Episode #5 Under The Banner Of Heaven: A review of the book & series with Ben Shaffer & Felipe

0:05 So unless you live in the place without internet or TV, I'm guessing Everyone by now is heard that the book under the banner of heaven was turned into a miniseries on the FX channel. And I'm guessing that there's also a ton of Mormons out there who feel like they just got blindsided by a bunch of obscure Mormon history. Now, I felt kind of a sense of urgency here that we needed to talk about this, so I brought on Ben. A Shaker now Ben is kind of like the guy that everyone goes to outside of fundamentalism to get answers. He's very well-spoken and he's very articulate. The other thing is that Fen has some very personal experiences that he shares on this episode that parallel close. Some of the events that are documented in the book under the banner of Heaven.

0:55 I also have on Felipe and he provides some very interesting context on this subject. Checked. Now, in this episode, not only do we talk about the book and movie Under the banner of heaven. But we also go over everything from personal moral agency to blood atonement to the oath of Vengeance and even provide a few pointers for navigating these topics if they're new to you. That's next on this episode of the Mormon Renegade podcast, Your listing to the Mormon Renegade podcast.

1:51 Welcome back to the Mormon Renegade podcast as always you can get ahold of me either by email at Mormon Renegade at gmail.com. You can also get a hold of me on Instagram and Twitter and getter under the handle. Mormon Renegade. Also we have a website up and that's Mormon Renegade.com. So go check that out. I'm here today with Ben Shafer and And Felipe. Now just as a disclosure these are both men. I go to church with. I love these guys and I respect these guys having said that we need to move right into what it is that we're going to talk about today. I believe there are certain points with in Mormonism that that Mormons have watershed moments.

2:39 And I really believe that this is going to be one of those moments. I think we saw one back when the Olympics came to Utah. I think we saw one when shows like Sister Wives came out. I think we saw it when Mitt Romney ran for president. And I think we're going to see one now. And unfortunately this time it's not so silly as, you know, Mitt Romney's and movable hair or or the the Sister Wives show or whatever. This is going to deal in some very meaty stuff. So been Philippe, I can't tell you how much it means to me that you're here. Yeah, thanks for having us over so I know Ben you went to the premiere, I did and the the new FX series under the banner of Heaven.

3:26 I got invited by Lindsay Hanson Park. Have the year polygamy, probably gasps. She's also very active of course, in leading the Sunstone Educational Foundation. She got me a invite to that Premiere because she helped doing some cultural Consulting trying to make sure they didn't completely blow it on their depictions of Mormonism and and Utah. Oh, and so forth. So, and I helped her out a little bit. I know people throughout the Mormon fundamentalist Spectrum, a bunch of different communities, and she wanted to know some obscure things like, what did it look like in the 1980s in different places and I wasn't there. But I do know people who were and so I was able to put her in contact with some, some ideas for those depictions and yeah, really powerful show.

4:10 And and I think you're right, this is why it's a watershed moment under the banner of Heaven has been In the New York Times bestseller list for a decade or more, I think I've ever forever ever since it came out and it's depictions of Mormonism are dark and terrifying. And of course, the subject matter is really serious stuff and yet because it's viewed as an anti-mormon work, I think a lot of Mormons haven't really engaged with it and yet now I think that's going to become unavoidable right now. This is really going to have to spark a really big and important conversation. Ation and I was at the premiere but it is now available as of today on Hulu.

4:52 And so I believe that as of today it's really going to get probably get a lot of traction and get a lot of people talking and I think, I think I can speak for all of us here that we have felt in our heart. That this is, this is why we are working so hard so quickly on this, because if we don't help to frame our own narrative, we let somebody else do it for us and ours alone. And that's not to say a narrative in the terms of spin, but that's narrative in terms of truth, right? To be able to talk about these things. At that Premiere. Do you feel like they did a good job with inviting like enough, fundamentalist enough mainstream LDS enough, Aunty Mo's? So to speak. All right, you know, there was actually a really interesting mix of people there.

5:37 I sat right next to one of the daughters of Dan Lafferty, who's still in prison. And of course that was very Very, very difficult and triggering for her. She left. As soon as it was over, she just seems really broken up. And I on the other side of me was Sandra Tanner of famous. Utah, Lighthouse Ministries, right? She's getting up there in years. I helped her find a seat, she has a cane and it's a, you know, A theater has a sloped floor. So I was like, hey, you're one of the matriarchs of Mormonism. OK, anti Mormonism. But you know and she was like, oh well, that's nice of you or whatever. And I helped her find a seat and all that. And we had people from the Meaty of Christ. We had some independent, Mormon fundamentalist, Mormon families from a couple of different communities, as well as myself, of course.

6:24 And so, yeah, I think there was pretty darn good representation. Oh, and, of course, don't forget the darters where they're Joe darker and his three wives or really major icons. Yeah, of Mormon. Fundamentalism royalty, royalty, be right. That's celebrities. If this if there are any such thing as as Martin fundamental celebrities. That's them, that's it. Yeah. So let's let's for those Those who haven't heard because I was surprised so many people didn't know the story behind the banner of Heaven under the banner of Heaven. Can you give us a quick synopsis of what happened there was it was a true story, it, right? And then and then of course, the idea of the book is that krakauer Jon krakauer, the author wanted to weave this into 11 Grand Narrative of all of Mormonism and connect it to kind of its most violent expressions. And this is why it's viewed as such an anti-mormon work and why I I believe it's actually work of dangerous levels of cultural appropriation because as a non-mormon himself, he played very fast and loose with a lot of the facts and then created a narrative.

7:26 Whereby he could profit off of a different minority that he was not even a member of or necessarily concerned about the consequences of his of his actions. Now that said, I know a lot of people listening or anything, but I thought the book was amazing. I'm not saying it's not amazing. I'm just saying it's appropriation. Well, and that's the yeah. There's definitely some of that it in there. I happen to be very much a Libertarian when it comes to free speech. Right? I believe in child West, Free Speech. As long as you're not infringing on the right of somebody else, I might go for it. So I feel like krakauer's got that right? Sure. But we also have the right to refer refute. What is blatantly obvious? Right wrong. So I guess my point is that in in the book for sure.

8:10 And I'm not sure about the TV show, I've only seen the first two episodes that were shown at the premiere. But he does generally conflate all Mormon fundamentalist into the flds, which is actually one different sect that actually had nothing to do with the Lafferty's at all. So, so let me give you the basic rundown. Spoiler alert. By the way for you can go watch, you can go watch at least the first two episodes on hooli right now. So go ahead and pause it and watch them if you want but basic basic overview the Lafferty's where a mainstream LDS Family, very devout. Very, very connected. They became somewhat more radicalized over time and it culminated in them, murdering one of the members of the family Brenda Lafferty and her daughter Erica and for clarity one of the reasons why this is so triggering and so terrifying, is that Erica Lafferty.

9:09 Was just a baby and 15 years old, crib, I think. Yeah, asleep in her crib and so So brutal horrific murders. And it's one thing to murder adult. I mean, we that's Murder Mystery Dinner Theater, is kind of can be dismissed about the murder of an adult but the cold-blooded murder of a baby is a level of evil that most of us never even contemplate being possible and and so it's their story and how they became radicalized and delusional enough, and to this day Dan Lafferty is alive, he's in the Utah, State Penitentiary. And to this day, he you know, Not only uses religion to justify his murders. He's proud of what he's done, right? He believes that God wanted him to be a serial killer, and that, this, that he's still fulfilling a Divine Purpose. He takes a huge amount of grotesque, delusional pleasure out of what he's done even now.

10:08 And so, it's really kind of hard to Grapple with that and therefore it brings up questions. That krakauer in the book, brings out saying, is this kind of delusion part First Love religion, is this kind of murderous nature? A fundamental just a part of Mormonism. So fundamentally that you know that Mormonism breeds dangerous men? And of course the real anti-mormon take on that that's really terrifying. Is it leaves the reader? I believe at least the book at least I believe leads the reader to believe that Mormonism is so fundamentally violent in its theology that anymore. A Mormon.

10:50 If they go a little too far, A little too Mormon, they will also succumb to the darkness. That is the nature, essentially, he believes of religion in general, and they will become evil that they will kill. And it's really a flawed. I'm just going to call it like I see it. It's a flawed idea that he comes out within that writes a Blog conclusion because let's face it. If you were going to make a true historical movie, I the Old Testament, that boy, bad boy is rated R 0 but I but no. Not defending Christianity, his bride all religions, I understand, I think he believes the same thing about Christians as he does about Mormons. If you become too deep in your Christianity, you will become a monster. That's what I think he believed, right?

11:30 I'm just making the point that that Mormonism isn't. The only religion that has a set of scriptures that depicts Wars, right? Well, certainly, and in fact, I think that's one of the big questions. Is that depicting? Something is in the same thing as participating in it. What kind of scripture would it? It be if it doesn't wrestle with the big questions, you know, the fundamental questions. What is life about? What is moral? What is the purpose? What is, what does it mean to become the best that you can be? What's what is human nature? Anybody who says that they're going to teach you about human nature? And they, then they don't even mention that violence. Might be one of the things that can happen in human nature that, you know, that great evils can't be possible.

12:16 Well, then they're deluding they're deluding themselves. Things are real. They do exist in our world war, Israel. I mean, right now we've got the war going on in Ukraine, and that's not exactly staying local. The concern is how big and how bad is this going to get. And, of course, that's a very, very small, and localized Skirmish compared to some of the things over the last hundred years, right? Millions. And millions of people have been slaughtered, the holocausts, the world wars. And and so, yeah, I think that it's crazy to assume that a religion shouldn't wrestle with that. Of course, all religions have to wrestle with the question. The the answer is, are we finding a way to peace? Are we finding a way to Divinity in spite of the evils and spite of the the suffering in this world, can we is religion exalting to the human soul, right?

13:06 And I think that krakauer just kind of Misses that and I don't know if the I don't know if the show's entirely going to miss it though. For example in the show Jeb pairi, the investigator is not in the book. His, he kind of takes on the role of the reader becoming a narrative tool to show you through the story and he's depicted as a loving faithful, Mormon, man, and that can, I hope be will see as the rest of the episodes play out, but I think that that's supposed to show, kind of, the Redemptive side of religion as well, that that you can struggle with difficult issues and come out a better man.

13:47 Not a worse, man, because you struggled with difficult issues, right? Right. It will be interesting to see what they do with that character and I hope I'm wrong, but my gut tells me that he may end up losing his faith in in Mormonism before this whole things over, right. Which is kind of what you'd expect from the book. So now, I want to be wrong, right? I want to be wrong at the end. I want him to wrestle with all these historical questions and come out on the other side, a more well-informed, Mormon, a more well-rounded Mormon and a Mormon that also understands human. You're a little bit more because let's face it as a people, especially within the LDS church. I think I think a lot of things have been sanitized over faucher in the LDS church and and when these things come up, its mind blowing.

14:34 When in our spoiler alert like I said I go to church with Ben and the conversation we had in the meeting II. Spoke to the fact that I think that we as fundamentalist may carry a larger responsibility on our backs for explaining this because the vast majority Twenty-somethings, within the church. Have probably never heard of blood atonement. Have I never heard some of the violence that kind of had to take place in certain instances. I'm not saying in all instances but in certain instances when it was self-defense well and sometimes also because we want to make our people to Heroes, right?

15:17 We ignore. And we whitewash. Any story where we weren't where I blame? Right. We did. We we as or as People. I don't mean us individually, right? Good. No, right. And so, and I think that also is human nature, right? And that's the battle of history. His balancing your ego with what actually went. Yeah, I mean, how many patriotic military parades? Would they be if we were going to get nitpicky about? Well, was it fully justified in each case? How did this really go down? I mean, horrible things happened, but we usually try to make it out. Like we're the good guys. They're the bad guys. This actually brings me up. Brings me to one of of the things I want to talk to him about this serpent, which is the concept of other ring.

16:00 Okay, the US versus them mindset. One of the big issues with the way we approach. This kind of media is that we almost always find a way mentally emotionally, we Circle our wagons, and we view ourselves in the hero's role and we view them in, you know, the other, the other the bad guys, you guys, the antagonists. Has these these dark evil forces. They don't need to be understood. They aren't part of us. Doesn't need to be wrestled with, doesn't it? Need to be confronted. It just needs to be conquered. And so then we rejoice when the hero beats the bad guys. Now this kind of way of thinking, I mean it can be fun, especially say.

16:42 So if it's a Marvel movie or something like that, you just want to identify with the hero. The problem is is that when you wrestle with the really deep questions of life, you have to embrace what Carl Jung, calls, the shadow, you have to recognize that That within you exists the capability of great, good and great evil. And that really, you can't have one without the other. I believe you may have heard the phrase. A great man is not necessarily a harmless man, correct. He's a man who could be a very dangerous, dangerous man, but he chooses virtue and I'm paraphrasing, but there's a quote that goes along with those lines. So, my point is, is that when you when people view or read under the Of Heaven, one of the most common things that they've done, is that they will look at themselves as people who, who are probably more virtuous than all those bad guys. Those bad Mormons or there's bad Mormon, fundamentalist, or at least just the bad Lafferty's, depending on how you look at it and then you say, oh that's not part of us, right. Clearly, that's not part of our culture and this is one of the big push backs when Mormons encounter it, Mormons going to be wrestling with this because they're going to look at this and they're like, that is totally a lie, Mormonism. Doesn't have that in it, that none of that is more. Ermine and that's what's called the no true. Scotsman fallacy.

18:00 And it comes from the fact that, of course, Scotsman, again partly because they were an embattled minority for a great deal of their history started to have this idea that being a Scotsman meant certain virtues and then whenever somebody in the community did something that went against that Community Athos. What did something evil they would say? Oh well no true Scotsman would have done such a thing and by doing so they simply make that Actual Scotsman not part of the community more. They say he's out because our community represents these virtuous principles. It doesn't represent that that stuff. The problem is that the Lafferty's were mainstream faithful Latter-Day Saints in the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints.

18:43 They served their missions. They were sealed in the temple. They were 110 percent representative of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Okay, so, so real quick here, a couple things I might have to give a caveat To that. So yeah. So first off with with this idea of no true Scotsman would do it. This idea that people say well no, no true Mormon would ever do that right? The, the issue with that. Is that a lot of them? I think, really believe that because they've never heard the full history of the shore of Mormonism, right? And so, I wanted to give someone the benefit of the doubt more than just cognitive dissidence, sometimes in the sense that you just didn't get caught, well, actually, we actually also have a mechanism In Mormonism called excommunication, right? When somebody does cross that line and we don't want them in the community more, we excommunicate them and then we say, oh no that's not part of us because he's out now but he was when he was when he was doing it, right? He was when he committed the crime. This is one of this is one thing. That drove me.

19:43 Crazy about recent media. I want to say it was only about a year ago, might have been to. There was a bishop in Lehi Utah, an actual sitting active Bishop And he was a police officer. Who ran an actual underage sex trafficking ring and the church wanted to say an ex-member. All of the, all of the newspaper article said, an ex-member of the churches discuss. A lot of things did this, and I'm like, no, no. He was a bishop, an active sitting Bishop sitting on the stand. Taking the sacrament leading, the priests Quorum, all of that while he was committing these crimes. The fact that when you caught him you have seen again it does not change the fact that he did this as as A bishop and then, they'd say, oh, well, it turns out that the girls that he was exploiting, were not members of his Ward, do that me? And I'm like, that doesn't make that any better. Like, don't get me wrong.

20:39 I'm grateful for every person who was spared being being a victim, okay? I'm grateful that these people escaped that but that doesn't reflect anything about his character just about his brains about not being caught for so long. You know, he found ways around getting caught. That doesn't mean that the church doesn't Having a kip capability recognizing doesn't have any responsibility to recognize this is part of our community and this is a problem that occurred in our community, in our church, what do we do about it? Now, the Lafferty's, the caveat I Gotta Give by the time they committed murder, they were mixed up in another group. So will the process cool? The prophets and it was this far more looser Collective than were aware of now and actually led to some changes in mainstream LDS church policy against having study groups Or groups that, you know, some informal Sunday schools and things like that harms thing, right?

21:32 Correct. No, is your you are wrong. It was. Robert Crossfield Crossfield who called himself the profit on nyhus, actually, and published a book called the second book of Commandments take off from the original before the doctor and Covenants. There was a book called The Book of Commandments which contained the revelations to Joseph Smith. And so he's made a second book of Commandments which contains his Revelations and that's why I always have people on waste Martyrs now. Field did pass away a few years ago. There's a guy named Jason Wharton, who claims to be the successor of that prophetic line. And I don't get on very well though. So I'm not sure what he's up to these days. I've talked to him a few years ago though, but the school of prophets also was not necessarily found to be entirely complicit in this. This was really Dan and Robert Lafferty's own delusions, okay. So even then you could say well okay, maybe they're not representative of the mainstream LDS church because they're involved with this other group that's blame that other group. Again, I want to remind The Listener will talk about other ring.

22:38 Okay, again we want to say, oh they're not part of us, the part of them. Well, what do you think they did in the school of the prophets there? Like we had nothing to do with this right off the bat. Of course, they said that and this is and I think some of them genuinely didn't had no idea what the Lafferty's were up to the Lafferty's also got their own Revelations. It's only and those Revelations so-called, which were clearly not from God. I need to point out, they never made it into like the can None of this other group, this the school of the prophets people, they never recognize it didn't appear in this book of the Prophet or nyhus or the second book of Commandments they were doing their own thing, right? So to say, to a certain extent, if we want to other them, we can say this was just the Lafferty's problem.

23:23 This was their own delusions and if you look at him now he's definitely clinically insane deeply insane and that kind of criminal Insanity. It's easy to say, well that's not part of us. That's just one guy who's off his rocker. But it's still part, not just of the school of the prophets and not just not even just the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's part of our community. This happened here. And one of the other things that happens when we do like you said, and I like how you put it. The other thing is that we don't that prevents us from looking at ourselves and say, what were some of the warning signs, right? Right. Could could, could this happen to one of my kids could this, you know, what is this?

24:08 And in that other ring, you kind of isolate yourself. To look out for certain signs. Exactly. Because what you did with the first thing you have to do, in order to in order to other them as you have to get, you have to be in denial. You have to say oh well that's no part of us. We don't have to worry about that because that's not something that we do. That's not something any good Mormon would do and it can it can happen in your own families and so this is why I'm going to bring up something that's difficult for me. I've never talked fully about publicly your listeners. Some of the No, I've been on various other podcast and things like that. I've talked about some of the stuff, but I haven't really talked about my brother Samuel Schaefer. He's in prison, he's, he's criminally insane. The, he's in the mental health care units there, and that means that he may not be released even after his 25 years. He's been sentenced to our completed. He may stay even then just because he won't be considered a deal. deemed competent enough for release, but it happened in my own family and one of the reasons is a little bit hard to admit is because I wish this was a story of total success and it's not, it's a story of my own failures in the failures of my family to stand up effectively against this kind of rhetoric. This kind of, this kind of insanity. Now, first off, I do want to

25:40 say, I do not believe that Mormonism or any religion can be blamed for its craziest members, Whenever there are especially schizophrenic type disorders. There is often a fixation on Authority, this is my armchair psychologist, take on it but I have studied this. Some I'm a lawyer by training not a psychologist but they fixate often on authority figures. I have a good friend whose mother was a paranoid schizophrenic and her mother committed suicide. It was really, really, really sad. She felt that she had to commit suicide because of terrorism. Now, this is not logical.

26:28 This is this is insane, right? This is because of her of her illness mental illness. She was convinced that the United States government was in contact with her like subliminal Only through codes through these other things and that they were communicating with her because there was something important she needed to do she needed to save the lives of her fellow Americans. And she believed at the time of her, of her death, or suicide that if she followed through, she could save them. She could save thousands. So she did it as a great self-sacrifice. Now that doesn't excuse the fact that it's still suicide, she didn't need to take her life, there were none of that was real. She was fixated though on this authority figure in this world view.

27:18 This delusional world view. But this worldview, nonetheless, she believes is real. And there's a flip side to that two. People will do dangerous and and then also, of course, violent things, when they think they need to because somewhere in their world view, it's necessary. My brother Samuel. Was always a little bit strange, but nothing to worry about, right? He was eccentric. He wasn't evil. He wasn't known to do any violence to anyone or anything. He never harmed a pet or anything like that. And the person we were actually really worried about originally, was his wife, Carolyn, she is all. She's definitely mentally ill.

28:10 She's been in and out of the Mental Hospitals, a few times. And again, she has a certain different type of paranoid delusions where she is always worried about. Again, I believe this is the authority fixation, she's worried about good and evil spirits. And so instead of seeing Like my friend's mother instead of seeing the world in terms of government Authority and terrorism, these types of threats, she saw the world in religious terms, she saw the Carolyn sees the world as being about good. This Dynamic, an eternal struggle between good and evil and these spirits that are constantly at War. This might even be familiar to some people. Theologically who believe in this kind of spiritual warfare Paradigm, which can be a useful in genuine. Religious perspective.

29:01 However again in this case it's twisted it's twisted into a delusional world view that puts other people in danger. So for example she feels like certain objects can be cursed or blessed and that means they need to either be held close to those. You're trying to keep safe or they have to be gotten rid of or destroyed. So it causes her to commit, a lot of petty theft, Petty vandalism and also hoarding behaviors dangerous, hoarding Behavior. Behaviors where she will keep rotten food or something like that. Because if it was blessed, you can't just get rid of it because it's rotten. It's special. It's got this spiritual power in it.

29:42 Well, yeah, clearly again, that's delusional. So, if you want to, if you want to set it up, if you want to set up a straw man and say, religion is wrong. Religion is evil. Well, here's your straw man for you. Find somebody with paranoid, delusions, or schizophrenia, and they're going to defend what they're there. Worldview in those in the terms of what they believe in. And that's, that's why so many things like the movie, It's A Beautiful Mind, A Beautiful Mind, Russell, Crowe A Beautiful Mind, that that movie is really about his paranoid schizophrenia and how he, how he views that as part of the government must be asking me is the way he thinks about the government must be. Asking me to decipher these codes or something right now. He still has a brilliant.

30:37 Beautiful mind. That's the name of the movie, but he also struggles with these delusions. Okay, I'm almost too much set up and I'm beating around the bush. Now my brother Samuel, Definitely had a hard time settling on anyone worldview. We didn't think this was violence. We didn't think this was dangerous. Certainly not at first. It was just that he changed his mind, a lot. He hung out with some Mormon fundamentalists that were Independence. He studied a lot of church history. Actually, he was even just into that, even when he was on his LDS mission, he's I read a lot of neat books and again I don't there's nothing wrong with those books where I love the general discourses.

31:28 But what the difference is is that he didn't approach it with a regular healthy mind. He approached it with a certain kind of obsessiveness, he would find one favorite idea and he would beat it to death. It would be the only thing that's important. The only thing that's important in the entire universe. For sometimes months at a time. And then he would switch and he'd be like, no, no, that's stupid. I don't even believe that anymore. That's just garbage and he'd throw out the one thing and fixate on something new. And so he did this as he bounced around a lot of different worldviews, interestingly enough, he stayed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through many iterations of this. It wasn't until he became an atheist ex-mormon that he said that he was done with it and he resigned his church membership in the earliest church, and so, That was one of his faces. He was an atheist ex-mormon and then he became an agnostic ex-mormon and then he Dove right back into different more extremist views where you fixate on one thing or another that it was really important to him.

32:30 I don't think he actually came back to Mormonism immediately. He regained his theism by discovering the worship of the of the old pagan gods, the Norse gods and some of these other religions and he found great Beauty in that and excitement. And I thought, well, that's cool too. Like, I love world religions. I'm interested in all these different art, great archetypes. But again, that's that wasn't what it was for him. What it was for him was a fixation taken to extremes at all times, but never steady enough to to Bear to Bear, good fruit in his life to mean something to him. It was almost like, whatever. He was studying at the time became so Central to his core and his identity and his identity that he would sell out for it, right? Oh, absolutely which and here's the Fine Line pen. Is that ideally, I mean us as Mormons, that's that's what we all strive for, right, is selling out to that ideal to assert.

33:29 And, and I think that's where krakauer is potentially, right? That religion becomes very dangerous. I believe that any time you abdicate, your moral responsibility. You are in the wrong. I don't care if you're advocating a moral responsibility to follow. Someone who is telling you to do, what is right. If you're abdicating, your moral responsibility you I've lost part of what it means to be a responsible adult human being. You know, if somebody says, you know what, I'm just going to go with it. I'm going to join the Peace Corps or the Red Cross. And I'm going to give it my all that sounds like a virtuous thing, right? Or Doctors Without Borders or so you know, Oxfam you're engaged. In good works, right?

34:12 Know if you're doing it morally blind, right? Then it's wrong. You never ever ever do anything, morally, blind, otherwise, otherwise all any kind of evil is possible. And so anyways, he went through all these different iterations and he fell in with a guy named John Cole Tharp And for those of you who have seen because I've warned you, you should have already seen it. The first couple of episodes of under the banner of Heaven. This is became very, very personal to me because John Cole Tharp was very much. Oh my goodness. He's so similar to the Lafferty's.

34:52 He believes himself to be the one Mighty and strong a reference to Doctrine command section 85 that was in the first episode of under the banner of Heaven, only Mormons pregnant pick up on the reference, right? But he believed herself to the one Mighty and strong, he believed himself to be Joseph. Smith reincarnated, I believe, I think so that he's got that multiple mortal probations type of Doctrine in his mindset. He believed that he was his calling to to unite all the Mormon sects and make them all, all unite under his leadership and things like that. And he was a dangerous pedophile and extremists of violent, pedophile, and a violent extremist and My Brother Sam. Fell into thinking this guy's it, he's the real deal. I should sell out in the sense that like you were saying, aye, if this is the real thing, I should commit 110%, I should abdicate.

35:50 My moral responsibility, should do whatever this man says because this man speaks for God. He believed now of course his just another one of this string of delusional. Oh, maniacs. And we need to get into that. But I'm gonna finish telling the story first, So, John Cole Tharp. Receives these Revelations about marriage which were well, of course we didn't know about this. Yet at the time he receives these Revelations on marriage that basically indicate his belief. That, like Jacob worked for seven years to obtain worked for Laban for seven years to obtain a wife that the Dowry and this kind of thing is really essential to getting your wife that you should work for her.

36:40 Her. But you can't work for a woman who's already liberated? Who's already an adult, so you have to sorry, trigger warning. For the lister's, you have to pick a child and you have to raise her the way you want her and you have to work for her father for her and do service or pay money or both. To basically purchase that child has your bright. That's the way he twisted. This, he turned this into this monstrous pedophile doctor. Now, we didn't know. That's exactly what they were up to, but, and this is where some of my failures come in. We did know that John Cole tarp was trouble, John Cole, Tharp had said, a lot of other things that were just horrible and violent in nature. He would say, things like, You have to recognize that I am the Lord's Prophet otherwise you will be destroyed you know he used a lot of being destroyed rhetoric. He used a lot of threats and just even just plain harassment. He came to meetings once for Christchurch he showed up My Brother Sam.

37:52 Of course knew where I lived he's my brother and this is the came to meeting one time and he really came just to harass and tell us. Us that we were all wrong and false apostates because we didn't have enough of the Holy Spirit to recognize that he was God's chosen mouthpiece. And so we were like yeah we don't do that here, you know, but what did I do? I try to be polite about it. I tried to be a peacemaker about it, I'd sorter or so I thought, I've always thought of a peacemaker as somebody who deescalate, the situation is really nice about stuff Smiles. You know, that's what I thought. A peacemaker was the time. And I got in the way I got in the way of John Colter, oops, Kingdom. Apparently, when I did those things, when I post him, Well, a little while, this is the other thing, we knew that Sam My Brother Sam and he has two daughters that, that they were not in a very safe situation.

38:51 They kept being it, kept me an unstable situation, John Colter clearly had this strange, hold over him. But again, it was like the justifications are, well, shouldn't we keep the peace and shouldn't we be polite, and maybe it's none of our business. But I was worried and I asked my whole family to come over to my house all except Sam, of course, at this time we'd already had arguments about some of his racist doctrines. Some of his crazy ideas, I warned him, but again, politely warned him that this wasn't a very good or healthy situation. But what did I done?

39:34 Nothing? Really. Alright, I'd been polite about it and that was already too much for My Brother Sam. He was deeply offended that I would tell him off and tell him the John Cole Tharp wasn't a good man and that he was being racist and that he was being neglectful to his children, in that, this did not sound like good Doctrine and that, you know, and I even pointed out to him because he talked about this, you got to work hard for a wife or whatever and I'm like, yeah, but that doesn't. Matter. Because you better not be working hard for an underage person. A person is of age, that parents have no claim on them. That's just not how it works in our societies. Like, well, it's the way it should work in our society and stuff like that. And I'm like, look, women aren't your property and I told him a couple things like that but I but how much of how confrontational was that?

40:22 It was confrontational enough that he and I had a falling out and he more or less said I'm going to spend the holidays, with my real family. My true family is John Cole Tharp because he is God's. Offit. And that means I'll be sealed to him for eternity, but I'm not seal to you because you're an apostate and you won't accept these doctrines and that really pissed me off. And I but again, I was thinking that this was about my relationship with him. I was thinking this was about me being a peacemaker, not about my relationship to a potentially violent situation. So here's what I didn't know after these conversations after we had this falling out. Sam and John Cole, Tharp entered into a contract.

41:07 According to those doctrines or John would take my niece's to be his wives, and he would take John Cole tarps daughters to be his wives. They then performed their own marriages with these nine and ten-year-olds. and, Then once they were once, they were engaged in actual pedophilic acts, they knew that they were in danger. So that's when they cut off, communication with everyone and everything, and they disappeared. Now when they did that, apparently they were living in Spring City, Utah, and to disappear, they moved, they bought some land. And they moved somewhere on the outskirts of Cedar City, and we just didn't hear from him, for months about that time. I knew that they Disappeared somewhere. And that they'd been talking about weird stuff. And I was already worried about my nieces. And so I I brought my family to my house and that's yeah. Okay, back on track, my mom, my dad, my younger brother, my sister, my brother-in-law.

42:21 We all sat down and I said, I think we need to call CPS. The child protective services, right? The DCFS and you're an attorney. So you know that this is opening up a whole can. When you do that I do and I am sorry to say and I'll probably just have to say it right here. I still don't trust them icps and DCFS, they are unconstitutional, disgusting prejudicial organizations that are actively engaged in genocide regularly. They, I know people and several Native Americans, Friends and clients. I've had where they wanted to take their children just because they wanted to make those children more white just because they wanted to destroy their culture and Heritage. I've seen them do this over and over again. And, and frankly, as we get further in the story and you see how DCFS acted, they behaved in a violent and illegal manner. Even in this case, I had my own go rounds with them, that we won't go into here.

43:21 But I can't agree with you more. I mean, it's and yet and yet, I just want to make the point. I know your stance on it, so, right. And I'm glad you brought that out because to make you get to the point you and attorney a Mormon fundamentalist, a well-known Mormon, fundamentalist, to want to involve them in my family's life and open us up to that scrutiny. It was not something I wanted. It's true but I think it shows and a high level of Integrity on your part that you're like, okay, consequences be damned at this point because it because got that letter. Dangerous. Yeah, they got a better shot at CPS. Am I understanding that correctly? Yes that's correct. And actually and here's one other thing I want to make clear after I've pointed out my position I I deeply regret that I did not do it. My family got together, we talked about it and everybody kept saying, we can't trust them, we can't do that. You don't have any evidence that Sam, or John Colter / doing anything, violent or dangerous, or harming those girls in any way.

44:26 You just, you can't trust. DCFS. You cannot call them and everyone, my family begged, me not to do it. And I didn't do it but I regret that I didn't do it, it would have been better for everyone, if I had done it. And this is one of the things that's hard. We don't have perfect systems. Okay. The justice system isn't perfect and certainly not the Child Protective Services System, it is not perfect, but it's better than letting dangerous individuals get away with it or, or turning a blind eye to this kind of violent rhetoric and the, The Fallout from, that is something I can't undo because, but I really wish I could go back and just called DCFS because what they would have done, Done in spite of the fact that I believe that they handle many, these cases horribly responsibly is still better because they can do something and let's face it, they have saved many children from terrible situations and in this case, they would have been much, much better off.

45:29 So, here's the other thing that I didn't know at the time, John Colter. I've got a revelation now, famously. I'm going to bring this back to under the banner of Heaven. The Lafferty Brothers. Got a revelation that said Brenda Lafferty is an obstacle the removal Revelation. Yeah, they called the removal that she needed to be removed and and that was their justification for murdering her and her baby John Cole Tharp. Got a revelation. saying that I was the obstacle to God's kingdom that I had to be removed and my daughter's taken and, I didn't know it. I found out the way almost everyone in Utah. Did an amber alert.

46:24 My phone made the funny sound the and I looked at it and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It said suspect Samuel Schaefer for girls believed to be in real Danger. And I was like, what the heck is going on? Because as much as I believe in my brother to be going down a dark path, I didn't know how dark and I didn't know how far certainly. And I thought, well, look, even if he's being irresponsible, I don't think he would intentionally hurt anybody. Well, and here's the thing. It's all academic. Till the crap hits the fan. Oh yeah, right. And pardon the expression but that's just the truth of it, right? We think about certain scenarios all the time. It's one thing to think about it's another thing to get the Amber Alert.

47:11 Right? Right. And, you know, the old expression, crap just got real. It got really real really fast. And so I was like, what the heck is going on? I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. I didn't have a good number to call him and then other calls started coming in. I got a call from the Salt Lake Tribune. They wanted to know what I thought. I thought I told him what I thought. I said, I don't think he's violent. I don't think he's dangerous. I don't think he would have done anything to hurt anybody. I don't think he's a bad guy. I don't. I mean, you know like I have I've been I've been on the outs with him.

47:52 We've been estranged a bit but that doesn't. I mean that doesn't mean I think you'd hurt anybody. He's been in my home. This is the thing with the other ring, okay? The first step is always denial. Not the Lafferty's. Nah, they're good. They're good Mormons. They couldn't possibly be involved in that. Chad a bell. He's a desert book author. He's, he does speaking tours. He's a good respectable man. He can't be a serial killer. Nobody would have thought so right. And so I was in that stage and I told him, no, I don't think he heard anybody on these wrapped up in anything illegal or or anything horrible. You know what I mean?

48:33 But that was just my own did. I'll and this is the type of thing. You hear, every time it comes up, and this is why we need, we really need to catch ourselves. We need to watch ourselves me, having been through this, I need to warn you. You gotta watch yourself when it happens to you. If it happens to you, you're going to say, but they were such a nice neighbor. Oh, but they were our friend. The thing is, you don't know what people's private lives. Are you just don't? Especially when it comes to sexual crimes. A person can be legitimately a brilliant mind, a great pillar of the community. Very clean-cut always respectful and a child molester they can be both.

49:16 In fact, most of them are and it doesn't necessarily they can be a great artist and a pervert, you know, there was plenty of examples of these things and I think that we need to be able to compartmentalize that enough to say, you know what? I appreciate their art anyway. I appreciate the work they did for the community anyway, but I will not use any of that to be an excuse for this other crap that goes on. So, anyways, apparently John Colter had this revelation. They were setting up their new house in Cedar City area. No, I I find the term compound a little too pejorative. They were basically just building a house, you know. It's not like, I don't know what compound is, accepted, pejorative term for house. Generally, you know, people always all the more fundamental seen their compounds wants about the same thing as Suburbia. It's just that we don't like those people. So we called a compound.

50:08 Anyway they were setting up their thing down there and they'd gone Back up to Spring City, apparently to get some more stuff. And John Colter had not been allowing his children. The mother of his children to see his children. They were no, I don't know if they were divorced or just a strange. Maybe they were divorced. Anyway, I don't know much about their situation only as it relates to me really, but she was looking for the kids and so the police went to do a wellness check. And there they were trying to get stuff out of the house and disappear. And here's the cops. It was like fortuitous timing. See. Okay, so they arrest John Cole, Tharp when he won't cooperate. Great with them. Our tell him where his kids are or allow her to have any custody or any of that. And then My Brother Sam goes on the lam and tries to hide tries to run, and it made no sense to me. Made no sense to me now, they did catch him. Um, he was trying to find some other shelter. Some other places in winter to summer brother, Sam's got four, little girls.

51:07 All of whom are witnesses to their crime, all of whom would out them because they've been brainwashed into this. The first thing they would have said, I think is oh, yeah, he's my husband or something, you know what I mean? They'd totally brainwashed them into this. And so he's got four little girls. And I should I should point this out, it's not an excuse but it is context. My Brother Sam has had some pretty serious physical disabilities. So he's not exactly the most capable guy and he's trying to bring for little girls in the dead of winter, through the middle of nowhere, in the desert, somewhere out in the west deserts, and trying to hide from the cops, all the same time. Yeah.

51:50 So that was not going to work obviously and so somewhat to His credit, he basically ends up turning himself in, he walks out to the road flag, someone down the cup and tells the cops, or the kids are hiding. Because he couldn't, he couldn't keep them safe, they were going to freeze, right? But here's the thing, that enrages me about this, these religious justifications and these delusions. All I know this point, of course, I don't know anything about the abuse. I don't know anything about them. Having a revelation to murder me or any of that craziness? I just know that I get a call. They found your nieces and they found your brother and they're in Cedar City. And someone, I mean, I'm man.

52:35 Do I wish I had a recording these conversations now, but somebody it's CPS goes yeah, we're not we're not sure what the situation is going to be for him. Maybe they need to be picked up or something and I'm like that's like three hours away and it's you know it's evening already I better go pick up those girls. I can't just you know have them out here in the desert or what the heck. So I jump in the car. We get we get car seats from my other. Niece has other side of the family, right? Henry, we load up the car and I drive Straight down there to pick up the girls when I get there. Boy, howdy. Is there something weird that I cannot put my finger on but the police are just like, hostel. Hostel is heck.

53:18 And I'm like, so what's going on? Where's the kids? Do you need my help? And they're all like, hands on their gun. Like, what's your full name? Show us your ID. You know what I mean? Like, not cool with me at all. I look, I'm a lawyer and they're like, are you his lawyer? I'm like, well, no, not really. It's just, My brother, you know what I mean? But I didn't know you level the full excited know the full extent of what was going on, right? And apparently they're interrogating, the other room and he's spilling you know he's just telling him everything he's going this guy, he's spilling his guts saying God has commanded me to like molest little girls and murder my brother and all this crazy crap. That's what's going on in the other room. You know what I mean? And they're like, get out of here, you know what I mean? And I'm just like, what about the kids? And they're like, the kids are not your concern. You know what I mean?

54:01 Kind of thing. I'm just like, holy crap, you know? And I don't know how they know what's going on, right? So the next day after they're done, interrogating my brother. I actually go into the jail and say, I want to talk to him and they say what gives you the right to talk to him. And so, I did, I told the lawyer card, I pulled out my bar card and I said, I'm his lawyer. If you don't give me access to my client, you'll be in violation of the law. And then they said, yes, sir, and they let me do it. So, Hopefully, that's not abuse of my privilege. So, anyways, oppression to put it that way. Don't listen, if you remember that, your tow bar association. Um, anyway, um, hopefully, this is a little bit comedic, but so they pull him out and he's like, hey Ben, how's it going? And I'm like, hey, I'm talking to what is going on? What have you told the police, you know, do you need me to represent you?

54:51 I have you committed a crime, what's going on, you know, and he, he, he talks to me for a while. While it's nice to see you, but in a little while a little bit by little bit, I start chipping away and he starts telling me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm abusing. This girl's cheese. Yeah, I was running from the cops because I have committed crimes and I committed multiple other crimes and then the thing that really just made me want to strangle him. That's one of the reasons why those glass there I'm sure it's not just for the safety of the security, the prison it's also to keep prisoners safe frankly. Then he tells me He fears, he has lost his Immortal Soul because he didn't kill the girls.

55:38 What? Johnny bluest of blue, hell's. Yes. So John Cole Tharp apparently left him with this instruction. If you think you're going to be caught, it is your obligation to kill the girls rather than let them be captured or taken by the authorities. Now, the only reason I can think of that, John Colter would give such an insane instruction for cold-blooded murder is because he was afraid of being conference cry. Times and he just heard a good way to get rid of the evidence. And so My Brother Sam says the true prophet of God told me what God commanded me to do and I didn't do it.

56:18 He's like, I just couldn't I just did. I wasn't courageous enough was the way he thought about it. I wasn't brave enough to do what God has commanded me to do. And now I think I've lost my soul because I can't obey because I couldn't obey now to some extent at least that means he had enough Humanity that he couldn't bring himself to do it. The thing that scares me is he was armed and he was instructed. To commit that to murder the girls. He just felt like, he just couldn't do it. He was. He said, he felt he was too much of a coward and I think that that's the one redeeming piece of humanity. He has left, frankly, it's the one thing I hope that he doesn't give up on.

57:00 He may have confused weakness with Humanity. Oh, he definitely did right. He conflated that last part that was there saying you can't do this. He had the one part left that the one Lafferty didn't have when he killed the fish. 18, month-old child, right? And And thank goodness. He didn't he didn't he didn't hurt anybody but The idea that he thought he had to write and then to find out from the police after that conversation that I was on that hit list. And my daughters were on the rape list, essentially. Was very chilling to find out.

57:45 Yeah, you look the beast in the face, I did. And I'm sorry to say that, you know, you look into those eyes and you think you see somebody you've known your whole life, I was there at his birth, you know, it's my my little brother. you think you know, somebody And all I saw was. A murderer, a psychopath someone who'd completely lost all moral sense and I kind of again, I know I'm really good at diffusing situations and playing. Nice. I just told him, I wished him well and walked out. I handled it really cool part of me regrets that too because I wanted to strangle him.

58:28 I wanted to defend myself. I want to defend my family. He's the monster. Paucity of it and what he was. And, of course, because I wasn't firm with him, he then spent the next like, six months writing me letters, which then I started just throwing the trash without reading being things. Like, oh, but don't worry, you can still be saved if you'll support John Cole Tharp and we, you know, God's talking to me in the prison and this is maybe this is the way it's meant to be, but don't worry because soon enough, we'll kill all the American powers that be well over. Or the government will all be liberated by this you know, these terrible things that are going to happen because we've seen it in Prophecy, you know. And here he is promoting once again additional and continuing violence against the innocent.

59:17 Okay. Let me stop there because I want to pack some of this been, because what was an academic exercise just became pardon the expression again, crap. Just got real right first, let me say this, it took a massive amount of 42. Attitude to tell that story. You should be commended on that too. And feel free to interject here where you feel it's necessary. But this idea that you failed your brother, I don't buy that. And and let me tell you why this was not yours alone to do true, but I have some responsibilities.

1:00:00 You look, you do, but I'm going to also say this Mormons in the jet in a much wider context. I believe, I feel have a much greater responsibility in defusing this crap before it ever gets started. If we don't do a certain amount of policing within ourselves, Right. It's going to get it gets ugly. Okay, let's just look back at the flds situation when everyone started noticing that Warren Jeffs was going off the rails. At that point.

1:00:40 The fundamentalist that were guess mainstream mainstream fundamentalist, right? The LDS church. We should have been more vocal. We should have been like, you know, what theology damned for right now, what will will fight those battles later? Her. But right now, right now, we should come together and you should come together and condemn what is going on in Colorado City, and we should do it with as much peaceful veracity as we can, and make sure our voices are hurt. Because I think that does two things, right to those who are oppressed and those who are in danger, if they can see. Well, you know, I I may not agree with their theology but there's these people out here who say they're Mormons to and, and, and they're trying to help. That at least gives an Avenue where does and you know, when you think about it with the, with Warren Jeffs and his crimes, if all of the flds people had stood up together at the same time, when he started preaching that stuff over the pulpit and said, no, look uncle they call him uncle, look, Uncle Warren.

1:01:42 As much as we love you, you're wrong, right? If somebody had done that, then it could have saved the whole Community because frankly more, that way less than half the community still with him, right. He destroyed their community so much that the vast majority of people, if they stood up at the same time would have absolutely been able to stop him but they all had to stand up one at a time. What is it that I want to say? It's a Viktor Frankl. Maybe talked about how well they came for the Socialists. I didn't say anything. As a socialist, the then the Nazis came for anybody who was a Jew, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. They came for everybody who was a Mason, but I wasn't a Mason, they came up for each of these groups and then they came for me.

1:02:24 There was no one to stand up for me to a certain extent. You know, you're have to put a link to that little poem. Now on this on this post just certain extent, that's the problem. You got to stand up together, right? When you lock arms, you have so much Our. It's like it's like a union versus one person getting fired. One person can be fired just because they're making true allegations of sexual harassment or unfair treatment or or dangerous work environment. You know, one person can get up and say, hey, this isn't right, and then they just get fired and then they abuse the next person and the next person stands up and says, hey this isn't right and they get fired too, but if all the employees link arms, Then the employer has to clean up their act.

1:03:08 It's the same kind of thing. Like there's power in numbers, you know. Right. Having said that there has to be there's oh it always starts with one. It takes a catalyst right now. I'm a firm believer in Courage is contagious. Hmm. And so I think it and and I think this Harkens back to what we were talking about last Sunday. If you guys ever want to come, I can tell you where to go just saying. Um but but what we were talking about last Sunday Day. At some point, we have to make the decisions. Every one of us, what are we going to do in those uncomfortable situations? I think back to the classes. I took for my concealed carry permit, my instructor was very good about saying, where's your red line?

1:03:51 Where's your red line? Because if you wait until the moment you want, don't know what your red wine is, right? So at what moment and these are uncomfortable thought exercises to do, but they put out to be done so that in that. Moment, maybe it's you that starts to spread that quote virus of of Courage, right? You're a patient zero, right? And and I guess that's the reason to why you have to think of it through ahead of time if you don't decide. Now, when it's merely a thought experiment, when you're going to call the cops, when you're going to call CPS, then as it sneaks up on you like it did on me. It's just so easy to put off because it's like, where is the line?

1:04:36 Maybe the line should be a little further down the road because I'm not comfortable with the, with as difficult as this going to be the cross. I want to put this into a much less dangerous context, but very true. One thinking about the BYU Honor Code thinking about whether or not to tattle when you're at camp with your buddies and they're doing something dangerous. Oftentimes, one of the reasons why this is messy. Because you don't want the scrutiny on yourself either your you're not like guilty of doing anything really bad but you're not ready to face the Fallout of having been so close to something, right. Right in a lot of cases say the BYU Honor Code or being a tattle being at snitches get stitches they say, right? Because they want to intimidate you into not saying anything when your friends start doing drugs or your friends start doing something dangerous.

1:05:32 Regularly. You don't want to be the party pooper and you know, that if you report to an authority, they're going to know that you've already gotten yourself in knee-deep. Maybe not neck deep and you can see your friends are heading toward neck-deep in the skit and dangerous. But you're in knee-deep, you got drunk or you committed some dangerous actor. You covered up for somebody in the past and it's all going to come unraveled. The moment you report. This, that makes it really hard to speak up and I really need to speak up for Mormon fundamentalist in general to because let's face it. There is. So there is still very real, very dangerous prejudice against Mormon fundamentalist communities, the yearning for Zion Ranch rate in Texas, for example, okay, there were crimes being committed there, but none of those were associated with the probable cause or the warrant that sent them in.

1:06:26 And don't forget when they went in, they brought artillery they brought military weapons. Because they were ready for mass murder. Well, wake the Texas coast? Yes via Texas authorities were ready to murder every man, woman child baby didn't matter who got in their way when they went into the Ranch in Texas. Now, I'm not justifying, Warren Jeffs, he was committing serious crimes. Some of his associates were also coming very serious crimes. There were some really evil stuff that, that, that rate uncovered, but you know what? You know what caused the raid Nothing. But some of the blindest and most stupid Prejudice imaginable which should never have been acceptable for a warrant and never should have been acceptable. Legally, a woman who had read under the banner of heaven and thought the flds must be bad.

1:07:15 People who lived in Oregon had a never even met a Mormon fundamentalist in her life. Called up the Texas authorities on the phone said she wanted to remain anonymous but that her name was Rachel Barlow because she knew that that was a very common name in the community. So that's believable that her name was Rachel Barlow and that she was 16 years old, and she was being forced to marry an old polygamist man. That's that's, that's what it was. It was that phone call? She had no knowledge of actual Mormonism. She had no knowledge of actual Mormon fundamentalism. She had no connection to the community at all. She was like a 34 year. Old woman who read under the banner of Heaven in Oregon. That's what launched, that's what launched a genocide, a level raid against an entire community and don't forget every one of those innocent mothers had their children, their babies torn from their arms. And the Texas authorities said that it was their objective to eradicate the disease of Mormon fundamentalism. They wanted to commit genocide essentially against the entire culture and the entire religion and they didn't care what the Fallout was.

1:08:21 It wasn't until some, you know, reasonable and wise, judges. And this is why I do have some faith in the judicial system still as a lawyer. I still think there's some real redeeming qualities in here. He, you know, they started bringing up this actual evidence starting to look at. How are we going to place these children in non-mormon family? So that we can eradicate this Mormonism from our community. We need to eradicate the religion. So in order to do that, we have to re-educate all these children. So they were that was literally, their whole organ design. And a judge said, wait a second, what cause do you have to assume that there's any crime has been committed? In this family and they kept saying, we don't have anything, we don't have anything. Essentially, that was met legal muster and so the judge ordered. No, you have to let the women and children go.

1:09:01 You can only continue to hold people. If you have some probable cause of a crime now, did they find crimes there in Texas? Yes, they did because Warren Jeffs has committed some very heinous crimes and that's where fortunately for, you know, criminals are so dumb. I mean, I can't get over this one. I'm doing criminal defense. I can't tell you how often criminals are so dumb. But Warren Jeffs is dumb criminal. He basically recorded in detail all of his crimes, right? And then left records of all of his wonderful crimes because apparently was proud of them. It's the same thing with my brother and John Colter honestly. He spilled his guts to the police, told him everything. And on top of that, they wrote it all in a book and handed it to the cops.

1:09:41 Right? So you know, there was there's no defense for that sort of thing, but what's my point? My point is is that fear? A very real, very serious consequences especially the moment found a mouse committee is not unfounded. Know it look let's face it. The the reason that Warren Jeffs could do what he did was because of the short Creek grade, right? Thus the 1953 short Creek raid, basically taught that entire Community, you are not Citizens United States, you have no rights and you should fear them because they will destroy you and they will hurt your family. This is part of the problem. When when you, you for something like, Plural. Marriage.

1:10:24 You know, someone's lifestyle choices. Look, obviously I'm a Mormon fundamentalist. I'm not super sympathetic in terms of the homosexual lifestyle. Having said that that is your right to practice if you so deem fit and you shouldn't be forced to live in the shadows for it, right? Be right. Or or legally harassed because because bad things happen when you force people into the shadows and we saw that with Um, with Excuse me prohibition, we saw that every time. We go that direction well and especially any time there's prejudice against any minority, right? Right, Prejudice.

1:11:06 Anti-semitic Prejudice, even just apartheid or segregation. What happens? You separate those communities out and then you other them. They're not one of us. They do not deserving of Rights and then, and then you can harass them. You can harm them with. Impunity, right, and right now to this day, Mormon fundamentalists are other especially in the state of Utah. And so people aren't concerned if if you are targeted or harassed or harmed people assume that you deserved it because of that prejudice, right? And it's greatly to my lack of intelligence that I decided to do a podcast. All right, I just came out well and that's one of the one of my problems to write being a very open, Mormon Fundamentalist.

1:11:53 It puts a Target on my back. Is it with certain individuals? Absolutely. However, there is something to be said, it's a little tougher, take someone out in the light, right? It right. If you, you know, there are some safety in the sunlight there is in fact, and that's why they say sometimes the greatest disinfectant because it stops a lot of this bad stuff from happening. So, but my broader point, my daughter point is my broader point is, it doesn't matter. Even if your flds there, still needs to be a red line where you say I'm calling the cops even though I don't trust them. For example, I said earlier, I don't trust the Child Protective Services of Utah. They do not follow, even their own rules, whenever Prejudice gets in the way and they're prejudiced organization, especially against weren't fundamentalist, but I still wish I called them.

1:12:40 I still wish I'd called them because they're not, they're not fundamentally evil, they have misconceptions. Some of them are very poorly trained. Some of them are just plain overworked, so sometimes they'll make bad decisions because it's the Heat of the Moment. They just got to think they got to do what they got to do. But Even then somethings better than nothing. And even if it brings scrutiny to me, like, one of the things that I'm worried about is because of that, prejudice, I was afraid that they were going to investigate and harass my family, just because we pointed them the direction of my brother's family, right? Because if there is something wrong and his family, we would have hoped that we would have had the opportunity to bring my niece's.

1:13:20 Into one of our family's, my family, my sister's family. One of us should have been on the list at least. For taking custody of her own family members, if he's an unfit parent, well, we didn't know how unfit, but even then shouldn't we have been consulted and that is their policy that people should be placed with family unless they're prejudiced against that family's lifestyle or something. And sure enough, because my brother Sam was spouting this, you know, insane delusional, but religious rhetoric, CPS cut us out completely when that happened. They never, they never interviewed anyone. Us. They never talk show any of us. They stonewalled us at every possible turn everyone didn't matter. If they were mainstream LDS, like my mother, who as their grandmother would have been a very reasonable choice, to take care of her own grandchildren.

1:14:12 They would not even return our phone calls that wouldn't take let they wouldn't open her letters. They had nothing to do with her because of Sam's rhetoric. They just assumed, oh, he's one of the others because because Sam is involved in some kind of Quasi-religious craziness and of course, don't forget. This is Southern Utah where there's a huge amount of prejudice against the flds. They're just lumping them all into one thing and assuming that that means they don't deserve the regular legal rights that other people have. And so, they absolutely violated all their own policies and cut us out completely, and then they did what the other thing too, which is that they want to make sure that any kid who comes out of that other group gets re-educated into the in-group, right?

1:14:56 Right. And so my niece is, for example, if you're, if you're worried about them, for my story are actually in a pretty good situation now. But It reinforces all of these problems and themes because the whole point was these, these social workers had decided that this good LDS Family deserved more children, and they had already decided that the next couple of children that came up as being available which, of course, they decide what children available? We're going to go to that family, they just made that decision before they even knew. My Brother Sam had moved into the county, they had already prejudged, which is the root term of prejudice.

1:15:38 That as soon as they could get children out from an other group, they were going to give them to this in group person. Now, that, that in group family, I don't blame them individually, but here's the crazy thing, my brother and John Cole Tharp are in prison for kidnapping. What? It's CPS do? How is that functionally different in any way than kidnapping? They had a premeditated plan about how they were going to take children from one culture or society, and put them in another and re-educate them and exactly where they were going to go and what they're gonna do with them. And then they seized them by force and delivered them to their their purposes. Now, don't get me wrong. People say, well, that can't exactly be kidnapping because their motives weren't weren't bad motives, and that's why I, this is one of the reasons why I think we need to re-examine ourselves. I don't want to call bullshit on that, I don't. What your justifications are violence, is wrong, I don't care what excuse, you're going to use or law. You might try to hide behind or profit. You might try to hide behind.

1:16:40 If you are using some kind of rules or instructions or something, to abdicate, your personal moral responsibility, and do violence to another person or family that's evil. And it needs to be called out no matter where it's found. If it's found in a church or a government or the policies of your employer, it doesn't matter. You have to say we all have to stand up and hold up your hand and say, no, I will not participate in a system of violence. it reminds me of one of the things I was asked when I was asked online recently just yesterday about About my brother is one of the reasons I wanted to talk about on the podcast because he said two people one person said, well, how can you talk about standing up against this kind of evil?

1:17:28 What did you stand up to your brother? And it's like I tried I did but I didn't do it strongly enough and for that I'm sorry. But another person said well, well you can't always talk that way. What about Abraham God? Commanded Abraham to offer his son. Isaac? Would you would you have opposed to the prophet? Today. And I'm like, yes, yes, I would. Because we identify ourselves wrongly. This is the problem with other ring. The other group that US versus them, that the them group, we miss identify these scriptural stories, and how the lesson were supposed to take from them because we miss identify, who we are supposed to be in that story in the story of Abraham offering, his son, Isaac. We get taught in, like, for example, in LDS curriculum that we should contemplate that story. And most of the discussion goes that we should Don't believe that story.

1:18:23 Are you willing to obey God? In all things is the lesson were supposed to take from the story. I don't think that's less than were supposed to take from the story. I think lesson was supposed to take from the story is you should be like the angel who had more knowledge than Abraham. You should be like the angel and you should be able to willing to stand up right in front of the prophet of God and say no you're wrong. Stop what you're doing right now. It doesn't matter that Abraham, had some kind of authority. The angel was the one who was in the right there. And we need to have that kind of Courage, even if there's fall out, right? And it's hard, it's hard to say to your church, you're wrong. I'm sorry. But you're just wrong about this and I won't put up with it anymore especially because we're taught so much about obedience and in a Mormon cultural mindset. And a lot of that comes from the way that we circled our wagons and tried to break a very harsh desert in like it while some is the rose and build this, you talk Kingdom out here we needed each other.

1:19:21 We needed a strong sense of community. The problem is, you can have a community without abdicating. Your moral responsibility to many people got lazy, didn't exercise their moral muscle and just thought I just do what I'm told. You do that for a few generations and people lose the moral strength that it takes to stand up and say no and not only that, I believe Joseph Smith said that one of the major faults with the children of Israel is that they didn't want to meet the Lord face to face. They wanted to have Moses there. They were more. And willing to abdicate that moral responsibility all the way back. Then closes. This is a very human problem. This is the see play out over and over. Sometimes it results in very very dark things like we see with.

1:20:08 The Lafferty's are things that happen to your brother. Other times we see it with God and a sense of frustration. Like I want you with me right? And now and I think we should preface this, we all three of us belong to a church. Church where we recognize that and sustained. Prophetic Authority. Prophetic Authority. Oh yes, but I'll say this. Nowhere in that in my times and hearing that man speak. Have I ever once heard him say? Just trust me. No, it never write a sense of what that, that can be a difference between our church and other churches, do because I have heard that in plenty of other Mormon sects, right? Right.

1:20:50 Yeah. I mean, so so, yeah. And I remember one talk, he did get was the first time I was there, where he said, so if you all could be prophets, right? If you could. So, you know, it's a meaningful memory for me. Even though I don't remember what the deal was. He was really Excited about the gospel principle in one of his talks. This is five years ago or some before. Either of you were members of Christ's Church. Actually is like five years ago. It was in a solemn assembly meeting there and he was he overstated something. And I was looking at the dangerous implications of overstating, something And I raised my hand and I said to the prophet in the middle of his speech, because we do that, by the way, in Christchurch, you can raise your hand and make a discussion. So in the middle of conference or solemn assembly, basically, I interrupted the speaker who was the prophet and said, you took that too far, you got to roll back in against those dangerous implications of taking something gospel principles outside, the bounds of where they fit.

1:21:55 Instead of being excommunicated or shouted down like boo, you're not sustaining the prophet, right? It was so meaningful to me that he said. Thank you brother Benjamin that's helpful and then he restated and he got back on track with his talk and it wasn't a big problem. But that memory means a ton to me because I was raised in the mainstream LDS church, I'm, I'm pretty much as mainstream as they come for my whole upbringing so I'm very familiar. I never would have dared do that in general conference. Sorry, brother, Ross, you're wrong about that. You know, he goes by Rusty idea. Rusty could be wrong. Yeah some anyway. Yeah no I mean even if you just called him called him Rusty.

1:22:35 It'd be like blasphemy, you know, you can't even just call him Russell Nelson. You have to use the Russell and - right, right, as a all of the honorifics and stuff like that, that we do all the hero worship that goes into that gnarliest culture. It's such a relief to kind of feel that I've broken free of that. And I but that I think is one of the first steps to to taking back your moral agency and this is this is really something. I think that everybody has to do at some point to truly be an adult. When you're a child, you're used to. Obedience just means I do what I'm told. But at a certain point, adulthood means I'm doing what I know is, right.

1:23:16 And to make that shift from I do, what I'm told to, I do, what I know is, right. You have to take back some of your own power. I think this is one of the reasons why even though sometimes they're responsible teenagers have to, they have to repeal a little. Well, yeah, and they have, because they have to be their own person. They have to be able to say, no, I have control over myself. I'm not just an extension of my parents. I am a person who has, who has their own choices to make and and so hopefully, you don't make too many really bad choices when you're just trying to figure out how to make choices. You've got to learn to make choices to be an adult. And, and I felt like when I came in to Christchurch, it really broke that spell for me for the first time, really in my life before that, I was a mainstreamer 110%. And I was absolutely ready.

1:24:08 And this is why it can be a dangerous thing. Sorry, krakauer for giving you such a hard time, John. But, but Jon krakauer basically said this is this is his main thesis as to why he thinks Mormonism breeds breeds dangerous. Men was his phrase in other words. Makes us more dangerous. Really was about, I believe, from from what I read, is that, I believe, what he really means is anyone who's abdicated, the moral responsibility to an authority figure, right? Is capable of great evil. You know what the most common, most common complaints, most common defense, during the Nuremberg trials and things like that was always in order just following orders. It's not my fault. If you look at the Milgram experiment for example, everybody show shock. Mm-hmm.

1:24:49 Yep. They shocked people and things like that. People who most people, the majority of people would commit heinous atrocities because they felt that they were commanded to by an authority. And so they didn't realize that they have personal agency in that situation and it was reading the Milgram experiments. It was reading an excellent book by Jacob Newman. He's a yeah. Forgive me politically, this isn't a political comment but he's a UC Berkeley but he is. The commies. The commies at UC Berkeley but anyways, he's not he's not a political scientist. There he is. A philosopher, he wrote a book called, why can't we be good? And it was a, it was an examination of not just the pure philosophy of reason of what is good and evil. But why is it that so often?

1:25:38 We fail to live up to our own ideals? Most human beings never live up to their own ideals and why is that? Right? So, anyways, I read some of those books and it really made me think. No, I have to I have to exercise this muscle. That I have a choice in all these situations. When someone comes into church like John Colter opted to be disruptive and to say violent rhetoric. It was easier at first to just kind of abdicate that more responsible, moral responsibility to do anything about it. Because it's like, look, he's just a weirdo. He can go his way. I'll go mine. It's not my problem or we can agree to disagree kind of thing and there's there's room for compromise in a lot of our discourse that we need to. There's a lot of place in our discourse where we should compromise more, but I've realized when you're dealing with the types of false doctrines that lead to violence, I no longer believe that we can go along to get along we must boldly stand up.

1:26:42 And if you overhear it, even if you didn't say anything, I think that you're under moral obligation to speak up, it reminds me of a case that was a racist situation. I have a lot of friends who are seeks, I actually dealt a deep into Sikhism for a while and it right after September 11th, right? They were, they were targeted heavily and which is crazy. Of course, because Sikhism they do Turbines. Usually, because they have this principle called Cash, which means that their Devotion to God, means that they would never cut their hair, right? Which makes the turbine the most, the easiest thing to do. Because if you have a man who has floor length hair, okay, that's basically what some of that turbine in most cases.

1:27:22 You can't just leave that out very easily. We're okay, right? So there's a way that they put up their hair and they put it in a turban and unfortunately, you know, ignorant stereotypes a lot of Americans associate turbines with Muslims even though they're not even Muslim, right? In a sense, right? A friend of mine, it was a really sad case, just after after September 11th, was murdered in Phoenix. Yeah, he's and it was a hate crime. It was a hate crime. They targeted him. Because he was wearing a turban. And I think it was, I think he was killed September 12th or 13th. 2001 I was on my oldest mission of the time I found out after I got back and I met him just before my mission and so that kind of those kind of hate crimes though.

1:28:05 They don't happen in a vacuum. It happened because it was September 11th. And before they committed murder, they committed. These types of verbal cues that they were leading up to it, okay, right, and so, for example, they had gone around and they had started Them towel heads, right? As a derogatory racist term are you know, violent hate term, their work, on until heads. I see, I do believe that even though that, you know, freedom of speech means you can use racial slurs all you want. But you know what else we can do, we can stand up to the people who use them. If some if everybody, he had said towel head to that week had said stop right there that is not appropriate. There are plenty of people of various backgrounds that wear turbans that has nothing to do with that. Don't be a bigot.

1:29:05 If people had stood. Up to him. It wouldn't have escalated in the same way. Now, I don't believe that we can, or should criminalize speech, but I do believe that when we encounter violent speech, especially in our churches, especially in Mormonism, where we have a strong obedience ethic, I think it's our moral obligation to stand up and say no, stop right there. We are people of Peace. I've gospel is a gospel of peace, we're not going to talk like that. I think you're right. And I want to go back to something here real quick. The reason I brought up the fact that all three of us believe in prophetic metal, and prophetic, hierarchy, is to show that you can have. You can have that belief and vigorously, sustained a man in his prophetic calling at the same time, exercise. That right that that that muscle the other thing. In fact, they're not even, they're not contradictory at all know, their compliments.

1:30:04 They they're both necessary, right? They work together? Yep. And then the other thing I wanted to talk to speak on here just for a second. Is this clarification on Peacemaker? Okay. Yeah. I brought that up earlier you, right? And so you talked, you said, well, I've always tried to be The Peacemaker, right? There's two ways to make. Peace. We think of it in one way, which is to be to be apologetic up to college at French alas of differential, what's that? Yeah, yeah. The the hippie guy or whatever, right. The other way is to be the guy that sees Danger on the horizon and speaks out.

1:30:46 And it's like confronts. It's like, no, we're gonna go confront this now because if we don't confront this now, what are we gonna be dealing with later, right? So there's A peacemaker. And I think they're complimentary, they're not, they're not opposites in the sense that they're, they're against each other. They can't occupy the same space. Ideally you want one guy who is like Gandhi, who's talking about or Martin Luther King? We're just going to sit and take it and then there's times you need the other guy. That's like, we're gonna kick some butt. We're gonna go have this argument. We're going to meet on the battlefield of ideas and we're going to have this out so that we can put this down. On now now, yeah, we've been putting him off for too long.

1:31:29 I want to speak to this for a minute. I am a pacifist I come from a long line of pacifists before we were Mormon. Many of my ancestors were members of what is called The Church of the Brethren. It was one of the anabaptist movements a pacifist movement, sure that came out of a verya and I've always believed very strongly in absolute and complete pacifism. When I turned 18, I was eligible for the draft. I got a draft card in the mail to fill out. Out and I just wrote conscientious objector and all caps across the front of it and turned it in, right? Right. I've always been very, very strongly in favor total passivism. It's actually been a struggle for me that in Mormonism.

1:32:09 We don't always glorify passivism sometimes we glorify violence, but here's the difference, they can exist. They can coexist Helaman. Was this leader who respect to the ammonites pacifism and he even told them you must never break your oath. You should remain pacifist even in the face of War, even in the face of invasion, do not break your oath to stay pacifists and taught them that but those who hadn't taken the oath he mustered together those Stripling Warriors, right? And then they went out and they save their, they saved their Nation. So, there was both of the same time and I think that both Can exist. So I guess I wanted to bring that up because I'm a pacifist and I've always been absolutely against any form of military service or military's existence.

1:33:02 And but I've got my brother here. Felipe, who is who's in the military and so what do you think about some of the stuff? Well, I'm not a pacifist obviously but I'm not a violent guy, right? Like if you were going to ask what my political views are in foreign policy, I tend to hold the old paleo You like not interventions, you know, but when it comes to our culture, yeah, weird violent culture, which is sad. You know, they say, the number of murders committed on television, is some massive orders of magnitude, more than the numbers of killings that actually took place in the world, right? So, there's more fake murder that we use for our entertainment.

1:33:43 Then there is so, so there's a certain amount of glorification of violence. And we just rated R movies. We just trade, the Coliseum for TV. This actually has a Fetish for violence, that's the issue. I mean, I don't want the only violent strikes that would probably watch just Band of Brothers, that's about it. But, you know, if my wife were to tell you, I don't really watch a lot of Island television, Dwayne watch a lot of television at all, but You were to ask me like what my views on violence is its should always be the last resort, you know, there's a author, Jack Donovan. He wrote an essay called, violence has golden, and to paraphrase has it. He said it without violence laws would just be words. It's part of our nature, does not mean we have to use it. I mean, I didn't join the military for mercenary purposes. I joined it for my patriotic duty, but I've never met, I have happened so far, haven't rented to a soldier. Who's looking forward to going to war and killing somebody? I mean, I they joke around, but when I was a basic training, we had a sergeant major come into our company and talk to us, you know, like don't be scared at these guys are going to train you have any questions All the kids they asked him. So, how's War, like, how does it feel to kill somebody, you know, and he dodged the question, then when he left the drill, one of our drill sergeant said that's a question. You never ask because it gives them gifts T. That's something he said, that's not something, they're all proud of, like, none of them go off.

1:35:09 Right in the book. I just killed like a, I just killed an Insurgent. I'm so proud of myself. A lot of them have a guilty conscience in the sense, the gauge of the film that Brothers in Arms. Now whether or not you agree with the word, that's another thing, but they're there to look at After each other and it might have been necessary, right? But that doesn't mean that most, anybody wants to never be in that situation where it becomes not sick. I don't think look are there. Some guys that are full of Bluster? They are. But those guys who are full of Bluster, very rarely have ever been in a fight. I want to, I have a good buddy who is damn good at Jujitsu scary, huh? Oh yeah, right. Because that dude is the most peaceful, most loving man.

1:35:51 One of the most loving I've ever met but what I've seen on, you know, he's capable hands. Yeah, I've seen on a few occasions which goes back to what you originally said, which was a good man isn't a weak man. A Good Man. Is a dangerous man who has it under control, right? Right? And and I think that's what morality is, right? Your reality is when you make your own decisions because you actually have it under control. Yep. And so we see in certain instances in the scripture, right? The same scripture that they Use that krakauer uses where Nephi slays Laban, is the same scripture. I'll use to defend this idea of defy didn't want to do it.

1:36:34 Let's remember Nephi argued with the Lauren. They're a little bit, right? Right. So it's not, if you're lining up signing up, going to send me, send me, you're probably not the guy for right, right? We don't want masochistic violent people in the military. That's one thing because those are usually the soldiers who are going to snap and probably commit war crimes and give us a black eye. Yeah. I mean it's we're taught to treat the shirt like my military job is not a combat job, but they can send me to combat, but it's always a treat the enemy humanely as possible. Like, no torture, treat them as a human being, which something I agree with. But, and again, that has to be the type of thing. You have to stand up for.

1:37:19 I have one more. I have another story on that. Sure. Trigger warning to anyone who served in the military for sure, on this one I'm sure you already my trigger. Ready. There you go. My my my wife Wendy, my ex-wife actually one of her best friends growing up. Her name was Elisa Peterson. She's somewhat famous in these circles. If you study the Iraq War, she was an interpreter that was her job. She she was very gift with languages. She picked up Arabic very Quickly, and, and Farsi. And some, you know, she was very, very good at that sort of thing. They wanted her to interpret and they had her at a black site prison with something.

1:38:04 They called the cage, which was a torture environment, and they brought her in there to interrogate and interpret for the interrogation. While they committed war crimes against these. These people, this was the same exact time as Abu ghraib And some of these other abuses and they brought her in to interpret and she did it that one time and then she told her superiors that she refused. She said I will not cooperate. I won't go in there from what I understand from The Fallout and this is only because of some of the additional commissions that took place as well as some of the stuff that was revealed by Manning.

1:38:47 And Snowden about how they got some of the Us information out, apparently her superiors knowing their their criminal Behavior, they wanted to cover their criminal Behavior. So they they forced her, not to say anything, they put her in a really tough situation but she continued to refuse to participate. And with that much pressure on her and the fact that they couldn't allow her to leave, they couldn't allow her to get a dishonorable discharge or go to any of their unit. Because then she would be able should be able to reveal their crimes. They put her under a lot of pressure and she was already a look, she was gifted with languages but I don't think she was cut out for the brutality of real especially torture.

1:39:32 She was not exposed to the nicest type of War either she was exposed to some of the ugly, most ugly things of Manatee. The pressure was too much and she actually killed herself. and so she was one of our, you know, first hundred dead in the in those, in those wars, in the early 21st century and You know, to this day, her her mother has a hard time even accepting any of what happened to her. And I guess that's that's the thing to me. She's one of my greatest heroes though. Because she said, no. Right. She said no to the point of death, even if even if I wish that she'd had the strength, not to take her own life. At least, she was strong enough not to be complicit anymore, right?

1:40:30 And I just, I think it takes practice. I think we have to practice that we have to mentally practice. When do I say no and why? And if you know, when you're going to say no and why you're going to say no to certain things, You're not going to you're not going to get that far down, you're going to stop it before it escalates. I'll go back to my concealed carry training training, right? Which is no your red line because here's the thing. I don't constantly worried about my red line anymore. It's been defined, I know, lawyers, how do you decide where it is, what, you know, tell walk me through that. So, I do, how do I make up this red line? Where's my red line? So, for me and concealed carry, uh-huh, we'll just use this. This as an example.

1:41:14 What is the line at which I'm ready to discharge my weapon. Okay. Is it? When some guy is leaving my house with a television? No that's not. It is it when I have him at a clear disadvantage in. He is surrendering, that is not a red line. I'll tell you where my red wine is. It's 3:00 in the morning how are really doesn't matter but just hypothetical 3:00 in the morning dudes in the hallway. Walking towards some a room. I'm just going to assume at that point.

1:41:56 That it's a worst-case scenario. I am going to say, once I have a weapon stop and if they continue to make, can you come out you approach? I will discharge my weapon. So I thought it through I thought if I'm in a store, you know, I have thought about your money or something here - something interesting that I want to bring out here. One of the biggest problems with our glorification of violence on our culture, that drives me crazy about that. Red line issue is all the Mexican standoffs they call them or All the times. When someone doesn't obey an order, you'll you see this constantly and television shows and whatnot. Someone pulls out there, got a police officer, somebody pass the pull their gun, somebody's in a dangerous or threatening violence situation and they say, stop right there. All open fire, you know, they give them a verbal warning and everything that and then the guy rushes them and they don't fire. Yes.

1:42:46 Or someone pulls out a gun and says, I'm going to kill you now and then the other guy pulls out a gun and says, well, what about now? It's like know that those are not those are not situations. Any rational human being is going to have a conversation, continue to run, or any of that. And I feel like that that Miss trains, our minds, our minds, fix it on that. And we think I know guns you point a gun to assert Authority in a situation. It's like no, no, no, no. If you do anything, I've done savings to you. Never point a gun to assert Authority in a situation. You use, you only point the gun. If it is absolutely necessary to protect human life to shoot the gun, right? You don't Point the gun willy-nilly, right. And this is one of the big differences. I think between our military and our police, our police are overly militarized but they haven't yet. Got the discipline down the way, the military does. You know, I want a SWAT team Reds house because someone thought they smelled marijuana Smokers. Only, they've all got their guns out. They're all pointing at everybody all the time and it's like, you know, if you're pointing that gun, you ought to follow through and just do what you said you were going to, you know, your body language was in the first place, you got to pull the trigger is why else are you pointing this at people? You know?

1:43:56 What I mean? And and, and so yeah, not knowing where a red line is is partly training to us. We're trained you to think that you can have a Mexican standoff. Look at a bunch of. Guys are all pointing guns at each other. It's going to be over really fast, there's not going to be a conversation, right? No. And that's just it right? Or if you say stop right there and then they rush you you're going to shoot because, right? That's the whole point of that situation, is the composition on situation is the reason I'm putting my gun is you have to stop now, you you start running, you expect to be shot, right? Right and and and that's just one red line, right? There's been others that I've been forced to think about, which are I'm in a convenience store. And it's getting held up, to be honest, our bank, or some or bank or something like that, to be honest. As I thought through those, I think that's going to be one of those things where I really hope I'm in tune with the spirit that day, because it's hard to decide where that line is our time to decide where that line is because I'm like, is this a desperate man?

1:44:56 That just needs the money or is this or is he going to shoot desperate man? Who's going to shoot, right? And yeah, some of it depends on the weapon that he's using as he called the place. Up with a knife, right at that point. At that point. He's probably he's dangerous, but he's probably not going to kill anybody, right? So yeah, there's there's several things. Now let's get this back in the context of the Gospel. Okay. Yeah. Where's my red line? Where's your red wine? Been at what point are we going to say? Okay, that's enough. You got to stop, right? No more. I'm going to put, we're going to put this down now. Anytime someone preaches, false Doctrine relating to blood atonement. And in time, someone preaches false Doctrine relating to advocating, some kind of blind, Obedience of authority. Anytime somebody is teaching preaching, or encouraging us to, to idolize the violence in the scriptures without the context of why it was Necessary if someone's just like, oh man, I wish I could be like Captain Moroni. I I'm gonna be like, yeah that's great. I want to be like a dreamer and I do because I'm thinking in my head Captain Ron, I was so compassionate to his enemies. So constantly forgiving so careful and he valued human life so much including the lives of his enemies. That's why I respect him so much. But then if I find out the other person's conversations, like, oh yeah, I really respect him because he knew how to kick butt.

1:46:22 I want to be somebody who's ready to kill. I want to, I want to, I want to toughen up until I'm ready to kill then I'm like, whoa, no, so that's the right, you know, that side of things are red line. Somebody who's Miss interpreting our misunderstanding, the oath of Vengeance which I believe to be one of the most peaceful and beautiful doctrines. The restoration explain the oath of Vengeance because not Not just the krakauer make reference, oh yeah. They make a big deal out of that, but there's been a lot of other authors in terms of Mormon scholarship and I use that word rather Loosely that tries to describe the oath of Vengeance.

1:47:03 Tell us what the oath of vengeance is what it really want is actually is what it's all about. The oath of vengeance is a portion of the Mormon Temple endowment and, or at least it was originally, some people speculate that it I have been added after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, I don't think that's actually true. All of the oath of Vengeance language is actually throughout the Bible and the Book of Mormon and a bunch of other places on definitely was taught by Joseph Smith on many occasions. So I don't think was made up by. I think it was probably in the endowment even before Brigham Young but I can't prove that no written records. By the way of, what the endowment we retained fully, there was no script until 1877, but this, but in 1877, as it was recorded at the time, And as it's still practiced in Christchurch, the oath of vengeance, is one of the covenants that we make with God, that we will pray. And then we will never cease to pray and never cease to importune, high heaven to avenge, the blood of the innocent.

1:48:01 And then we will teach this to our children, our children's children to the third and fourth generation. Let me unpack what I believe that means. First of all, I think that it gets a bad rap because of the name, it's been called the oath of Vengeance. It's really more accurately frankly from It's own wording. It should probably be referred to as the oath of Prayer. That just sounds too peaceful to people who want to make a big terrible thing out of this oath of Vengeance. The prayer of the oath of Vengeance of course is what that the Lord's will be done. That the Lord's Justice come upon those who shed the blood of the innocent. Now this is throughout the scriptures I especially would love to point to the Book of Revelation, where John saw in Vision, the celestial Temple. And so he looked up through the heavens and he saw this representation of heaven with Jesus in the temple that is heaven.

1:48:57 And from beneath the altar significantly, he could hear the blood of the Saints crying out for vengeance. The blood of the innocent, the dimension, over the ages, crying out to the Lord. How long O Lord until we are Avenged. Now, I want to put this in the context. What was that Revelation all about? It wasn't about violence. The scriptural basis of all of this is about prayer and it's about the Holy Temple being the place where the innocent cry out for Justice from God. It's a prayer, not an act of violence and it's a prayer for what, it's a prayer for peace. It's a prayer asking. God, how long must the innocent suffer in this Fallen World. It's wrapped up in the recognition. First of all.

1:49:49 That this is a world where these terrible Injustice is happening. Where Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty, her baby can be murdered in Cold Blood. What do you do with such a world? How do we in, how do we engage with the world filled with war crimes, and rape and murder? Now some people deal with that by saying there must not be a God because if God was real he would stop this from happening. that's not a Biblical God and that's certainly not the way that we understand God and Mormonism but we do view God as a just God And we believe that in the end, God will create the millennial age that he will heal the world and bring about the resurrection. And so the oath of Vengeance to me is an oath that we will. Never forget that this is a world of darkness and Evil. And that will do something about it. And what's the something we're going to do about it? We will pray and we will never cease praying. for an end to all sorrow an end to that, every tear will be dried and every, every innocent life that's ever been taken It's not lost forever.

1:51:07 That's the because this is what's caught up in the actual hope of the gospel. And this is what John, the Revelator I believe was teaching about the oath of Vengeance in the Book of Revelation is that he was trying to teach us that in spite of this world. There's a better world that there's a hope and this is why it's called the gospel of the good news that there's a hope in that Resurrection. Nothing's lost not forever. Brenda will live again. Erica will ithacan. Brenda will be able to hold her child to her breast breathe in the air of a new world and pick up the Lafferty's. Cannot Rob her of that right to me. That's the hope of the that's the whole over the gospel. And this is one of the reasons why I believe the oath of vengeance is such an important part of the temple ceremony because it happens right in the very center of the endowment ceremony, And it's described as being this like this cry from the ground, like a song from the other side of the veil of all the innocent to have ever died, all the wrongs that have ever been done.

1:52:14 Every Injustice is brought before the Lord. In other words, he's not ignorant of our pain. He's there with us in our pain and he's promising us, don't be afraid. I will make this right. And so if we can make our heart constantly filled with that prayer, never ceasing to pray for that world. Then our heart, our mind becomes attuned, with the mind and the will of the Divine. That's how I believe we become a peaceful people. That's how we live. The gospel of peace is by having this oath of Vengeance. This, this prayer always in our hearts for God's justice and God's Redemption. we don't despair just because we see these terrible things, we know that The evil will get their just reward for their evil and that the righteous will get the just reward of their righteousness that there's Mercy out there for them and that it's not the end, you know?

1:53:19 And I won't go into specifics because it's sacred to me but I will say this nowhere in the oath of Vengeance. Does it say Do you ever say make me the instrument? Let me be the RO. Let me do something against the wicked or something you know, it's not a nice. God. Please, please your will be done in this. Please. Will you do this, right? So this is not conditioning and this is why it says in this in the scriptures vengeance is mine. Saith the Lord. I will repay right? Because we don't repay right? The Lord, the Lord will sort this out and we don't have to do any violence, right? Right.

1:54:00 And and so you're right, I think, just because of its name it gets a bad rap. Right, right. The thing I first thought of when I first read it, all those years ago, First start studying fundamentalism was, this is really like a plea for justice. This isn't a plea for quote Vengeance, this is Justice. Right? Because of the Lord's. Vengeance is Justice exactly? Exactly. And so I think that that's very important because the this gets twisted in really heavily along with blood atonement, right? And here's and so let's talk about what I do for a second. I want to get Matt to what is blood atonement. People say the the again. Krakauer Has booked these other things. They want to point out that they believe that the doctrine of blood atonement. Is this idea that We should kill the evil doers or that, you know, like Jihad or something, like some Mormon version of jihad, right?

1:54:54 That those who do really, really evil things, they need to be destroyed. They need to be killed and that, that's how we will be saved or something. That's really, I mean, if you look at what Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and these other men actually taught. I don't think that's ever the point. It's not about look more. Modern Pioneers were definitely on the frontier. Okay, And there was some Frontier Justice dulled out but not just by Mormons, okay? Right. There was the what it was, the Wild West, okay? And so there, I'm not going to try to justify or explain away some of the heinous crimes that were committed. There were heinous crimes committed, okay? But I don't believe that they were properly motivated by a true principle.

1:55:37 There is a true principle in blood atonement. And that is really the, the central message of all Christianity. And actually, a huge part of Judaism even now is the idea that we are saved through the blood and that sounds really gross and violent because blood of bodily fluid or something, but blood is not just a bodily fluid, it's a symbol in this case that goes back into ancient antiquity. And the questions that the Ancients were asking these ancient Patriarchs were asking about, what about life, what about death, what about after death, what about any of this? And so the blood becomes the symbol of the life within us. This is one of the reasons why nobody accuses us of threatened our family, for example, it would say, hey, it's in your blood, you know, the The Incredibles, that's a fun one. The, in The Incredibles they the parents are these superheroes, right?

1:56:32 And they haven't actually, Their kids, how to use their powers well and they're in a dangerous situation. The mom says to Violet the teenage girl and so Elastigirl, says to forget what violence superhero name is supposed to be, says to her. Don't worry if the time comes that you have to protect yourself, you'll know what to do. I believe in you because it's in your blood. And violet then takes the great hope in that thinking, you know what? It's true. I've never faced a dangerous situation, but it's in my blood. Well, nobody thought that nobody rational, I don't think would assume that. Oh my goodness. The makers of the the animators of Pixar's must be Mormons, their teaching blood atonement theology. You know?

1:57:19 I mean and and now she's encouraging you to do violence to go kill people because they're crazy Mormons. You know that to me, Most of the talk about blood atonement and trying to make it into this bad thing would be roughly equivalent to making that connection because of a Pixar movie. Okay. You know. Um because blood atonement is Is a Doctrine about who we are and how we relate to God. And that we have the opportunity to be redeemed from our mortal state, which is symbolized by the Mortal life is in the blood. Okay? So everybody dies or your children are considered your blood, right? Blood is thicker than water. There's another thing we often say, and nobody thinks we're making violent, violent threats, against anyone and we say blood is thicker than water.

1:58:05 What we mean, of course, is that we have a connection. Connection. And that connection has to do with something fundamental about our lives. So blood being thicker than water is like saying, look, your family is your family and you got to deal with it, good or bad, right? And so be loyal to your family and help your family. That's all part of these doctrines. And when you isolate it down to one little thing and say, ah, this must mean that you have to kill people. They're really missing the point. The other thing I need to point out is that from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young big part of it was a debate about capital punishment.

1:58:46 So when they do talk about shedding the blood of murderers and things like that, and let their blood be poured out as an atonement for their sins and things like that, this early Mormon rhetoric wasn't about. Justifying religious themed violence. Okay. It had almost nothing to do with religion and had to do with the fact that in the frontier days and pretty much most of the Christian World. Capital punishment was not only common in regularly used worldwide as a one of the most important and basic forms of punishment. Okay? So it wasn't this rare thing like it is now it was a regular occurrence and a public occurrence, they were all doing hanging.

1:59:29 And Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and a bunch of other people all pointed out that that is very anti-biblical to hang people. It says it talks about how that that's a. It's terrible dishonor. Anything that's been strangled. Even an animal that's been strangled or drowned is unclean. You can't, you know, like a cow beef. Beef. Cattle is absolutely a clean meat. You know what I mean? You can eat beef according to kosher rules and we do it baby. Yeah. Okay, you can eat beef according to kosher rules. However, if the Ow was strangled or drowned you cannot, it's like a disrespect against that animal. So why would we be treating even are criminals with such disrespect? That would be doing something that's absolutely forbidden in the Bible. And so they were saying no it says in the Bible that that when a man who sheds man's blood by man, shall his blood be shed. This is in the Old Testament, basically saying Capital, endorsing capital punishment by their reading and saying though, it doesn't say hang in.

2:00:29 It says shed his blood and so again they're pointing to these, they're pointing to these biblical passages they're doing. So in a symbolic way, they're talking about they're wrestling with as we all need to wrestle with big questions of life and death, not necessarily encouraging violence. There's a quote from Brigham Young gets thrown around all the time and people want to say, it's a disgusting horrible quote. And I think everybody who says that this is terrible, has no idea what he's talking about or ever read. We quote, you read, you read, plenty of Scott's. One of the quotes is, I love no wife so well, that I would not put a javelin through her heart and people are, like, what are you talking about?

2:01:10 First of all, what most people are hearing, the Casual reader who doesn't understand the Bible is hearing is Brigham, Young. Doesn't love his wives and he doesn't care if he murders them because he's a callous, you know, he's house bastard, you know, just a murderous bastard. Well yeah, but if you look at the whole context of his talk and, you know, What is referring to that? Somebody saying at all? It's not talk about actually hurting anybody. He's talking about a story from The Exodus in which there was a javelin, put through the heart of two people and while they were engaged in Intercourse. So this is very you know, rated R story and it was because God was going to destroy the camp of Israel because there was a great evil among them.

2:01:54 What was this great evil? It was, what's known? As Temple prostitution, it was a It was a sexualized religious observance of the pagans. At the time to have these essentially priestesses that were prostitutes, that would do these sexual rituals. And God said, I will not have my people doing like them, you have to put a stop to this and if you don't, I will destroy Israel, okay? So first of all, don't forget, God is in this conversation and it's still probably A symbolic, it might not even be literal again. People take the scriptures way to literally way, too often, okay, but what we have here is like a parable. We have a parable where God says, if you don't stop this, there will be consequences and then someone stops this thing. So what was bringing?

2:02:46 I'm saying he wasn't saying, he doesn't love his wife's and he wasn't saying he's gonna murder anybody, he was saying get your priorities straight. Do not excuse evil. Well I think that's the same thing I'm saying when we need to stand up against violent rhetoric. Eric I was just thinking here for a second. It's amazing to me that we have to tell quote Scholars not to take the scriptures to recognize at least when someone's making a Biblical reference making a Biblical reference right. I think so yeah and and I think it's also important to point out that As far as I can tell, as far as it being Church, sanctioned, I know of one instance down in Saint, Pete County, you probably are more well-read than I am.

2:03:32 You're tearing. My really just really just justifications for my right. Blood atonement with blood atonement right. 1111 instance, in Sanpete County. I'm not sure if Mountain Meadows would even come close to meeting that criteria. Main reason Mountain Meadows. Sort of does is that they executed John Lee right by the firing squad. And one of the reasons they executed by firing squad was specifically because of these teachings about not hanging in right now. Of course, you would have been hung in any other court, but instead they shot him because of the idea that execution should be carried out in a Biblical manner, right? Yeah. When bring them talks about it and if you read context, it seems to be Brigham's talking, much more about a government than a religious, right?

2:04:21 Oh, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense my off-base. Yeah, I know I'm not. That's the way I interpret it to, I think like--look, but you think that the governor have to get the cam, you have to get the context. The governor of the territory is in charge of the executive function. That means, if anyone is convicted of a capital crime during his time period and seeing them, duly executed was the duty of the executive branch, which was basically Brigham Young. So, Brigham Young expressing, his political views on a political subject of which he is, literally the Eagle officer is perfectly reasonable thing to expect him to do, absolutely, especially you you can't you can't take a whole colony of religious minded, folks and expect that that religion is not going to bleed over it bled over into our constitution in the United States.

2:05:10 Right. Aha. So it just happens to be what some would consider a fringe religion, right? Right. And so again, I think it's more and it's it's more ominous sounding in the in its name than it is in practice, if that it ever running practice. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. Now, there have been other situations of violence, there's the more site War. There's Mountain Meadows. Puerto Rock will almost certainly shot quite a few people. There's a couple of other really ugly ones that happened there You know, and those are those are all sad instances but they're not necessary. And some of them are politically more political than others, and some of them were religious.

2:06:01 But here's my point, I don't think we have to have a clean history, right? In order to stand up for a better future? No, I don't think right. And so yeah, we have some examples where people use people Twisted religious doctrines and use them as excuses to do evil. First of all I think I can't excuse a lot of statements as not being what they're made out to be in under the banner of Heaven, for example. But even if I could Couldn't we can still do better, we can still absolutely do better than what we've been doing in the past. And you know the most recent example is got to be Chad de Belen Lori valo right there. They're not even on trial yet, but they're working up to it. So, sometime this summer or fall they're going to be having them there murder trial and there's there yet another religious serial killers, right?

2:06:55 They murder Lori, vowels children. They murdered Chad a Bill's wife. They murdered somebody's brother. I don't remember whose brother was Laurie, was brother Chad's brother, and probably a couple of other people. And, of course, especially disturbing is that murdering Lori's children, right? Do you know what I mean? Um, there's just absolutely no excuse for any of that. And, and when you had at a certain point, Chad table, looks like this upright good, Mormon man, whose eloquent and is an author and all this sort of thing. Everybody was like, oh yeah, he's one of us. He's one of us now. Everyone's quick to be like, oh no, he's not a real moment. He believed in weird doctrines.

2:07:38 Well yeah, I did believe in where doctors but where did he get his start here to start in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? He just started twisting those doctrines. He started turning it into something weird. Right? And when it starts looking violent, that's when it was everybody in his words job. Everybody at the conference as he spoke at everybody in any of those groups before. It turns Two murders should have started telling him. No you this is sounding this. This could be used to justify violence. You can't mean it that way. You must mean it some other way because that's not what we believe and just standing up to him and then he wouldn't have he wouldn't have gone though. So far his doctrines are admittedly super weird and not super Orthodox.

2:08:23 They're not what I would say is my beliefs or anybody's beliefs. That I know. I don't think he and I could be wrong. And but the Have a Mormon, rude, I guess is my ride. He's got some basis in Mormonism, even though his beliefs turned into like zombie apocalypse, reincarnation crazy stuff that I don't believe at its heart, it's still fundamentally, Mormon in nature and that's where it came from originally. That's where he got his start. So, how did he get from point? A to point B? He had to travel there somehow before you got into, like, let's murder people. He had to start with the same first four principles and onto the gospels. The gospel I did. He had to start with the same Sunday school lesson sided. Have to start with the same primary songs that I did.

2:09:05 At what point did he diverged from the path of peace and go into the path of murder? Whenever we see somebody's on that path, we don't have to wait for them to get to the end before we say no, no. Get back on the path of Peace, get off the path that leads to, to justifying this kind of violence. And I don't know if that would have stopped him, but I think that the consciences of a lot of people who knew him would be a lot clearer right now. If they'd stood up and maybe they could have stopped it or maybe at least they could have stopped him sooner. And so if you're ready, we'll go to died. You know, I think we talked a lot about the other e right of people and I feel like with in Mormonism, it's super easy to do because, uh, because The very I shouldn't say the very the, the sole basis but but one of the big pillars was God's chosen people. Uh-huh.

2:10:01 You're going back to bill. So as I've looked at that and I thought a lot about it over the last week, how do we prevent that other earring while we still hold that place of? Okay, we have a special responsibility. I think we have to let go of the ego, we really do because otherwise, you know, if you're all, I'm going to God's chosen people, the kind of Pride that that breeds the kind of humor. That breeds because well, God will justify his profit. That's one of the ones that that's one of the things I should have brought up earlier, really ticks me off. That one is one of the most dangerous false doctrines, anybody quoting that unironically call them out. That's a red line. When they start saying, God will justify his profit. No, he won't.

2:10:42 God will God expects us to step up and stop these self-proclaimed profits before they commit violence. Right? Right. And and and so, I thought, what does Letting Go, the eagle look like in a practical sense, for someone who believes in this? Chosen people theology sure, right? And as I thought about that, I got to it looks like servant leadership. It doesn't look like self-aggrandizement. It doesn't look like look at me because I'm special, you've got to recognize them special. It looks like let me wash your feet, right?

2:11:24 Let me serve you, let me feed you, let me close you that I think is the chosen that the Lord speaks up, you know, one of the best examples of this in modern society. I think we could definitely learn from is orthodox, Jews like the habad organization. They are group of Orthodox Jews who understand themselves to be chosen people and because their Orthodox in their beliefs, If they take their religion, very, very seriously. They enact that religion in the world, could they use passages from the Torah or the profits to justify violence? Well, yeah, we've seen people do that when they misinterpret them according to our understanding, right? But they don't instead they interpret it to mean that they have a duty to heal the world to do good, right? And so that's the thing.

2:12:18 When there's two possible interpretations if you're choosing the one that justifies violence instead of the one that promotes peace, You're interpreting it wrong, right? And so, you know, they have the same, they have the same Torah, we do they have it in there as in the Book of Joshua and in Samuel about utterly destroying their enemies and things like that but look at the way they're enacting those scriptures in the world Chabad teaches peace and they promote peace. And they want to see, you know, and this is especially important because of the israeli-palestinian conflict, we need more Israelis Willing to stand up for know. We have to choose peace, even in the face of violence because that's the only way you really resolve these in transient conflicts, these horrible conflicts.

2:13:07 And so ask, you know, almost any Jew will always stand up for any race. Any religion, any one who's being persecuted? The, you know what I mean? They'll be the sum of the first to stand up and say, no, you know what I mean? These these might not be our people with. These are our people because you don't get to persecute anybody, you don't, you know, they'll call you out. Even while they maintain their own distinct identity and religion and, and practice, they don't have to just lose their, their, their virtues, or their principles in order to defend the rights of others. I think we can do the same thing. Essentially, like you were saying earlier, lgbtq communities, we need to recognize that those communities, and their rights are fundamental to their dignity as human beings, and we have to be ready to protect.

2:13:56 Detect them in those rights, no matter what we think of their religion or their lifestyle, that's their. Right to choose that religion, to choose that lifestyle, to choose that way of being, we have to defend them because they also need to defend us that. That's right. You don't. And this is the part that gets conflated, right? And you don't have to give your seal of approval on their lifestyle. You have to be willing to defend their, right to live. It even if you think that, Is that it's not ideal that it's the wrong way to live. Yeah, you know. Yeah. You have to defend that right because here's I remember I got the opportunity once to have in-depth talks with an old steak patriarch who was Wei Weis.

2:14:44 And this was when I was first coming into the church. He said, do you know the one place God will never intervene like where your will, right? Right? That's the only thing. God will never interfere with your will if you desire. I so if it's so important, that God's not willing to get involved. Hmm. What makes you think that we're qualified? Well on? This is one of the unique ways, in which, I mean, this is worthy of a whole lot of discussion. One of the ways in which Mormonism attempts to solve the problem of the question of evil is that we do believe in a non-interventionist God, but not necessarily as far as the deists.

2:15:24 Do we believe that God can intervene Yeah, but he acts through ordinances through priesthood, you know, he Reveals His will that way and so forth. But that's different than saying that that God just interference, right? He's not going to stop a murderer. Instead he's going to make his going to raise the person who's killed from the dead. He's going to make it right in his own way in the new in the world to come. You know, and but that's different than assuming that that God should always intervene. And so, yeah, that's that's one of the ways that we try to attempt to solve that problem. How does evil exist? Why does it exist? Because if that's what someone chooses God will not interfere, right?

2:16:11 All right. So we've covered a lot but I want to bring it back to one thing and this is where I kind of want to wrap up. This is the last idea. I want to explore unless you got others that you feel are important. Because I think this is the thing that that has been weighing on my heart, the most all week and especially at 3 a.m. last night after I got done watching the two episodes. Hmm. And I know somewhere, there's an LDS person. There's a Mormon person there is somebody who may be struggling with their faith anyway, and they just got a big dose of the Lafferty's. Oh, No, right.

2:16:54 Let's I'm sluggish traumatic thing. So what's make up a hypothetical you encounter? Someone who's like, I don't think I can can believe in Mormonism anymore. Ben. I don't, I don't think I can do this any longer because look at this, this is just horrific what you say to that person. Is are tough ones, right? First of all, because my my reasons for Faith are my own there, in my heart, there in my experience. You really can't communicate a testimony to another person. Fully you can talk about your own belief or your own experience, but people have to experience for themselves. and, I don't know.

2:17:45 I don't know what they actually need. Where's the problem coming from? They're real question might be coming from a place of they want. To not believe, maybe there's a burden in their life that religion looks like it's a burden to carry and it's not benefiting them. Sometimes people feel like religion stifles their freedom instead of gives them more freedom or more insight or that it's myopic instead of enlightening, well, I want them to be able to let go of that kind of religion. I guess, I guess what I'm trying to say is that when someone comes to me with big questions like that, I don't necessarily We think that it's a bad thing because I think faith is found in a faith crisis.

2:18:35 I believe that I'm actually very eloquently though. I don't think he's the originator of the idea Andrew Garfield during the Q&A session after the premier. Andrew Garfield, who plays, Jeb Kyrie said, and he's, he'll be quoted for this a lot because it was really good. He said, I don't know that. A life of certainty is a life of faith. A life of Doubt is a life of Faith, something to that effect that faith is. Do we found in your doubts? And so when I see somebody who's question their faith seriously because they see maybe for the first time, the real darkness that exists in this world and in our communities because this is our community.

2:19:20 We're talking about Sometimes people they because they want to other it. They might say well if that's what this community is stands for, then I'm leaving. I'm out because I need to maintain an us-versus-them where I protect my own mind, saying I'm good guy. I'm one of the good guys. They're the bad guys. And so this and this one of the traps that a lot of ex-mormons fall into. They assume that because they found evil in their old community that if they leave that community, All evil, all bad things can be Mormon and all good, things can be, whatever their future is. And then, of course not knowing where their moral boundaries are some of them struggle quite a bit.

2:20:01 Once they've lost their faith because they no longer have the, a mooring, a foundation upon which to build their world view, it's very disorienting. But I don't think that the disorientation at that first point is the bad thing. I think it's it's the big question is, how do we deal with it? And so I think when somebody views something like under the banner of heaven, and they say I'm losing my faith because of this, I'm beginning to see Mormonism and a totally new light it now looks to me like just it's a con man and Mormonism is dangerous false doctrine that it's selfish by Nature that it leads to murder, you know, all of the krakauer's whole thesis essentially. I would, I would first really try to warn them to recognize that. That darkness, that evil, that you're recognizing. It's real.

2:20:52 But you can't just dismiss it that easily. You can't dismiss it as easily as just being like, Oh it's it's a problem with religion or it's a problem with Mormonism. Otherwise you don't learn the lesson, you don't mature past it in order to mature spiritually, you have to sit in your doubt and embrace the darkness itself, see that darkness and I know that I cannot remember who it is, but I know it came from somebody in the 70s or 80s in the LDS church. He talks a little bit about how in our doubts. We reach the point in the darkness where we cannot see the next step. But if we will step forward in faith, we will see that the way is lighted ahead, just a step or two. This was a powerful analogy to me. It's also an analogy made by Yogi Rama chakra who turns out was actually one of the teachers of the theosophical society about a hundred.

2:21:45 And some years ago anyway, they are to know that is anyway, but I appreciated it because he he brought in the idea that faith is jumping into the darkness knowing where you'll land. And he used the example of the HIM lead kindly light, which is says, you know, I do not ask to see the distant, seen one steps enough for me. And so if you picture that him I imagine it being much like the vision of Lehi, you're lost in The Mists of Darkness, you know, that somewhere far away, lies the sacred rest somewhere out there. There is a better world somewhere out there. There is goodness and truth but right now all I see is the dark.

2:22:30 If I could just have a little light to take one step in the right direction, then you find that you can progress. And so in the Mormon view from the lehi's dream, for example, Lee I found himself lost terribly lost in the Darkness. And at first he tried to follow a man, but the man couldn't leave him. He was still lost in the darkness and then he prayed to God. God, help me. And that's when he saw a light and turned out. The light was the tree and he saw also the other people in the dream were lost in the darkness, but if they could bump into this Rod of iron, if they could bump into this handrail even though they couldn't see they like white, there's a rail here. What's this railing?

2:23:11 And they would fall and they would literally says hand-over-hand the rod, right? In other words just holding on one little bit of time, he would leave them out of the dark. Basically what happens with doubt with any of these Faith crisis. Is that they may have been lost in the dark this whole time, but they just didn't know it. They weren't aware of their awful situation. And something like under the banner of Heaven, are these other things can make us awaken to very serious issues. We've never struggled with before, how do I know if just? So there's a true Prophet, do I believe this? Because I was taught it in primary, I don't even know anything about Joseph Smith, frankly, if all I know is the church, curriculum Joseph Smith, lived a complex and powerful, and interesting life. But the correlated version I could tell you in just a few sentences boy asked God which church to join. He saw heavenly father Jesus Christ Moroni appeared. Two terms of the Book of Mormon and then he was super awesome until the bad guys killed him.

2:24:07 That's that's basically all you're going to learn, right? But it doesn't make me believe in Joe Smith less than of the complexities in the interestingness of his life, makes me believe in doing anymore because I see through him and his struggle, both the humanity and the divinity. Of what the human condition is. But how did I arrive there? I only arrived there through the darkness of trying to struggle with those things. So what am I trying to say? One thing I would Point people to if they don't want to accept religious Authority, maybe they're like. Well, yeah, but Benjamin's a Believer. I don't want to listen to Benjamin. I would say think about some of the uni and psychology, maybe Union archetypes, incorporating The Shadow.

2:24:49 If you want, if you need, if you want to actually understand The Human Condition and what causes these evils to exist and what's really going on? You have to embrace that. It's not that you can't just separate yourself from it by saying. Oh, that bad stuff was in Mormonism. Now I'm an ex-mormon and now I'm free from that. No, I'm sorry. The darkness is still there because it was in you all along, right? And this is why a good man is not necessarily a weak man, he's a man under control, I would say a real Adult isn't a person who has rejected the darkness. It's a person is recognized the darkness within their own capability for evil and then they've chosen not to do it.

2:25:31 So for example, I do not think of a pacifist being a pacifist, you know, philosophically a pacifist is not a man who doesn't like violence and therefore just tries to avoid it a pacifist. A man is a man who fully understands and Embraces violence. Enough to choose to stand between the violent and the innocent. A real pacifist is someone like like Gandhi, who was willing to say, I will make my own body to sacrifice. You know, one of the most powerful moments, it's in the film, of course, of Gandhi. And it's just a powerful moment in his biography was when he's in South Africa and they wanted to make all of the Indians register with these cards and things like that with there.

2:26:16 And they They were doing a protest where they were going to take the cards one by one, read the names and burn them. And the at that time, connected to Britain, write these police show up and they're like, it's a crime to burn your. It's not draft card, but that's the one thing we did in our country. There's similar. It's not you know it's just a registration card. You can't burn them, it belongs to us. This is we're breaking this purchase. You have to go home and he just ignored them and he read the name and he burned it right in front of him and they were like, no, we got to stop him. So then went and one of the guys, Some with a billy club and he picks up the next one, and he reads it and he burns it. And the guy hits him again until they knock them on the ground. And they're like, you're going to give up and disperse now. And he's like no.

2:26:58 And he crawls while they're beating him back to the pile. Reads the name crawls. Back to the fire burns again right at. So I mean what's my point? My point is Gandhi for example, who's one of our great prophets of pacifism? He wasn't a man unfamiliar with violence, right? He was a man who simply decided his reaction to violence would be through this radical Act of self-sacrifice. So, so, what's my point? My point is that when someone comes to me and says the losing their faith, I would like out what I would point out to them a few things first. You're not losing your faith. You might be gaining, you faith for the first time in your, in your life. Before this what you called, Faith may have only been belief. May have only been default the your raised this way. You were taught it.

2:27:50 Couldn't just be programming, your default operating sister do for default, operating system, it could just be your programming, but now that you're questioning now, you have the opportunity to have a real Faith. Like Andrew Garfield was saying a life of faith is a life of doubt. It's a life where you you don't dismiss the darkness you confront it, right? And the other thing I would point out to them is many, many prophets and sages from all religions throughout all time. They came through this Darkness, so don't think that it's hopeless. You two can go through this into a life of much greater Insight capacity and faith.

2:28:33 But I but again they're going to have to walk that path themselves, they're going to have to experience it and that's one of the reasons why I'm always a little bit reluctant to tell someone what they should believe. Because they're going to have to find it. Now, if they say, well what about this question or what about that question? I'm I can point them to the, the answers that the Ancients and the modern prophets and the the guru's and the whatnot, a various religions have answered those questions. But again, none of it. None of its real until they go through their own Dark Night of the soul and find it for themselves. Last one, the other ARCA typed right?

2:29:15 Raised in Utah County. Okay been to BYU. Is the first counselor in his Elders Quorum president of has been well correlated okay. Yes. Isn't necessarily in a faith crisis. Faith crisis, but just got smacked in the face with all kinds of things that they are like that can't be true. I never heard of them, right? So so they're not in a full-blown Faith crisis. Where would you point them for resources, where they can begin to read this right or talk to other people because right, this is going to be huge right? As these Action start coming up and I'll just go back. This is tricky like is if I put him to Richard Bushman and we're rolling and things like that, there's gonna be a lot of people are going to say don't put him there.

2:30:00 There's all kinds of stuff in there that is uncorroborated and and and could be destructive of faith and yet I think man you've got to you got to be enough of an adult to deal with and sort through that yourself. Because I mean, I don't think Richard Bushman was right about everything either. For example, know what you have to be able to read about both sides of the argument. In order to really exactly. So, so, in my mind the truth and that's the conundrum I faced when I was, was thinking about this last night, like, I feel like in some ways I almost need to get like a so a preferred reading list for people who just got smashed in the face idea. You know, it was a great idea. Okay, here you want to know about blood atonement, go read this, where it is.

2:30:45 Here's what I think. Here's where you can find it something. Because here's the thing. There's a ton of people. I don't know how I know this, but I know this. There are a ton of people that just felt like, they just got punched in the face by Mike Tyson. And now they're trying to regain their legs, their again, their composure. And they just don't even know where to start panic. And they're like, oh, crap, what are we, what I do, what's going, right? And the other thing too, is it's easy enough for me to take for granted things that I know that other people don't. So like, for example, like when yours like School of prophets, was not harm, Stones group, and say, actually, that's called the true and Living Church, right? And this one was called the The school of the prophets, right? And it's like, actually two different things. You know, one of the biggest problems of krakauer's book is he generalize is everything so much, right?

2:31:27 One of one of the best things that I do want you to put the link on that is on the reading list. For sure that I want everyone to think about is, Something written by Shirley Draper. She talked about how that no one in her entire Community. She lived in Colorado City. She was flds. She said no wonder my entire Community had ever so much as heard the name Lafferty they had no connection with anyone in our entire Community but the book under the banner of Heaven, severely affected my community and it put us in danger and she said it affected my own life. It put my mother's life in danger it. Put it made it very difficult for me to leave the flds because everybody just Just knew you know, it was common knowledge even though was incorrect was just prejudiced but it was common knowledge that the flds were connected with those Lafferty's who killed though that those people they weren't they were can actually this other group they had no communication whatsoever as far as I know with any flds person.

2:32:25 But krakauer lump them all together in the book and it created huge amounts of Fallout 4. The culture exact same things going to be happening to these poor guys that are gonna be blindsided. It's gonna be happening to the mainstream LDS. They're going to be You know, people are going to watch it and they're going to be like, well yeah, apparently F. Apparently LDS people are just like the Lafferty's laughter. These are the an example of what all Mormons are like, right? When you strip away, right? I can just see the argument and so that prejudice is gonna be there. Yeah. And and so what do you what do you do about it? And I think that one of the main things that we need to do first is we need to recognize. There's a Nuance here that you don't know, for example, like I was saying earlier the difference between the flds to a You be the true and Living Church, the school of the prophets and these other groups, they're different people.

2:33:12 We can't lump them all together. We shouldn't be generalizing and because that's just be prejudiced. It'd be like saying that because one person of One race committed, one crime that they're all a bunch of criminals or that you know, anti-semitic things or any of these other prejudices is the same thing. And there's real prejudice against Mormon, Mormon fundamentalists even more than there is against mainstream Mormons and even mainstream Mormons are going to be feeling it from the show. So I guess, what I would say is, take a deep breath. Don't other anybody involved. Take a deep breath and just allow nuance and learning to happen. You can say, look, I don't know about those people, and that's not my experience with my, my church.

2:33:52 As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that does not look representative to me of my community and go ahead and just say it that simply so people who bring it to your attention or people are looking for answers. You know, my stumble on this podcast, they're going to be like, well, what do I do with all these people who want to know if, I'm if I made murder covenants or something and strange, Mormon temples. You know, you can say that is not my experience with my religion. I end and be comfortable with maybe, you don't know. It's okay, there are complicated and nuanced answers if you want them to be correct. Answers. And right now, generalizations Hasty and horrible prejudicial generalizations about to be made willy-nilly all over the place.

2:34:38 Be the rational one stands up and says that's not my experience that's not my understanding. I'm sure the truth is out there even though I don't know what it is. And I think it's okay for us to say, we don't know what it is, but I know that if you're making a certain Hasty generalization that you're the one who's wrong. So let's all be mature about this and learn these things. One at a time, one little bit of time, but I really wish there. The best thing I can say, for a reading list is surely Draper's article is a must when, considering how these things affect Your community because all of us are about to be experiencing some of that. And she had some great insight about what it meant to her for other people to generalize against her to use prejudice against her.

2:35:19 And she's a great example of resilience and strength in the face of that calmly and consistently being bold enough to say, well, actually, that's not quite correct. Let's look at the Nuance of the issue. This is my experience. Let me explain to you, right? And so yeah, I would say the Blindsided poor, average, Mormon guy or gal. Who doesn't know anything about this? Is gonna have to say I don't know about that, right? Maybe you and I will get together. After this point, maybe we'll put together a reading list, right? Maybe we'll get something together to where we can put our heads together and just give some resources.

2:36:00 Because, look, I wish there were a better resources out there because frankly, one of the biggest problems of Mormon fundamentalism is because of our fear of a Justified, fear of authorities, as, you know, there's been a lot of persecution, we just don't speak out, we don't speak out enough and because we don't speak up other people speak for us, and those people are often, Inaccurate and filled with prejudice or some ulterior motive. And yeah, if we don't speak up, then there is no other side of the coin. There is no other story. And frankly, I do not think there really are a lot of good materials in print that explain a lot of this history because a lot of it's never been written. Well well and here's the other thing because and I'm trying to say this without being accusatory here but because the LDS church has tried to disavow some of this and and just flat suppress it, let's be honest, right? Let's call it.

2:36:54 Yeah, this place is made, right? Because of that. They find their their membership. Now, maybe a little ill-equipped to deal with what's coming. Absolutely. And it's because and they're also not trained to take their own personal moral responsibility and say I will take responsibility for my own. I own spiritual life and my community and say this is, this is my experience and this is not my experience, they don't feel equipped, they feel like they have to defer to Authority. Again, some correlated material, it's going to have all the answers in this case. They're it that's probably the scariest realization that they're going to have to just live with. I'm sorry, there is no correlated answer to this. There is no Pat answer, there's not going to be a simple, right? And wrong answer.

2:37:34 There's going to be a whole lot of answers that are going to have multiple different viewpoints in, you're going to have to wrestle with all of them, right? And I wasn't saying that to beat up on the LDS church. I really. Yeah, I know. But it is true though. That that is something I struggle with because I want I want my LDS brothers and sisters to be able Stanford. Yeah, I really do. I'm concerned for them and so that that was that was why I felt like this podcast was so vital so you know as a believer in the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith and a believer in the restoration as someone who loves the Book of Mormon and all of that. Think probably one of my greatest Sorrows is that when confronted with very difficult questions in anti-mormon literature or wherever else, they might find it. That so many choose to abandon Faith altogether, right? As a man who believes in God and believes that, when we pray, we do not pray in vain, I do believe that there is a God who hears our prayers.

2:38:34 It breaks my heart that 99 out of 100 people when confronted with these big problems throw the baby out with the bathwater right and and that's what I don't want to see I just you know yeah if they were coming to The Community of Christ or Christ Church or the AUB or something, 99 out of 100 times when they when they see that when they see the Corruptions in the failings in the mainstream LDS church, if they were going somewhere else where they could find more, where they could find better answers where they could be free to examine and struggle. Then I wouldn't be so sad, but so few actually keep their faith, right? It reminds me of broke my heart. You know, I should be better with pop culture than I am.

2:39:16 But what's the name of the guy in? Imagine Dragons is one of the main Hers and Reynolds. Yes, yes, Dan Reynolds. He did a music video of the of this song believer, which Heroes. And in that music video, he is so angry because of the way the church has had the November 5th policy, right? Basically saying that even the children of a gay parent had no ecclesiastical rights in the church that everyone was to be shunned at the whole family was to be shunned completely. Of the church. It was shocking. Kind of behavior honestly from any religious institution to blame children for their parents for their parents sexual orientation or something. That's it was bizarre.

2:40:02 But anyways, he was so mad about that, that he wrote that song about his own pain and religious struggle and feeling like he was finally just done with the church. And so, once again, he went from the in-group to the out-group. So when he was in the in-group, people held him up, like we've got celebrities, that are Mormons, Dan Reynolds is so great, you know what I mean? And he's a Mormon. Then you know and then he writes this song and I'll pretty soon I was like well he's not representative of Mormons, he's just he's just a gay weirdo who does music and we don't like him and ball a lot and they just push him right out. So that's why they did the like the love loud concerts here and stuff like that. To defend to defend people, frankly who feel cast out of the oldest Community for being lgbtq or something. Anyways, my point is, is that when you made this music video, it shows him really angry and there are these Against these photographs that are distorted, photographs, and even spray paints on one of them and they're pictures of Jesus and Joseph Smith Chief.

2:41:01 And I'm like, look, I understand that he's going through religious anguish and I feel I really felt for Dan Reynolds. The thing that broke my heart is he should have been spray-painting a photo of Thomas, S Monson and Russell, I'm Nelson. These are the guys responsible for this. These are the guys who made that choice. Choice. Russell, I'm Nelson was telling everyone. This is a pure Revelation from God. We should never have anything to do with lgbtq people. Their children should be blamed for their parents. This is what the Lord's will is, you know, Russell Nelson's out doing that Monson. Who knows what his capacity was at the time, but he certainly seemed to have signed off on it, at least in some capacity since he was President Search.

2:41:42 And say why isn't Ann Reynolds throwing his anger at the men who made this decision, instead of throwing his anger at God. But I think that this is exactly the problem that we have in Mormonism, A really deep problem we have in Mormonism, which is that we don't know the difference between follow the prophet and follow the lord. We don't know the difference between choose the right and do what you're told. We don't seem to know the difference between between God. I know the gospel is true and I know the church is true. Those are different things. They're very, very to hear they us. Yeah. And and I think that it takes a certain amount of Faith crisis a struggle for people. Learn that because we are not taught that in the correlated. Curriculum.

2:42:28 We're taught that obedience is the same thing as righteousness. We're taught that You know, that that following the prophet is the same thing as following God, but the Lafferty's for example, are an excellent. Case in point why that is not true. They said oh we've got a revelation, we have to murder people because of our Revelation and so in that deluded state, if you're if you're if you're in the follow the prophet crowd and that's what the prophets telling you. You have to then you're going to go along and this is why we have to decide ahead of time that we're not going to go along. We have to decide ahead of time that there are lines that we won't cross.

2:43:14 You know, I think this is one of the things that and Mormons aren't good at that. I talk to people all the time who say, oh don't worry, it'll never happen, the profit will never lead us astray, but that's such dangerous rhetoric especially after seeing the Lafferty's and Warren Jeffs and plenty of so-called prophets. Who definitely lead people astray. And, and don't forget, there were people in the flds who were like, well, of course, I don't believe the prophet could never leave us lead us astray. Because I know that the mainstream LDS church profits of let people strip it, but Warren Uncle Warren would never lead us astray. It's different. It's different this time it's because it's my church it's my people. This is the in-group my in group is the good guys so it won't happen here.

2:43:58 That is immature and it's wrong. We have to step up and say it doesn't matter where it is. I have a profit I have fi L. There's Temple presidencies this corn presidents. I sustain the leaders in my church but I don't sustain them blindly is and I'm going to do something bad if they tell me to I sustain them because they give me Insight, that leads me to the Divine that Revelation that leads to the Divine. But if they come out and they show me a revelation, they say, look, here's a revelation from God and it clearly leads into the darkness. I need to have the courage to say, no, you know, I don't care that you're the prophet know. And so I think that this is the type of thing. I wish I could go into like every Primary in the whole church and just blow their minds a little bit.

2:44:42 We should be doing moral agency exercises. We should be exercising our moral agency by saying, every time we receiving instruction, From anyone, we should be saying, should I follow this? Or should I not? Is this a lawful order military parlance? Or is this an unlawful order when we do that? Then we recognize that there's a big difference between following the prophet or following God or following or knowing that the church is true annoying. The gospel is true. And then then we might hold them accountable. So that the next time, I mean like for example, for me, the reason I was out of the mainstream LDS church was because of changes to the doctor. Ian's changes to the temple ordinances changes to the priesthood that I was like no that's you don't have the authority to do that but there's plenty of things that people who are perfectly fine with that. I know lots of good LDS people in the mainstream earliest Church who fully believe that Russell Nelson has not crossed the line.

2:45:39 I would still ask them to draw a line it because all of us need to for our own moral for our moral Health. We need to say, okay maybe I don't think that we're over the line yet. Maybe the LDS church is not an apostasy or Christchurch. I don't believe Christ. You're just like at least not fully in a posse. We're still doing pretty good but I still. But the difference is, I do have a line where I will know if they cross that line, it's too far that red line and I just wish that every Mormon would Take a moment to draw that line. You might think it's ludicrous. You might think well Russell, I'm Nelson or Donnie chokes are none of these guys. They're never going to get up there and cross.

2:46:20 That line doesn't mean it isn't useful to have that line, right? Right. You got to have that line so the maybe maybe it's not rustling nothing. Maybe it's not down a choked. Maybe it's the next guy, maybe it's a guy after that. Maybe it's some guy you don't even see on your radar and maybe it's even maybe it's even just a test. You know. I remember here's one that I actually experienced in the LDS church that taught the In simple. He really upset people. I don't think he gave this talk more than once. We had a high councilman, come to our Ward, to give a talk, and he and his point was, we shouldn't have blind obedience. So, this was really fun. He got up and he said, well I've been sent by the stake presidency and it is proposed that we sustain and he went through the regular stuff and they started adding weird stuff and seeing when people would stop, huh?

2:47:07 And it got super weird. It is proposed that on Thursday, afternoons, we nothing but cheddar cheese. And And, and that any food, besides cheddar cheese that has eaten between the hours of 12:00 noon and 6:00 p.m. on a Thursday is a violation of the order wisdom and that we will surrender our Temple recommends, all in favor and he opposed, you know, and it was just like it got sillier and sillier, but it was silly as crap for 10 minutes before people stopped. And he said, and there were people and, and probably a good half of the congregation continue to sustain all the way to the end until he just gave up. And he said, I'm not making a point here. There's two ways you can look at what we just did.

2:47:47 One those of you who stopped, you know, congratulations to you guys because you recognized that there are limits and that this was not appropriate. And here's the problem. He was also in favor of the people who continued and those of you who went all the way to the end Bravo for you because you are willing to be obedient no matter what. And but I was one of those who at least used this example as a moment to realize wait a second but I shouldn't be a beginner matter. What? Right there are limits, maybe we shouldn't be sustaining, insanity, or violence, or just craziness.

2:48:29 And and that's why I'm saying, everybody should make a line in their head. I've heard people say, for example, look, the LDS church is probably going to ordain women to the priesthood The oldest church is probably going to have gay Temple marriage. The LDS church is likely to do a bunch of those types of things in the very near future. I think fairly near future at least because that's what's going to become politically necessary or at least, probably going to be completely necessary, right? And they won't do it, unless it is necessary. But I think that it's possible that that will be necessary for them to retain their tax status or something else. If that does happen. I bet you they'll cave. I mean, for forgiveness Like Jimmy, Carter even said he didn't directly threaten the tax status.

2:49:12 I thought that was interesting. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that Bob Jones University case didn't go to the Supreme Court, the next year, right? You know what I'm saying? Anyway, but my point is, is that we need to draw that line if that's over the line for you, decide right now, that's over the line for you. So that if it does happen or when it does happen, you will have the moral courage to stand up. And say I am opposed. And if you can't do that, you don't have your moral agency intact really. In which case, you're not going to stand up against the Lafferty's know, you're going to ride in the backseat of that car. And they're going to drive you to hell with blood on their hands. Yeah.

2:49:53 You're, you're 100% correct. And that's why I kept coming back to that whole red line thing, right? Where's your and where's it at? All right, fellas, we've done two hours and 50 minutes. Oh my gosh, so long. So I want to end with giving you guys Eyes, each something to say Philippe, I'm going to start with you. I'll go and then I'm going to give you the last barely got a chance. I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's all good. I'm still a student learning this stuff. Like I've never had the banner of Heaven. My older sister did when she was missing in the AL Dia LDS church and that prevented her from. That was one of the books that's just turned her off from it.

2:50:33 And when I heard, they were making a series L, I rolled my eyes I was like, oh, this is gonna suck. and, I don't think Latter Day Saints. Should be afraid to investigate history if they should be afraid. These are going to you're going to find ugly things that it's normal. I mean, I used to be Catholic, imagine how I felt when I stood the Catholic Church did that, you know, but it didn't cause me to heal the Catholic church in a negative way, but don't be afraid to investigate your own history, its its history. It's going to be dark, sometimes, it's not all sugar-coated. It's not a walk in the field. Joe Smith is still a prophet of God Brigham. Young is still a prophet of God.

2:51:18 And the more you do, the more, you know, I think you'll be able to defend, at least in good conscience, know that you did your best to defend, Mormon history to the than the profits for yourself. And for those who may have a question because it may just be a simple question. You could save somebody from not save, but you could probably motivate them, inspiring them not to turn away from God, you know, but well that's good. That's its need to hear to about, you know, after all you've had this struggle, you had to go. Wait, a second, is the Catholic Church The Authority or not and learn about the restoration, right? Hi, you know, more than anything else I thought about what I was going to say and in this last segment, more than anything else, I guess I just want to Bear testimony of the fact that if you don't give up on God.

2:52:08 He doesn't give up on you. He doesn't give up on you when you do give up on him. Right side. Stick this out. I know right now, for some, this is a scary moment. You're reeling. Your feet are wobbly again. He got punched in the face and and it was a great quote, I Believe by Muhammad Ali. I could be wrong, which is, everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Yep. And so you may have had everything all mapped out and now you've got punched In the face, stick it out, get to the next round. Sit down breathe, drink some water. That's an allegory for breathe.

2:52:50 Read a little bit more read context, learn the history because history has a huge bearing on context, learn those things. And then reach out, if you can't get the answer on your own, reach out to me, I'm not going to guarantee that I can give you that answer but Can certainly put you in touch with others that can, that's the whole reason I have people on here that are way smarter than me, because I want this to be of worth, but but Reach Out, reach out to folks and I know it seems scary. I've been in your shoes. It's a big leap. Going from fundamentalism, you know, thought processes to reaching out to an actual fundamentalist.

2:53:34 But please, we're here for you even if you never Join the church. We go to and stay in the LDS church and above all know that. I know that this is, this gospel is true. Joseph Smith was a true Prophet. Brigham Young was a true prophet and I leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Yeah. There's courage and strength in each one of us that I think that we don't realize because we most of us have had few very few opportunities to truly tap into it. I think what I would like to leave us with is be bold be bolder than you think you need to be be stronger than you think you need to be and it'll work because that strength is in you learn from my mistake with my brother and not being bold enough. Doesn't matter if you've been taught that snitches get stitches when someone's head in a dangerous path. It's an act of love and self sacrifice to stand up and speak out.

2:54:38 Even if you have to call the police or CPS, and it doesn't matter. Even if there's going to be consequences to you, you can handle them because you're stronger than, you know, one of my favorite books by Ogden Kraut is compromised. And Concession, I don't know if that really fits into this reading list but it's about the martyrs and all the various people who died for their faith or had to stand up for their faith. And the struggles that they had, because it seems like it'd be so much easier to cave, and just give it all up so much easier. But his last chapter, is this beautiful little essay about the strength that is in you. You don't have to be a great man or woman like like Gandhi or Joan of Arc or some heroic figure to stand up for, what's right?

2:55:29 We all have it in us the same way I said earlier, we all have the darkness. We also have a great deal of courage in us to stand up against that darkness and I guess I would say If you thought about it, if you thought through, this is where my red line is, this is a principle. I need to stand up for. This is a thing I need to do. Just jump, just jump right into the dark. If you have to, I know it's scary as hell. Hold your breath, if you have to, but jump because the courage is in you and you will accomplish it, and when you do it, it's worth it. Standing up for your neighbor, standing up for. What is right? It's basically always worth it no matter what the consequences do you are because you don't see the fullness of your consequences at first. You might think I'm going to get in trouble for this and yeah that part's true but the part that you can't see, that's also true is that you will become a better man or woman. And you'll gain respect and you'll gain strength every time you make that choice.

2:56:28 So I guess that's what I'd leave with you. Is that the whole universe, the whole world. It's actually within you every heroic thing you've ever heard of, as well as the darkness, it's all in you and that struggle, you can overcome Awesome. Alright folks. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.