[00:00:00.000] – Speaker 3
Okay, well, Tyler Johnson, welcome to the Faith Matters podcast. Thank you so much for being here. [00:00:04.470] – Speaker 1
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m glad to be on the show. [00:00:07.250] – Speaker 3
Yeah, it’s our pleasure. The first thing that comes to mind for me, and came to mind for me as I read your book, was that it’s colored in various ways and throughout the book by your work as a medical doctor and an oncologist. I think that’s fairly unique, especially in this faith-oriented space. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind just sharing with us to start how your work in that specific field has influenced your faith and maybe even was part of the call that you felt to write this book? [00:00:47.540] – Speaker 1
Yeah, so it’s a great question. I also have a podcast which is about medical stuff. One of the things that’s been really interesting on the podcast, people who are familiar with the medical profession will know that in the past 10 or 15 years, there’s come to be a widespread recognition that in medicine, we’re experiencing what people often call an epidemic of burnout, which is to say that people who… It seems counterintuitive because you would think whatever the other problems with going into a career in medicine, at least it would be fulfilling. But increasingly, a lot of medical professionals find that it maybe is fulfilling at the beginning, but then it loses its purpose or its meaning somewhere along the way. That seems like both a worrisome and curious phenomenon. A colleague of mine and I started this podcast a few years ago, in effect, to try to explore that question, to try to say, why are we experiencing this epidemic of burnout and what can we do to maybe ameliorate it? One of the things that’s been really interesting is that of all of the things that we have discovered on the podcast, one of the most consistent findings, I would say, is that too often in medicine, we try to reduce what we do down to this very technocratic approach, almost like we’re really, really highly trained machinists. [00:02:19.220] – Speaker 1
Now, to be clear, I’m deeply grateful for machinists. There are all sorts of things in my life that when they, whether it’s my vacuum cleaner or the drains in my house or whatever, when I need someone to come and fix them, I’m deeply grateful that there are people who have those skills and have studied for a long time to have them. At the same time, I don’t think that you can reduce the practice of medicine to the equivalent of fixing very, very complicated machines because it loses sight of the fundamental humanity of the people that you’re treating. It also loses sight of the fact that medicine, at some level, at least oncology, is unavoidably concerned with life’s biggest questions. I have patients all the time who know they are going to die and are having to think about questions like, What really matters the most to me? What does it mean to live a good life? What do I prioritize? If I know that I only have two or three years left to live, what am I going to prioritize during that time? Then as they approach death and reflect back on their lives, I have many patients with whom I engage in conversations where we’re thinking about things like, What did my life mean? [00:03:36.840] – Speaker 1
Or did I do enough to pay enough attention to the things that mattered most? All of that is to say that medicine, or at least medical oncology, which is what I do, I think there is an element of it that is spiritual or existential in a way that really can’t be avoided. I think that what I often end up doing there actually feels a lot like what I do when I go to church or when I read the scriptures or when I listen to general conference, which is that I’m thinking about the questions that matter most, the really the deepest substance of life, and trying to figure out what matters and how we can honor that in the way that we live. In a sense, and spirituality or religion feel like two facets of the same crystal or two sides of the same coin. [00:04:39.770] – Speaker 3
Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I want to ask this right now just because I think it’s relevant to what you just shared. It’s not the main thrust of the book, but your work as an oncologist must… I mean, you mentioned the biggest questions of life. One of those questions, and we had a really interesting conversation with Patrick Mason about this a few weeks ago. One of those questions is, What’s the point of… Not just what’s the point of suffering, but why would God allow such suffering? Obviously, we’ve got the agency answer, which I think is fairly robust for dealing with the problem of human evil. But especially in your case, where cancer seems to be so random and causes so much suffering, and it seems like God could very easily alter these cellular mechanisms to avoid something like this. How have you thought about that as a person of faith? Has that, in particular, been challenging to your faith? [00:05:40.740] – Speaker 1
That’s a really interesting and insightful question. As you say, that’s not really the focus of this book, but I do think it’s important to address briefly. The answer that I have come to, I think, is scriptural, and I think that it’s consistent with what I understand of the science, and I also think that it’s a hard answer, meaning… Eleanor Maxwell one time said that he felt like there were certain doctrines of the gospel that were what he called wintry, and I feel like this is one of those wintry ones For me, one of the most important and beautiful and also difficult chapters of scripture is second Levi 2. If you remember in that chapter, Lehi is speaking to his son Jacob, who has had a life that is filled mostly with suffering and abuse. He’s watched his older brother beat up on not quite his old brother. He’s never lived in a home. He’s always been this itinerant refugee. He’s crossed the ocean, whatever. It’s been a really hard life. One of the famous phrases from that chapter, which we often quote, but which at least I had never really appreciated until I was thinking about it relatively recently in the context of the very questions that you’re asking, is that Lehigh says, There must needs be an opposition in all things. [00:07:03.380] – Speaker 1
I think that ties into a pretty radical part of our theology that we don’t talk about a lot, but that I think is really important with regards to this question, which is that while we believe in an all-loving God, and we believe in a God that is all-powerful, we also believe that we are co-eternal with God, and Perhaps even more difficult to really understand, at least for me, we believe that there are principles in the universe. There are laws in the universe that are co-eternal with God. To my mind, what Lehi’s counsel in that verse that I referred to a minute ago suggests is that the universe is fundamentally oppositional, meaning that opposition is woven into the fabric of the universe in a way that even It’s really interesting because there are multiple verses around similar subjects that say that if it weren’t that way, in effect, God would cease to be God. There seems to be something about the oppositional nature of the universe that just is, that even there seem to be certain laws by which even God is bound, and that fundamental oppositional nature of the universe seems to be one of them. [00:08:23.770] – Speaker 1
The reason that I think it’s relevant is this. When I look at the process of molecular biology, Francis Collins, who used to be the director of the Human Genome Project and is one of the most famous scientists in the world and is also an evangelical Christian, has referred to the way that our DNA is replicated and then the way we use DNA to make proteins and to build all of life Francis Collins refers to that as, The language of God, because he believes that it’s such a beautiful, elaborate, simple process that the beauty of it convinces him that God must be behind it. And although I’m nowhere near as learned about all of that as Francis Collins is, I agree with him. I find that to be compelling. At the same time, those very same molecular processes that allow life to arise in the first place, that allow an embryo to develop into a human, and that allow all of our bodies to be here and to function, are exactly the same processes that give rise to mutations that ultimately give rise to cancer, which is to say that, in effect, you can’t have embryogenesis without also having cancer. [00:09:32.220] – Speaker 1
They are part and parcel of the same process. For me, that means that this is simply the universe in which we live and even within which God operates. I believe that because of that, the fundamental question that we need to ask is not so much, why did God cause cancer? Cancer just arises because of the processes that are woven the fabric of the universe. But I think that allows us actually to ask a much more productive and for me, faith-nurturing question, which is, how does God respond to the suffering that is woven into the fabric of the universe? [00:10:13.960] – Speaker 2
Yeah. And it It feels like your work as an oncologist has given you practice in sitting with such particular pain. That feels very applicable in the same faith space for people who are really struggling in another totally personal and huge part of their life, it seems like this book was really about practicing sitting with people in pain that you’re not actually necessarily experiencing. If you are, then this is very applicable, too. I really appreciated that invitation at the beginning of the book that whether or not you’re experiencing pain in the church, this book is hopefully an invitation to help you sit with people who are. You had me at this one line, you said you hope that for people who don’t necessarily relate, that hopefully it will help them to start to recognize the plight of the people who are trying to decide if the church is the best way for them to do good in the world. I felt just so grateful that that was the way you framed faith crisis, because I think very often it’s easy to frame faith crisis like a cancer, like something that’s gone wrong, and maybe it was your diet, or maybe it was something that you broke in your life, and so we’re trying to fix it for you. [00:11:32.750] – Speaker 2
I really appreciated that there was this assumption that for so many people, faith crisis is about this angst that you feel about knowing for sure if this is where you should be. I appreciated the dignity that you start this book with for people who are asking questions. I expect that’s… Of course, that’s not true for everyone, but I think that that’s a story. I think that’s a part of the pain for a lot of people, that very often there’s an assumption of the opposite. There’s this assumption that they’ve done something wrong. I think there’s a lot of shame associated with questions. Anyway, I really appreciate that. I would love for you to just speak to that a little bit. I don’t know if this is coming from your own experience. Have you experienced these deep questions for yourself, or is this about being with students or being with friends, or ministering in your own church callings? Where are you getting all of these experiences that are teaching you about people struggle in faith. [00:12:32.210] – Speaker 1
Yeah. It’s so interesting that you bring this up right up front because it is true. I think people who have never been a medical oncologist, which is almost all people, would be surprised how much people assume that cancer must be their fault. Really? It is frequent that one of the first questions that I get when I meet a patient for the first time, usually it’s the question that they ask as they can tell that the visit is winding down a little bit. But often, one of the things they will ask is, Why did this happen to me? What did I do? Or what did I not do? Or how could I have avoided this? Or what should I have done? Or some version of that question. But the irony journey is, as to the point that I was making a moment ago, is that most of the time, the answer is, there is no answer to that. There is nothing you did or didn’t do. This is, as I said, an inherent part of the way that a body grows into a body. An inherent part of the way that our body replaces the cells that we have that are dying all the time is the same process that gives rise to the mutations that give rise to cancer. [00:13:42.320] – Speaker 1
Usually, it is, at least as best we can tell, random, and there is no fault. I don’t want to say that people who are reckoning with their faith, I don’t want to call that random because I don’t like that word very much in that context. But What I will say is that two observations I have are this. I think, first of all, it is the unusual exception that a person chooses to have a deep reckoning with their own faith. I think people who have been through that would mostly attest that that’s just not a choice that most people would make. Why would you make a choice to go from being in a comfortable place of what seems like relative certainty being in this, what at least initially often feels like a deeply broken, difficult, chaotic, whatever, uncomfortable place? I think that that is not a thing that most people would choose. And then the second thing is that many people, most of the people, at least that I have known who go through that process, do go through it. It’s not just that it’s not because of bad motives, but it is most often because of good motives. [00:15:00.280] – Speaker 1
It is precisely because they want so deeply to do what is right, to honor their own sense of integrity, to address the suffering of the people that they see around them, to reach out to people who they gather are marginalized or excluded or ostracized or what have you. And there is a deep sense of wanting very much to do what is right and to honor their understanding of what moral true north is, that that is what ends up leading to the place where they feel like this reexamination becomes necessary. And the other thing is that I found it to be a pretty good rule of thumb, just in my interactions with other humans in general, that we almost always are best off to assume the best about other people. In this particular case, my experience has been that assuming the best usually then is borne out the facts further down the road. [00:16:01.250] – Speaker 3
Yeah, I really appreciate the fact. I really appreciate that dignity that you give to people that experience crises of faith or other challenging parts of their faith journey. Not to give myself too much credit, but what you just said resonates deeply with me because when I was first thrust into faith crisis, I was done so kicking and screaming, really. I did not want to be the person who doubted at that time. I didn’t want to admit to that I was doubting. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I had deep doubts or that I didn’t know if I had a testimony. Eventually, it was my own integrity that forced me to be honest first with myself and then with Aubrey and then with some other close people around me. Certainly, in my case, the original things that kicked it off were mainly around church history issues, which you talk about a little bit in your book. But again, it was a matter of integrity. It was like, if I am being honest about what I’m learning, then that may dictate in some way what I feel like the way I need to live my life, to be a person that has and is following a strong moral compass. [00:17:18.410] – Speaker 3
That actually leads to a very interesting section of your book, which is you talk about faith journeys being moments. There are moments in which you believe a lot or you believe very little or you’re somewhere in between. You have these interesting charts that track faith and belief over time. And yet you make the point that The way you act in terms of your commitment to a religious tradition, to a community, et cetera, doesn’t necessarily need to track exactly your level of belief. Would you mind talking a little bit about that portion of the I make a move, which I admit is probably silly on the face of it in some ways, and I go back and deconstruct it later in the book, but I still think it’s helpful. [00:18:10.350] – Speaker 1
All models are wrong, but some are useful. I feel like this model is wrong and also useful, at least as a initial building block to have the discussion. But it’s the idea that, as you said, you can chart how confident a person is in whatever, a particular truth claim or the entire idea of the gospel or the church or any thing over time. As you said, I think it is true that for… The first thing is that I know that, at least when I was growing up, what I thought I understood was the normal way for such a chart to look if I had ever charted such a thing out, which, of course, we don’t usually do, but if I had charted it out, the normal would have been you go along with you’re not really sure, and then you have this one lightning strike spiritual experience and, Oh, my gosh, now you can say that you know, and then that knowledge is just fixed in place forevermore. That’s the idea. [00:19:07.590] – Speaker 3
Sort of a step function on the graph where the line’s a little bit low, and then all of a sudden it shoots up, and then it remains at a plateau there forever. [00:19:14.260] – Speaker 1
Exactly. It’s a quantum leap, and then once it gets there, then it just stays there forever. I do not doubt that there may be people who have that experience. If they do, I’m not here to tell them that their experience is wrong or illegitimate, but I am here to say that I think for a lot of people, it’s not like that. The first thing is to normalize the fact that it’s not like that. But then the second thing, which is to say that I think for most of us, the journey of belief is complicated, and there are ebbs and flows, and it waxes and wanes, and there are peaks and valleys and whatever. I think normalizing that experience allows us to open up a place to discuss that and a place for us not to feel like you were mentioning, Tim. I believe it should be striking to us that when you felt uncertain, your emotional reaction was shame and to hide, right? I think that tells us something about the larger cultural context that we have built around discussing these issues, because what it suggests is that if you are not certain, something is wrong with you. [00:20:27.280] – Speaker 1
I think that it would be good for us to recognize that life is usually more complicated than that. At the same time, I believe it is also true, as you pointed out, that there can be value to acting in the face of uncertainty. And in fact, all of us have to act in the face of uncertainty every day in our lives. Pretty much everything is, in one way or another, acting in the face of some a degree of uncertainty. And so while on the one hand, I believe that we would do well to recognize that it’s not always as simple as just saying, Oh, now I know, and then I know forever more. On the other hand, I also believe that it is worth us questioning the assumption that as soon as I don’t feel certain, that therefore there is no longer any moral in practicing fidelity, whether that fidelity is to my community or whether that fidelity is to the Commandments or the principles of living a gospel life. I think that that question about the relationship between the degree of certainty that I feel in a thing and the degree of fidelity that I demonstrate is a complicated and personal one. [00:21:55.370] – Speaker 1
We would do well to not make hasty assumptions where we say, Well, now I don’t feel as certain as I did anymore, so now fidelity is no longer required. [00:22:06.160] – Speaker 2
I love that you brought this up. I think you call it, this section was called the Ethics of Belief or something close to that. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard this articulated with such particularity, and I really appreciated this because I know this viscerally. I know this feeling of what my thoughts are saying is that I’m faking it, like I’m lying. So I love how you’re saying it, and I want to reframe it, and I want to talk about this, but I feel like what I’ve experienced is this feeling of being fake. If I show up and I do the things, then what I’m feeling inside is like I’m hiding. Nobody knows who I really am. If they knew how I really feel right now, they would know I’m a fraud. I think that’s the experience of it if it’s unexamined. I think that’s just the feelings that will be created. I really like this idea. I like the idea of challenging that and really taking back some agency and saying, My confidence can be low and I can make a choice to do this thing with integrity. But I felt like my integrity was instantly lost if I chose to keep engaging with the same energy that I engaged when I had a lot of confidence. [00:23:20.870] – Speaker 2
So it’s just uncomfortable. It’s very uncomfortable. [00:23:23.420] – Speaker 1
No, it is. And look, I want to be very clear, and I try to make this point at multiple junctures in the book, that it’s It’s obviously not my job to dictate anybody’s personal decisions. And in fact, I say at one point, very particularly in the book, please do not give this book to someone as a way of saying, Here’s this book that tells you you need to do the following things. That’s not the point of the book. At the same time, I think what you’re saying is right. On the one hand, to Tim’s experience that he was outlining earlier, I think it’s really important to recognize that we do often feel pressure to do something that I think might violate our integrity. For example, if you’re going to church, and the only thing you can really say right now is, I don’t know if this is true, some particular thing or the whole thing, if this is true, and you are put in a situation where you are made to feel like you’re being compelled to say that you know it is true when you don’t, then that is a violation of integrity. I think that we should take great care, especially those of us who may feel a greater degree of certainty, not to even inadvertently or tacitly compel other people to profess certainty that they don’t feel in a way that does violate their integrity. [00:24:42.860] – Speaker 1
But to your point, I think that there is a way to demonstrate fidelity in the face of uncertainty. Actually, this gets to one of the places where I think that our culture has really done us a disservice in the sense that we have become so comfortable asserting certainty. If you go to a testimony meeting, the most common verb you’ll probably hear is no, I know, whatever. We’ve become so comfortable asserting certainty that we have made it seem like certainty should be a prerequisite for living a life of faith. But I think the scriptures make clear that, if anything, that gets it backwards. In effect, the whole point is to act when you don’t have certainty. But because we have so valorized certainty as a virtue, I think we’ve put ourselves in a place where then if you don’t feel certainty, you feel like you’re spiritually second-class. And then, bizarrely, it feels like trying to live a life of faith in the face of uncertainty is somehow a violation of integrity when I would argue that for the vast majority of people, including most of the people whose lives are outlined in the scriptures, that’s what a life of faith is, is choosing to act in the face of uncertainty. [00:26:02.610] – Speaker 2
Thank you for that. It feels like just a place that requires some intense discernment. Maybe just I can see how I have, at different times, been motivated by fear on either side. I think it’s really useful to just have permission to figure out what alignment actually feels like. Sometimes it feels like showing up and engaging because it’s genuinely what my healthiest, holiest self wants. Sometimes it feels like withdrawing in a different way because because I feel like I’m acting out of fear. I get that this is the most dynamic thing, and it probably changes hourly. But I just really appreciated that you named this thing that being in perfect alignment with your integrity doesn’t always have to look quite so black and white, which is always the feeling that fear gives me, that I have to make an all or nothing decision every single Sunday. It feels like that. I I think that is really helpful. I will just say, really, honestly, I have such a resistance even to this word fidelity. Because I feel like that’s what became instantly up for grabs when I started having real questions. I didn’t want to feel like I had to be loyal to this thing that I didn’t know if I believed anymore. [00:27:19.160] – Speaker 2
I just want to say I feel like there was a time when I chose to engage, not out of this feeling of needing to be loyal to something that I was unsure about, but because there were other valuable things that felt like they were producing a lot of good fruit in my life. Even that felt like I just wanted someone to give me permission to show up and participate for those reasons that seemed important at that point. I feel like that’s the permission that I felt like I read in your book, that we make it way… I think our fear always turns this into a very all or nothing game, and it’s just too dynamic to make it that simple. So thank you. Thank you for that. Sorry, Tim, go ahead. [00:27:59.290] – Speaker 3
Yeah, I was just I’m going to say I agree with you, Aubrey, and that’s what I was thinking about, too. I visualize it in a different way. I was imagining these two graphs, let’s say the one is belief, ascent to a certain truth claim or set of truth claims, and then overlaid on top of it on the same timeline is your fidelity to said thing. I think on one level, what you’re saying, Tyler, and correct me if I’m wrong here, is that those lines, it’s okay if they diverge. One may be higher than the or lower than the other at any given point, and that’s fine. But there could be an implicit assumption, if people just hear that, that they should at some point reconverge. At some point, we’ll know whether or not this truth claim was actually as true as we hoped it was. Therefore, our loyalty should match that exactly, or our fidelity. If it wasn’t, then our fidelity to the said thing should also match as the as our understanding of the truth claim comes into focus. But for me, I would say as my own faith journey has moved on, it hasn’t been the sense that, well, I’m getting closer and closer to those lines converging, it’s actually that the one graph, the belief, the ascent to a set of truth claims has decreased in importance. [00:29:24.600] – Speaker 3
My fidelity to something has started to exist a little bit independent of what’s going on in that other graph. Sometimes I think about it, and I certainly have a set of beliefs. There’s no question. Everyone does have things that they believe. And yet these questions of my own spiritual transformation and how that’s affecting the people around me and the way that I’m engaging them in their full humanity and with love has become decoupled and independent of what I believe about a set of other things. Does that make sense? Yeah. [00:30:04.860] – Speaker 1
No, I think that another unexamined cultural assumption that we often share is that this is maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but probably not much of one, especially depending on who you talk to and where you look. But I think that there are times when it feels to us like living a good life can almost be reduced to the act of obtaining certainty about a specific list of truth claims, as if we were going to show up one day, we don’t really believe in curly gates, but so to speak for the image at the curly gates, and that someone is going to be there with a checklist and say, Well, how certain are you about this thing? And how certain are you about this thing? And that’s going to be the entrance criteria, right? Yeah. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that seeking spiritual truth is not important. I’m not saying that spiritual certainty can’t be helpful, and I’m not questioning the experiences of people who feel a degree of certainty. But I think that the idea that the goodness of a person or the meaning of their life or the purpose of the gospel or the atonement of Jesus Christ or the love of God or any of it, the idea that any of that can be reduced to the quest to obtain certainty about a particular list of truth claims, I find very little, if any, scriptural evidence for that being the case. [00:31:41.290] – Speaker 1
In fact, one of my favorite talks ever, which I think is wonderful precisely because it distills what can often feel like a very complicated subject into something that is very digestible, is a talk that then elder Oaks gave in the year 2000 called something like The Challenge to Become. In that talk, he says very specifically that sometimes we act like the ordinances and covenants and whatever that we have in the gospel are what he calls a list of deposits that have to be made in a heavenly bank. And so that’s not quite the same as the list of truth claims, but a a similar idea that there’s this checklist of things that you need to do. And then he says, he very explicitly says, That is not the case. The point of the gospel is not to do any checklist. The point of the gospel is to become a certain person. To your point, Tim, I think that, and I get to this point in the last chapter of the book, I think that the point of the gospel and the radical part of our theology is that the entire point of mortality, the point of having a body, the point of the covenants and ordinances and living in wards and all of it is that we are trying to learn to love like God loves.
And so truth claims can be an important… They can form an an important structure or scaffolding onto which to build a life that allows us to do that. But ultimately, what matters is how much my heart is becoming like Jesus’s heart. It’s not whether I can check off whatever list, whether of things that I’ve done or things that I think I know. [00:33:26.030] – Speaker 3
Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me a lot of Brian McLaren’s in his book, Faith After Doubt, where he says that often, and this is another, all models are wrong, some are useful. Often, faith before doubt expresses itself in the form of correct beliefs, and faith after doubt, it expresses itself primarily in love. To me, I love the image of scaffolding that you bring up. This tracks with my own life, too. Again, if I go back even farther to myself as a child and a young person and a missionary, it’s It was the correct beliefs that pointed me to show up for other people the right way. It was like, Because I believe this, I need to do this. It was all very good things. Eventually, I need to do this or not I need, but this is the way to show up for people in love started to exist on its own, even though the scaffolding fell away. Again, that’s not to say that I don’t have beliefs. But I think you’re 100% right, in my view, that it is all pointing to the same place. Sometimes we do culturally, I think, get it backwards where the beliefs are the point. [00:34:43.670] – Speaker 3
It turns out the beliefs aren’t the point, they’re pointing to something. [00:34:47.640] – Speaker 2
Can I just add? That feels so real in our life. But it feels like one of the reorientations that this whole experience, not that it’s over. I feel like we’re talking about this like it happened once upon a time. This is just the thing we are doing all the time. But I feel like doubt, looking back over the last decade, doubt has been the medicine, not the cancer. It’s literally been the medicine. It’s been the thing that shaved off these very sharp edges that the scaffolding created for me. I think it gave me a big, huge dose of like, I am the actual chosen one. Everyone has something to learn from me. Doubt just ripped that to It was so painful, but I feel like unlike a cancer, it can be just so devastating and destructive. This was such important growth in my life. I feel like looking back, there was nothing destructive about doubt. It is absolutely the thing that I needed. I felt like that was your tone through this whole book, that this is not a problem to be solved, except in the sense that we have broken the way we talk about doubt. [00:35:59.880] – Speaker 2
But this really can be something that is growth for your soul. I don’t want to… I think there are… How many different types of doubt do you talk about? I think there were six or eight that you named them separately. I really appreciated that. But there were a couple that I’d love for you to address specifically because I felt like I know this doubt so much. The one was dizzying doubt, and the next you called visceral. I imagine that’s very often when someone is coming to talk to you about this experience, that those are Those are probably the two that feel the most alive and painful if they’re in the middle of big questions. [00:36:38.560] – Speaker 1
Yeah. I think that there’s a really interesting passage at the end of Benjamin Park’s book that he released at the beginning of this year, which is a new history of the church, where he says that he thinks that part of the reason the church has been so successful, Ben Park is a historian, is because it claims It claims to offer certainty in a world of uncertainty, and it claims to offer a way of living a life in an era when that is always in doubt. The reason I bring that up is to say, I think one of the things that we often under appreciate is that if you are a person, a kid who is growing up in a faithful family in the church, it can be amazing. It can provide you with this incredible, again to the word scaffolding, but this incredible way of… One writer in Wayfair called it this calendar that orders every part of your life. What do you do on Sundays and also on Mondays and Tuesdays and Fridays It provides this structure for how to be a person, especially for the first 20 or so years through when a person goes on a mission. [00:37:56.100] – Speaker 1
The point is just the reason I bring that up is to say, if You have built your life around this calendar or this scaffolding or whatever for the first however many years of your life, and then all of a sudden, you are brought to believe that maybe that was never real, or maybe it wasn’t what you thought it was, or maybe even if it is pretty good, it’s not what it claims to be or what have you. To your point, dizzying is the best word that I can think of. It’s like you have been toiling along this trail that you think leads to the right place in the mountain, and then all of a sudden you look around and it’s just like precipitous drop offs in every direction, and you feel like you have no place to go. The ground has literally been taken out from under you. And that’s not even so much And the same thing, it’s a similar thing with visceral doubt. Those aren’t even so much frames of mind or intellectual questions as they are emotional states, right? They are just these like, it just lands on your chest And you just think to yourself, oh, my gosh. [00:39:04.260] – Speaker 1
Was it all just a lie? I don’t know if people who are listening have seen the Truman show, but it’s like in the Truman show, the first time when the spotlight falls out of the sky and onto the ground. And he’s like, Wait, what? This whole island was never real. What is going on? And then when he finally leaves the island to go out into the real world, he turns around to Christoff, who’s this godlike presence in the movie and says, Was Is it never real? I think that’s what it can feel like. And so that’s just to say that, in a sense, the measure of the beauty and order that church life brings to you, especially when you’re young, is precisely the measure of the fear and chaos and sense of despair that can come flooding in when for the first time you seriously consider that maybe it is not what you thought it claimed to be. [00:40:05.590] – Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. I want to just add that I know some people don’t have this experience or need this experience, and they are living completely fruitful Christian lives. I don’t understand how this happens and why. But I know people who I have so much respect for, and respect for specifically for what you for their own spirituality. I don’t think it’s something that everyone has to have this experience of. But I think I really did. I think it was what you said. It was the next thing that I needed in my spiritual growth. I don’t feel ashamed of it anymore, but I recognize that there are so many different paths, and I just know that this was mine. [00:40:58.070] – Speaker 3
Yeah. Go ahead, Tim. Well, I wanted to say, first of all, you are the chosen one. [00:41:04.630] – Speaker 1
Chosen by Tim, if nothing else. Yeah, exactly. [00:41:07.060] – Speaker 3
You are my chosen one. I agree from my perspective, too, that your journey, I can affirm that, and again, this is external, with doubt, has not been destructive. It has caused so much growth, I think, for both of us. Yet, Tyler, I think your perspective, based on what I understood from the book, is that you do see some types of as destructive in some ways. Would you agree with that? [00:41:35.940] – Speaker 1
Yeah, but to your point, though, I’m a word nerd. I recognize this. I spend a lot of time thinking about words and what they mean, especially in this context. But this is just to say that there is a whole section in the book about the word doubt, and the overriding message of that section is that I think that in the church, when When various people use the word doubt, they mean such dramatically different things when they use the same word that it is both enormously confusing and also deeply painful. Because what I am experiencing when I think I’m doubting whatever, it may be so different from what I… Then I hear a Sunday school teacher or even a church leader or whatever who talks about how doubt is always destructive and it always in darkness, and it does all these things. And then I think to myself, as you were saying a moment ago, Aubrey, gosh, I felt like in my case, doubt was a necessary precursor to a deeper form of belief. It was like the escort that got me from a shallower belief to a deeper belief. And so how can that be bad? [00:42:53.140] – Speaker 1
And so I think, yes, I think there is a form of doubt that is almost gleeful about tearing down another person’s belief. And that strikes me as at least unsavory, if not just spiritually destructive. But I think that there are also many people who are going through what we would often term periods of doubt where, yes, all they’re doing is just digging a deeper foundation for a more robust and resilient faith to come. The other thing that I also want to point out, which we’ve mentioned this obliquely a couple of times, but I think it’s important to reference. One of the things that I came to more deeply appreciate in the process of thinking about all this was the importance and beauty of spiritual gifts. I’m really struck that in doctrine and covenants, when the Lord offers a list of spiritual gifts, I’m not surprised, based on my cultural upbringing, that one of the things that is discussed there is to some it is given to know that Jesus is the Christ. List, et cetera, et cetera. But what is striking to me, and what was initially surprising, is that then the next part of that same list says, And to some it is given to believe on the words of those who know. [00:44:13.120] – Speaker 1
My understanding of that pairing is that the second is purposefully given in contradistinction to the first. In other words, to some it’s given to know, that’s their gift, and to some it is given to not know. We don’t usually up in testimony meeting and say, I have been blessed with the gift of not knowing if the church is true. But that section of the doctrine and covenant seems to suggest that that’s a totally legitimate thing to say. I think to your point, Aubrey, when we read in the New Testament about this metaphor of the different parts of the body of Christ, and the kidney can’t say to the heart that I have no need of you, and so on and so on. I think that those of us who have been gifted with spiritual knowledge could do a better job of trying to understand the gift of those who do not have that knowledge and trying to understand how it is that people who do not have that knowledge and who may never, at least Can this life have that knowledge? What necessary beauty and healing and sucker do they bring to the body of Christ that we couldn’t have if everybody had the gift of knowing? [00:45:28.890] – Speaker 1
I think that’s a really important question. [00:45:31.500] – Speaker 2
Yeah. I love how it creates some tension that does seem like the best for growth. If the gospel is meant to help us become, then having those two opposing gifts in some ways, that seems like a complication that you’re going to face every Sunday that would be really good for growth because it’s really uncomfortable for both gifts. It’d be a lot easier if everybody was on the exact same page. I I love that it’s not supposed to be that way and that that’s a good experience, not a broken experience. [00:46:07.740] – Speaker 3
I was just going to-Go ahead, Tim. Are you sure? Yeah. Okay. I was just going to say there have been parts of my faith journey where I have wished that everybody wasn’t as uncertain as me. In ways, there’s an elitism there. It’s like, Well, if people really understood, they’d know that they don’t know type of thing. As The best framing is I was just giving lip service to this body of Christ point that you’re making, Tyler. I just more wish that everybody had my perspective. I think that really is problematic and unsustainable. I’ve realized over time that the fact that we even have a community, that we have some structure, some container, is due to people who have a knowledge. It’s They’re the ones that have really formed a thing. If everyone was as Lucy Goosy with their beliefs as I am illustrating myself as having been at that time, then there’s nothing for us to really do. There’s nothing solid about it. And yet I think we do need to have people who are uncertain. I think we need to have people to raise the difficult questions and not get stuck in cultural or theological ruts. [00:47:34.160] – Speaker 3
I think we need people who are bridge builders, who have experienced both sides of that and can help the two various groups talk to each other. I really resonate with that, that the body of Christ, we really, really do have need of each other in a very real way. [00:47:52.370] – Speaker 1
Yeah. I think that’s the… I feel like every time I read about the Rameumptam in the Book of Norman, if I’m not worried about the many ways in which I’m likely either already up there or on my way, climbing up to the top, then I’m probably not being introspective enough. Because to your point, Tim, it’s so easy to be like, Well, I’m part of the club that used to think that I knew, but then I got enlightened and figured out that I didn’t really know. Which, of course, the unwritten subtext there is, Everybody else should be I am. I’m part of the Ramy Uptem Club, and everybody else just hasn’t climbed the stairs yet with me. [00:48:35.880] – Speaker 3
Exactly. [00:48:36.450] – Speaker 1
I think that there is always that danger that we can even make, and to the point of the metaphor of the body of Christ, that is precisely the issue, is that if the heart starts saying, Everybody should be a heart, and I’m the best organ, and none of the other organs are really necessary, if everybody were just like me, then the body would be better. But as a doctor, that doesn’t work. You need all of the different parts of the body of Christ, or else the body can’t function appropriately. I think that all of us, no matter where we are in our faith journey, in some ways, one of the most important moral imperatives is to think, in what ways am I tempted to make any part of who I am or how I function in the church or whatever else? In what ways am I tempted to make a special club that’s just for people like me? Any time I’m tempted to make that club, I know that I’m climbing the stairs to the rameumptam. [00:49:38.760] – Speaker 2
Wow, that’s so true. [00:49:40.280] – Speaker 3
You need to sit with that one for a minute. [00:49:42.020] – Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s so real. It’s just so natural. You feel isolated for a minute, and so you want to just go gather up your people and feel safe and in the middle of something again. I think it’s the most natural thing in the world to just do that in a sphere, It’s over and over and over again in different ways. So thank you. I want to just spend a minute on what you would say to someone who’s new to this space, who’s experiencing it personally, who’s on the edge of panic, that it feels like belief is slipping through their fingers. What have you found to be anchoring, but also maybe just general advice? What helps people slow down and do this in a really healthy, thorough way so that doubt can be productive of growth and not destructive in their life. [00:50:39.580] – Speaker 1
Yeah. I think to your point, I think the point about slowing down is important, right? Because precisely because of what we were talking about earlier with dizzying and visceral doubt, right? Those sensations can be so overwhelming that it can feel like you want to curl up in the fetal position and go hide under your covers, right? And that’s totally, that is a completely legitimate reaction. And it is also true that at some point breathing deeply and thinking through what’s happening can still be important and can still leave a little bit of space to think like, Okay, this is a thing that’s happening to me. It’s not me. I’m going to figure out ways to work through this. I think that a second thing is that it’s really important to identify who can be on your team while you’re in that space. I think that everybody has a sense of maybe that’s your parents, maybe it’s your siblings, maybe it’s your significant other, maybe it’s your best friend, maybe it is your bishop or your early society president. You also may know some people who are very much not on that list. You might have a person who you just sense is not the right person to talk to, and I would trust that sense. [00:52:08.930] – Speaker 1
I think this is a very personal and intimate part of ourselves, and we need to take care with whom we share it, to make sure that we share it in a way that feels safe. Then I want to acknowledge first I know there are some people who… We often use the metaphor of dominoes. I don’t particularly like that metaphor in a lot of ways, but we often use it. Let me say that slightly differently. I don’t think we should aspire to have dominoes, but I think we can recognize that we often feel like we have dominoes. That is to say, once one thing falls, then everything else starts falling in succession, whether you want it to or not. I recognize that there’s a There are some people for whom once one domino falls, all of them fall, right? And they don’t know if there’s God, they don’t know about Jesus. They just don’t know anything, right? They don’t have confidence about anything anymore. And that is entirely legitimate. And I want to recognize and empathize with being in that place. And this is a point that I refer to multiple times in the book, but there’s this really beautiful… [00:53:31.600] – Speaker 1
In Ether Chapter 12, this is one of those interesting places where the compilers of the Book of Norman are inserting themselves in the story again. The Book of Ether is the story of the brother of Jared, and it’s this tragic narrative. Again, in an encapsulated space, it echoes the tragic narrative of the whole Book of Norman, but in just a few chapters in just one book. In Ether Chapter 12, we have this insertion portion from the prophets who are compiling the Book of Mormon and, in effect, reflecting on the story that is unfolding. At the very end of that in verse 41, there is this beautiful verse that says, And now I would commend you to seek this Jesus. For my money, and again, I recognize that part of that, almost in spite of yourself, deconstruction of belief can include no longer believing in the divinity of Jesus or anything else. But to the point that I make in a chapter in the book about Mary seeking Jesus even after Jesus has died, I still think there is power and beauty in seeking after Jesus, even if the whole thing has come falling down. Even if you look around and it’s like every single domino is lying flat on the ground, I still think there is genuine spiritual power in in seeking this Jesus. [00:55:02.540] – Speaker 1
I think that there is… I think that by virtue of his Atonement, Jesus Christ can understand if all of the dominoes have come and fallen down. Jesus Christ can understand what it’s like to feel alone in all the universe, to feel abandoned, lied to, betrayed, all of those feelings. I think the single most powerful thing for my money is to continue to seek this Jesus, even if you feel uncertain of who Jesus is, what Jesus means, or whether there’s any value to doing so. [00:55:45.980] – Speaker 3
Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you, Tyler. I know we’re getting close to wrapping up here. Before we go, I want to emphasize that we spent a lot of time on the dynamics of faith and belief in doubt. That’s not really the entirety of the book. In the very title, it’s about just when church can be hard for really any reason. I want to ask you, is there anything in particular that When you think about that more broad topic that you’d like to share before we wrap up. [00:56:20.190] – Speaker 1
I think the one other thing that I want to say is that one of the… I think that 15 years ago, let’s say, I think as the United States, at least, went through its own revolution, and we should be clear that it was a revolution with respect to same-sex marriage, LGBTQ rights, LGBTQ visibility, et cetera, et cetera. I think there was a real wrestle within the church at that time. The reason that I want to bring that up is because one of the things that I have been deeply touched by is people who are either in that situation themselves or who are in the situation of being a person who loves a person who is in that situation themselves. And so for example, I have had people come and talk to me who have said things like, My brother, sister, mom, dad, cousin, friend, whatever, is lesbian, and she does not feel that she can… She does not feel welcome in church. She doesn’t feel like she can be here and bring her full self. I am not lesbian, this person might say, but I am trying to understand How can I, in good conscience, belong to an organization where a person that I love deeply doesn’t feel welcome? [00:57:56.040] – Speaker 1
The first thing is I want to be explicitly and emphatically clear that I think that is a serious moral question. And I deeply respect the love and empathy that, at least in every case that I’ve encountered, that underlies the question. I think that question comes from a place of deep integrity and love. I hope it is true that my book doesn’t offer easy answers for any of these very difficult questions. I hope it’s also true that those are questions precisely because of the same love that motivates the question, that the answer to questions like that deserve to be carefully considered with that same love. I guess what I’m trying to say is that on the one hand, that’s just one specific example, but I think there are many reasons why church is legitimately hard for reasons that deserve recognition by people who want deeply to do what’s right, and that still leaves a very complicated situation that has to be considered carefully and with love. [00:59:15.470] – Speaker 2
Thank you for that. I’m just thinking about what you said in the beginning that, what if we just err on the side of assuming the absolute best for everybody who’s in those situations, those complicated situations? That sure relieves a lot of the weight judgment. We can just be relieved of that burden of deciding if it’s justified. Remember that our actual role is to be with people in the way that they’re morning and legitimately be comforting them and experiencing real empathy. I really appreciate the way that you articulated that for these especially tricky situations that so many people are dealing with in the church and I’m sure a lot of listeners are dealing with in a personal way. I really appreciate the way that you’ve laid that out for us because it feels like big work. [01:00:08.470] – Speaker 1
I think, Aubrey, to your point, and you also, both of you mentioned something to this effect earlier, but I just want to highlight it. As a doctor, as a human, I think all of us, when we sense pain, we want to alleviate it. We want to run to the person who is hurting. I believe that there are some people for whom church will be painful precisely because their gift is a deep understanding of other people’s pain. That gift is precisely the thing that allows them in a way that no one else is capable of, and in a way that, in my view anyway, is deeply and thoroughly like Jesus, to minister to the needs of the people who are hurting in a way that nobody else perhaps is really capable of doing. I don’t mean that. I don’t want that to be understood manipulatively. Therefore, if you’re hurting in church, you have to stay because that’s obviously not what I’m getting at. But I’m just saying that I believe the ability to perceive other people’s pain is its own spiritual gift. And you made the point earlier, Aubrey, about something about that your has allowed you to shave off some of these sharp edges. [01:01:32.710] – Speaker 1
I think that ability to appreciate other people’s pain often equips us to paraphrase something that elder Maxwell once said, it’s like it excavates a space inside of us that can be filled with a suckering love that maybe can arise in no other way. I know that I have often seen that people whose empathy is deep and abiding like that are often some of the most effective healers in the church.Thank. [01:02:05.900] – Speaker 2
You.beautiful. Yeah, it really is. [01:02:08.680] – Speaker 3
Thanks, Tyler. Really appreciate you being here. This has been a really fruitful conversation for me. I appreciate all the… I mean, being here and all the work that you put into the book as well. [01:02:19.570] – Speaker 1
I’ve said it before privately, and I’ll say it here publicly that I think you guys are the very best. I’m just a fanboy being on the podcast. That’s very good. I appreciate the opportunity to talk. Thanks, Tyler. [01:02:31.440] – Speaker 3
Thanks, guys. [01:02:34.830] – Speaker 2
All right. Thanks so much for listening. We really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Tyler Johnson. You can find his book, When Church is Hard, on Amazon or a desert book. If Faith Matter’s content is resonating with you for you to leave us a review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen. We read all of the reviews, and it really helps us to get the word out about Faith Matters, and we appreciate the support. Thanks again for listening. Remember, you can check out more at faithmatters. Org.
Guest Author
Nick Galieti
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