0:00:00 - 0:00:24 Ok, so I just um running a little late this morning, I didn't get done nearly as much as I wanted to do, but I see an email just came in and uh because of who sent it, I decided to answer it. Um It breeds hi, Rob. I'd be very interested in a video on what you might say to a young L DS man or woman considering 0:00:23 - 0:00:48 serving a mission. What would you say in terms of doctrinal arguments, costs and benefits, responses to leaders pressuring them to go cultural issues, et cetera. Um And then there's some more after that, but that's, that's basically the short, long and short of it. Like there's a lot that needs to be 0:00:48 - 0:01:18 said here and uh I, I just, I'm under a lot of constraint here with, with time and um needing to focus on the most important things. Um But I want to make this more of a general response to the questions I get from time to time about um the L DS church in general. Um and sometimes other churches. Here's 0:01:17 - 0:01:41 the thing though, right? When it comes to persuasion, it, it like everything else. It's a hierarchy. Um And when you, so, so I made a video, I've talked about this when you're teaching someone, what you're actually doing is it doesn't matter what you're teaching them about, it doesn't matter how secular 0:01:41 - 0:02:09 the theme seems. You are taking your model of reality. Uh And the best way to be given reality, uh which that is what God is and you are taking your perception of where they are and how they are. And you're making a path in your mind, you're envisioning a path from where they are to their full potential 0:02:08 - 0:02:39 . And you take the next the smallest increment of improvement. And once you have that, then you use everything, you have to try to create arguments, situations, whatever the case may be. And it doesn't matter how long that uh occupies, not just in developing the plan, although that, that is much more 0:02:39 - 0:03:00 involved than I think anyone who doesn't do this realizes, but the ha the plan that the, the execution of that might be a process that might occupy a decade, who knows? Right? Or it might all of this might occur in a millisecond on a bus when you're sitting next to someone you're never ever gonna see 0:03:00 - 0:03:25 again or plane and of course, the bandwidth of the interaction. So with a, with a child, for instance, you're gonna have many years, hopefully, um with a person on a plane, you're just gonna have the duration of the flight maybe you just have the moment that they take their ear buds out, right? Or um 0:03:25 - 0:03:50 whatever. So that will constrain the means you have the bandwidth of the interaction, right? Um We've talked a lot about limits of language and things, but I don't want to get too off topic with all of that. So all of this comes to bear on this conversation um in the hierarchy of persuasion, then, you 0:03:50 - 0:04:17 know, it consists of reasons and situations. So, um I spent years of my life uh and it was, it was a task far beyond me. When I started, there was a lot of growth that had to happen during the process. And at the time, the costs of doing this were astronomical relative to what I had experienced so far 0:04:16 - 0:04:46 in life. I mean, um I, I risked my graduate degree. Um I risked my marriage. Uh I risked a whole lot on this book. Um Of course, I had to deal with the residual not belief but possibility. I guess that in fact, my eternal salvation was tied up to whether I maintained membership in the L DS church or 0:04:46 - 0:05:07 not. And I wrote the book anyway, because that's what God told me to do. And it was a process of faith. You know, nothing is ever 100% sure. Um It's something religious, people are very uncomfortable hearing, but that's the way it is. They, they, most religious people use religion as a way to find certainty 0:05:06 - 0:05:29 in an uncertain world. And actually, the closer you get to God, the more uncertain the world becomes in a way because the more reality is revealed to you, and you can't escape the fact that it lies far beyond what you can put a box around and treat as a finite, fully known thing. And so actually the 0:05:29 - 0:05:58 closer you grow to God, the more you have to divorce your security from finite things and trust fully in the character of God, even though you have to admit he's so much better and so much more than we are. And that's like the opposite of what religious people go for. So, um having invested all of that 0:05:57 - 0:06:21 and made what at the time I believed and I still believe is the best treatment of this question of what could you say to someone who is L DS um to help them, to help them see what's valuable and what they have and see the limits of what's not valuable and what they have. But obviously they think it's 0:06:21 - 0:06:46 all one. So trying to split that apart and preserve the good while giving an exit from the bad. So that because you have to climb, when you climb higher, you have to let go of what cannot come with you. I've already done that, right. And if I went back to that, you know, I have no doubts that I change 0:06:46 - 0:07:10 some of the things about my approach, but uh not significantly. And the, the my vision of the effect of those changes is so minimal compared to the impact I perceive and the things that I'm doing instead with my time that I cannot go back and do that. So how does this relate to, you know, a person, a 0:07:10 - 0:07:34 father who has Children considering uh L DS missions and they don't want them to go because they don't think that it's worthwhile. Um, well, and, and this relates to the L DS situation in general. So I, um, you know, I don't spend time looking into this but sometimes people contact me or something comes 0:07:34 - 0:07:56 without me looking for it. I know there are a lot of people out there who this is how they occupy their lives and tearing down the L DS church. Uh I have no reason to do that. I've made what I think are cogent and I wouldn't call them polite but, but measured arguments about what I think about all this 0:07:56 - 0:08:28 , what I, what I have reasons to believe God thinks about all of this and um, no one has poked holes in those. Um, I don't know that anyone's tried but I don't, I certainly don't know that anyone's been successful. So, um, that is this higher fuller task that has been completed. And when I hear that 0:08:28 - 0:08:48 there's this cascade and when I hear people say, oh, I have this friend or whoever I know this person who is really struggling with their faith because the L DS leaders came out hard in support of the COVID vaccines. And you know, how is a guy who's not only supposed to be a prophet, but also a medical 0:08:47 - 0:09:10 doctor? So how can he be so incorrect about this thing that is completely within his professional and spiritual credentials and yet be right about anything else, right? This wasn't something that was ancillary and you know, what kind of car should I buy if I'm a one legged midget, right, which obviously 0:09:10 - 0:09:27 if he was wrong about that or had a weak opinion about it, not a particularly strong opinion, you'd forgive him. It's like, well, obviously you've never thought about this. It has nothing to do with your life and maybe it's not super important in the religious scheme of things, but life and death happens 0:09:27 - 0:09:52 to be pretty important, lifelong um poisoning or disease as a result of getting experimental technology injected in your arm. You know, that's pretty important and then pressuring millions of people in your church that if you don't do this, you're not worthy of being here essentially. Um tying it with 0:09:52 - 0:10:16 the things of much greater spiritual value. You know, that's a really big deal. And so you think that this would be a really valid place to have a schism, however, not in my opinion, because in my opinion, all the evidence that came before is at least as great as any of that. What's the difference? The 0:10:16 - 0:10:48 COVID shot is one little thing. It's much closer to being possible to adequately express this in 255 characters or less. So, in a sound bite. Now, as evidence becomes simple enough and concise enough and independent enough, self-contained enough to be expressed in a sentence or a few seconds or one decision 0:10:47 - 0:11:16 in life. The amount of faith required to believe it. Remember, faith is believing what you have sufficient reason to believe. So that's a magical blind thing. The amount of faith required to heed that evidence is reduced, right? With that reduction comes a reduction in impact blessings decay as faith 0:11:15 - 0:11:42 decays always. All right. And it's a one way street, you can't go back to the the place where greater faith was possible to manifest. So think about just how much it costs to spin up creation and what was involved. And uh all of that was put together to maximize the conditions of faith because in the 0:11:42 - 0:12:11 long run in the scheme of things, actually, um faith is something that's not uh easy or constant or plentiful in the scheme of eternity. It, this all of creation had to be contrived just to make a space where truth things as they really are was not incredibly obvious. So truth, the Greek word for that 0:12:10 - 0:12:30 is Alethia. It's a beautiful word. It means that which cannot be hidden. So everything comes to we read in the scriptures that there will be a time when everything is known and we think that that's some magic light switch or something that it's a miracle that everything is known. Nope, that is the default 0:12:30 - 0:12:55 state. At least that everything is. Well, I'll put a star there and I won't go into what that star is. I won't keep on topic, but that's basically true. It's a, it's truer than what you probably believe about that, that you could put your whole weight into that for a long time without finding the edges 0:12:54 - 0:13:20 and, and improve much from where you are. Ok. So, so look, you can be one of these COVID Avenger people who are going out and rallying, you know, really ranting and raving about the faults of the L DS church or President Nelson or whoever. Ok. Fine, whatever. But you will reach people who are not willing 0:13:19 - 0:13:43 to receive the truth except in that tiny little narrow window of, I basically have to die before I'm gonna wake up or, and I, I shouldn't say wake up until I basically have to die before. I'm going to be honest. That's really what it is. I will love a lie until I, I will die from it. And then I will 0:13:43 - 0:14:04 stop and you're no different than someone who watches his parents, grandparents, great grandparents die of emphysema from smoking his whole life and then maybe quits right? When the doctor tells him he has lung cancer. What did he do now? Is that good? Sure. It's great. Any improvement is great. Is it 0:14:04 - 0:14:21 comparable in any way to what you could have had if you never smoked in the first place or after your first cigarette? You're like, you know, honestly, this just isn't a good idea and you never touched it again. No, it's not comparable at all. You see now, a father who has kids who are considering serving 0:14:21 - 0:14:41 L DS mission and who knows something of the cost that comes with that, which surely includes the statistics on uh how many of those kids come home early. What that does for their social life? Because they're ostracized and stigmatized. How many of them come home thinking that they are suffering from 0:14:40 - 0:15:04 any kind of, any number of mental illnesses are called uh how many come home prescribed drugs for that which um you know, have their own consequences. Um Well, what the opportunity cost of that is versus any good that you might possibly do. Um And of course, I'm not saying that preaching the gospel is 0:15:04 - 0:15:23 not worthwhile. Um I'm saying that uh in fact, I'd say it's worth any cost, but I'm saying there are much better ways of doing it than sending out people so young that they know nothing about anything. And most of them have never even read the scriptures, let alone uh have a relationship with God and 0:15:22 - 0:15:43 uh pulling them out of the prime of their lives for two years or whatever to do that. Um, yeah, that's really not a good idea. And then what good you're going to do for anyone else in doing that, uh, when burdened down by a mountain of rules that make it virtually impossible to do what Jesus would actually 0:15:43 - 0:16:08 do in your place. Um, yeah, I don't know how you think that's going to help. Right. But, um, you know, they're saddled with, with, uh, threats, pressure, guilt and, um, in a, in a, in a significant way increasingly, but there's always been the case for men at least, but I think it's probably spread out 0:16:07 - 0:16:36 to both now, both genders. The, the, the pressure is, you know, how could you ever marry a young man who hasn't gone on a mission and increasingly a young woman, look, I don't know how much plainer to say this one. If someone has that requirement, you should not marry them, period two. If, um, uh, there 0:16:35 - 0:16:58 is an inverse to this. If someone requires you to go to a mission on a mission, L DS mission before they'll consider marrying you, you should not marry them and you probably should not marry anyone who has been on an L DS mission. And what am I talking about? Um, I'm talking about someone who's still 0:16:58 - 0:17:20 in that stream, not someone who has opened their eyes and, and become more honest about what is increasingly obvious, you know, when I wrote that book Teaching for Doctrines and Commandments of Men. I believe it was published in 2014. Um That was very much a horizon kind of situation. People were just 0:17:20 - 0:17:48 starting to have tons of faith crises via information that was being published to the internet. And I saw this coming, you know, the Lord spoke to me about it. We did something about it. Um But here we are almost 10 years later, if you don't have abundant reasons to see serious cracks in this in L DS 0:17:47 - 0:18:11 church, like you've been living in some sort of cave and violently fighting off people who have come in to try to get you out of there. It's, it's a level of delusion that is uh you know, it is not any different than the FL DS people with the bonnets and whatever else in their compounds. That's the level 0:18:11 - 0:18:37 of delusion you live in. And um there will be and there should be people cascading down who grab on to things like this COVID business and wave it around in people's faces and maybe that's the thing that triggers them. But um you know, the gospel is like a net and that's really tight webbing and you're 0:18:37 - 0:00:00 catching the small fish, but I don't catch small fish. I catch big fish because as you read in Matthew 18 about the lost sheep people totally misunderstand that. But the more light you have, the more you have to spend your time on people with more light because you're the only one who can help them, 0:00:00 - 0:19:23 right? So, so those people are the only ones who can help these people and these people are the, and these people could help these people. But if these people did it, they'd have to stop helping these people because our resources are limited and this is something that I've been trying to tell you over 0:19:22 - 0:19:43 and over again with these videos. Um I'm not making these for most of the people that watch them. So if I, I don't know how many subscribers I have, it's, it's like 700 or something, but let's make the math easy. If there are 1000 subscribers, maybe these videos are just for two people. Maybe these videos 0:19:42 - 0:20:02 are just for one person and they're not even watching it now because of modern technology. All of you have access to this, right? The whole world does. They could click on this and watch it for now. It won't always be the case. It'll change depending on how old you are and what happens and what you do 0:20:02 - 0:20:24 about it, it'll change during your lifetime, but for now it's available to everyone. But, but the stuff I'm making, it's not for the little fish. Um Those people have always had enough to go off of and, and their changes are going to be miniscule anyway. And so if you're a father or mother and you have 0:20:24 - 0:20:47 a kid thinking about an L DS mission. I'm really glad that you're concerned about that. Um, and you should love your child because they're your child no matter what. But if that's the coal face in their spiritual path, that's, that's not something that I can, I can marshal very much concern about because 0:20:47 - 0:21:10 that's a person, especially if they're at that age, they're old enough. That's a person who's so flooded with willful delusion in their lives that there's not very much more that I can do for them than I already have. And if I did, I'd have to take away from the Children. Right. The, you know, the children's 0:21:10 - 0:21:35 bread, um I'd have to take away from the people that I'm sent to help and they're not them. Does that make sense? So, so you should use the tools that you have and take the time. I've said this before, that red book, the Teaching for Doctrines book that took me so long and cost me so much. I really wrote 0:21:35 - 0:22:04 that for one person in a, like a literal person. I know. And he never read it and I don't think he will ever read it. But you can't ask for someone to do even more than what they've done when they've done an incredible amount already. Um For people who are unwilling to use what's been done already, you 0:22:04 - 0:22:25 , you can't do that. Right. And this, we, if we had time, I could pull out examples from the life of Jesus and, and tell you all about this. So, um, that's what I have to say about this. I guess I don't spend time talking about the L DS church. There's no point. I've said what I need to, I've said what 0:22:25 - 0:22:48 I can and now it rolls on it, it, since 2014 or whenever that book was published, it's rolled on to the shoulders of other people and, you know, they're doing a pretty lousy job carrying the cause. But um the people they serve don't deserve any better. And that's the way it is. And so this is the way 0:22:48 - 0:23:08 everything flows out and it's the way it all works. You know, the, the prodigal son had to come to his own conclusions about the worth of eating with pigs before he could come back to the household of his father. He had taken himself away to a place where there was nothing the father could do to help 0:23:08 - 0:00:00 him. He had taken himself outside of that stream. And that's what people do too, with all of their decisions, with all of our decisions. We're coming closer to God or further away and someone who has marched so far a field that they're even remotely considering serving an L DS mission today. I mean, 0:00:00 - 0:23:53 just having to get the COVID shot during COVID, that is enough of a reason to say anyone going down this path has serious problems with logic, reason and honesty and common sense, they are diluted heavily. And do you think reason is going to reach any of these people? Probably not. I think the best thing 0:23:53 - 0:24:10 for someone who's considering an L DS mission to do is go on your L DS mission and have your life ruined and then maybe you'll wake up and become a more honest person and stop being such a doofus. That's my advice.