Understanding the Mormon Conversion Process

Episode 7

0:19 John Dehlin Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. I am one of your co hosts, Dr. John Delin, and I am eternally joined by my eternal companion.

0:34 Margi Dehlin Wow. Margie Delin.

0:37 John Dehlin And of course, we always have remote. Live from Wichita, Kansas, this is Natasha Helfer Parker.

0:44 Natasha Helfer I've covenanted to nothing eternal.

0:49 John Dehlin You did it one time.

0:51 Natasha Helfer Yes, I did, but not with you guys.

0:54 John Dehlin Okay. It is January 15, 2019. We are back broadcasting the weekly Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast episode. We've got several that we've released on iTunes and on YouTube. And we're back. We're going strong and we're going to do this for a year or two weekly. And we're going to do this until we release a book. Is that right?

1:22 Margi Dehlin Sounds like it.

1:23 Natasha Helfer That's the plan.

1:24 John Dehlin That's the plan, yes. So we're in the background slowly working on a book, and we're grateful for everyone who is supporting us. So thanks for joining us today. Let's begin discussing our mission, because we like to always start with our mission. Natasha, how would you feel about reading our mission really quick so that everyone who's new can know what we're trying to do here?

1:52 Natasha Helfer Okay, so our mission is to have positive, practical and personal tips for navigating a Mormon faith crisis or. And this is really important as well, we're also here to help those wishing to understand those in faith crisis. And we always give a shout out to Margie for coming up with positive, practical and personal. Because we love it.

2:18 John Dehlin That's right. So that's why we're here. And kind of our. The reason why we've named it, what we've named it is that as awful as a faith crisis can feel, as traumatic, as calamitous as it can sometimes be in your life after collectively, all of us working with thousands, if not tens of thousands of people over the past 20 years, what we found is that it can be an amazing gift and an important instigator to creating a big and a bold and a beautiful life unlike you've ever imagined. So we want to give people a glimmer of hope. And that's why our logo is shining and dripping with yellow.

3:05 Natasha Helfer We love yellow because it's sunlight and

3:09 John Dehlin life and that little green sprout. So that's what we're about. Thanks for joining us. And as always, each of us has a personal side or professional side outside of what we all do. Margie, why don't you tell us what you do professionally outside of this Podcast.

3:31 Margi Dehlin Sure. So I am a life transitions coach, and so I work with all things that transition life transitions tend to touch. So that's like relationships, grief. And you can kind of see a little bit of what I do on my website. It's called beautyinthenow.org and if someone wants

3:51 John Dehlin to get some coaching support from you, they can go there as well.

3:55 Margi Dehlin That's right. Everything's there.

3:56 John Dehlin All right, Natasha, tell us about your professional life outside of this podcast.

4:01 Natasha Helfer Sure. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, as well as a certified sex therapist therapist. I run an online practice, do several blogs and other podcasts as well. I run the Mormon mental health podcast, so lots of different things, and all of that can be found@Natashaparker.org so everything that I'm doing.

4:25 John Dehlin All right. And again, I have a coaching practice as well. I have a PhD in clinical counseling psychology. I. I run the Mormon stories podcast@mormonstories.org that's how I'm maybe most well known. But in addition, for couples or individuals that are really struggling in their faith crisis, mixed faith, marriage stuff, marriage stuff, LGBT stuff, existential stuff, whatever it is, I can support you. You can go to johndelinmail.com privatepractice and you can find out how to get my support. All right, so that's each of us, what we do. We do have an event coming up that we hope to fill. We may not fill it, but, Natasha, why don't you tell us about that event that we have coming up if there's an interest or need.

5:21 Natasha Helfer Yeah. So we have an intensive couples retreat. We've done a lot of kind of overall general retreats, the three of us together, in the past. And usually at these events, we have people come up to us and say, you know, this is also very helpful, but we would, you know, really like to dive even deeper into some of these things that are affecting our marriage and our relationship in particular. So we came up with the weekend after Valentine's Day because we thought that would be a nice time for a couple to treat themselves to an intense retreat where you would have access to the three of us. And we're only making space for six couples because we do want it to be intensive and very personalized to your situations. And it's Friday through Sunday, and all of that information can be found on the events page if you're interested in registering. We probably do need to hear from you, you know, before too long, as far as, you know, going right into May, that first week of February, because if so we need to make travel arrangements for me to come out and also venue arrangements and all those things that we want to make it really comfortable for everybody who wants to attend. So please consider that this retreat is in particularly meant for those who are, in a sense, transitioning together. Not everybody transitions necessarily on the same timeline, but if you're part of a marriage where you're transitioning somewhat together in your Mormonism, there can be a lot of things that you're still needing to navigate even though you're on the same page. And we're planning to do a similar one in the fall. That's for mixed faith marriage couples, where we'll do kind of the same intensive thing for six couples. They're in a mixed faith relationship where one is transitioning and one is not. So, yeah, that's the info, I think.

7:06 John Dehlin All right, thank you. We want to do a shout out to several new donors. So over the Christmas break and the past week or so, we've had several people sign up as monthly donors to this podcast, the Gift of the Faith Crisis. I think I counted. We have 12 now. So we've gone from just one or two to 12. And some of the new donors include Timothy, Jennifer, Adam, Michelle, Jasmine, Allison and Amber.

7:36 Margi Dehlin Welcome and thank you.

7:38 John Dehlin If I forgot anyone, let me know and we'll shout out to you next time. But we don't do this podcast for the money. But I think at least Margie and Natasha deserve to be paid for this work. And so, and I don't mean to exclude myself, but I think that you guys deserve that. And so I want to make sure that happens. So don't do it for me. But if you want to support Natasha and Margie in this work, if I have to, I'll give them all the proceeds because they're blessings to this community and they deserve compensation for their time.

8:17 Natasha Helfer We are, I think, Equal Opportunity association here. So we want all of us to be paid for our time. We're all bringing, I think, a lot of value to this and we all have different areas of expertise that we bring to the equation. So I think we're always in that kind of space, especially in mental health and in mental coaching and health life coaching, where it's difficult. You're wanting to help and all of us want to help and be super generous in that regard. And at the same time, it's our lifestyle and it's what we depend on to kind of live. So, yeah, we hope if you find value in this, that you would associate that with some type of financial equation in your mind what that means for you.

9:05 John Dehlin And to do that, you can go to mormonfaithcrisis.com and you can at the top right click on the donation button and $10 a month, you know, 25 bucks a month, hundred bucks a month, whatever you can afford makes this all possible. And that reminds me, for some reason I didn't have Anthony on my list. Anthony has joined us. Anthony is also a new donor and he's a brilliant friend who has a lot of cool things to say about the faith crisis. He's spoken in Sunstone and other places. So shout out to Anthony Miller and we've incorporated a few of his comments that he wrote earlier into this episode. So thanks to Anthony as well for his very generous support.

9:48 Margi Dehlin Yep, absolutely. Thank you.

9:49 John Dehlin Okay, we always do this what's Working section where we each share something that we're doing in our lives that's helping us heal and grow as humans. I'll start this time. What I have Rediscovered so back when I lived in Seattle, Washington, working for Microsoft prior to my faith crisis and during, I loved audiobooks. So I'd go to the local was it Cook County Library System and I would check out audio tapes and CDs and listen to them. And I consumed a lot of books that way. As soon as I moved and discovered podcasts, I kind of lost my mojo for audiobooks because I was just always consuming podcasts. But there are a lot of I need to feed my brain. Feeding my brain not only makes me smarter, it also makes me motivated for life. It gets me excited about life, about ideas, and it does well for my tendency to get a little bit moody or depressed. It just gets me excited learning new ideas. So I recently got an Audible account and I had a coach that I go to who recommended a shout out to Ivan. He recommended Rich Dad, Poor dad, which is a book by Robert Kiyosaki, and that was great. And now I'm listening to Esther Perel's State of Affairs, which is a book about affairs because I have clients who are in affairs and or have experienced affairs or trying to heal from affairs. And Natasha, I'm assuming you do a lot of affair work as well. Is that true?

11:29 Natasha Helfer That is true. And I love Esther Perel's book as well. It's a really good resource.

11:33 John Dehlin Yeah. So I'm listening to that book whenever I'm in the car, whenever I'm exercising. I'm probably listening to that book until I'm done with it. And so I Audiobooks are working for me.

11:44 Margi Dehlin That's so great.

11:45 John Dehlin What's working for you, sweetie?

11:47 Margi Dehlin So what's working for me lately is I go to yoga class locally and I really love this yoga class in that the makeup of the class, I think is really unique in that I would say probably 90 to 95% of the people in my class with me are over the age of six. And so my daughter and I go together. But it's just this. It's really inspiring and it's lovely yoga. And I'm really liking yoga as sort of, oh, an addition to winter because I think I get naturally kind of tight and hunched over in the cold. I just naturally sort of brace for the colder temperatures. And so it's a great way to kind of work out the kinks. And it's good for my mind. It's like mind, body, social, emotional. It's just beautiful, all the things wrapped into one. All right, working for me.

12:46 John Dehlin What's working for you, Natasha?

12:48 Natasha Helfer Well, so what I was thinking about is in my more perfectionistic, I guess, observance of my religious tradition of Mormonism, I would have these checklists that we're also probably familiar with, like daily scripture study and family prayer and home evening and all these different things that you're supposed to do, kind of like personally and also with your family. And although a lot of those things would bring me a lot of sense of peace, it also would bring me a great deal of shame and guilt if I didn't do them as often as I thought. Or, you know, I always felt like I was letting my family down. So I really tried to, you know, in my own kind of thinking through my relationship with Mormonism. And some of the things that we talk about in these transition podcasts is, you know, take out of the cart what isn't good, but keep in the cart what is. And for me, one of the ways I've done this is that I really find inspirational quotes or scripture study helpful and inspiring and uplifting when I like the scriptures and when I like the quotes. And so I've tried to set up a weekly reminder. So once a week I send out a family text where all of my immediate family is involved. And I just send them either like, you know, these photographs where you can find nice inspirational quotes, or I just write something myself. And that's been a nice way for me to still incorporate something that's meaningful in my life, but in a much more relaxed and non judgment, non shamey way. And as far as I can tell, my family doesn't mind me doing that. And Sometimes it engenders conversation and sometimes nobody replies, and that's fine. But it helps me feel like I'm connecting with them in kind of a spiritual way once a week.

14:38 Margi Dehlin I love that idea.

14:39 John Dehlin Love it.

14:40 Natasha Helfer Can I say you can.

14:43 Margi Dehlin Focusing on the positive. And I do think there's something very. It can be very counter brain, much like gratitude is counter brain. You know, how our brain works. So I love that.

14:56 Natasha Helfer Thanks.

14:57 Margi Dehlin Yeah,

14:59 John Dehlin I thought about adding a new section to this intro as if. It's as if we need more. But I like this idea of community shout outs, of just us mentioning people in the community that are doing really good things in the progressive and post Mormon community. And Natasha and Margie, I invite you to think about people for future episodes we can give shout outs to. But today I'm gonna give a shout out to Leah and Cody Young.

15:25 Margi Dehlin Oh, this is a mutual shout out.

15:27 John Dehlin And Brinley. Yeah, so go ahead.

15:31 Margi Dehlin No, for sure. I'm just saying.

15:33 John Dehlin Yeah. So I flew to Columbus, Ohio last week and interviewed both Dan Vogel, Mormon historian, and this family, Leah and Cody Young and their daughter Brinley. And it's an amazing interview where they talk about their faith crisis. What was groundbreaking about it for Mormon Stories podcast was that Brinley, their 15 year old daughter, participated in the interview. And it's the first time we've ever had a faith crisis story told from the perspective of a teenager, 15 year old. And she was just brilliant and lovely and thoughtful and smart. But that's not why I'm giving them a shout out. I'm giving them a shout out because they were so passionate after attending one of our retreats. And you were there, the Houston retreat, Natasha. They were so passionate about community that they started a Columbus Mormon transitions community. And we had a get together. We ate tacos one of the nights on Wednesday night and just had like 30 people there, all from the surrounding Columbus progressive and post Mormon community. It was just brilliant. That sort of thing only happens when community members are interested to do their part. And Leah and Cody have done that and they're helping people find friendship and community and support, which is a really essential part of a faith crisis. So I just want to give them a shout out.

16:58 Margi Dehlin Yeah, absolutely.

17:00 John Dehlin They deserve it.

17:01 Margi Dehlin They do.

17:02 John Dehlin All right, so let's jump into today's episode because there's a lot we want to cover. So so far we have covered topics like, you know, we've tried to give an intro, we've tried to talk about making peace with Mormonism, we've talked about all the Good things that we've appreciated and valued in our faith crisis. And then we've also talked about what were the causes of our faith crisis. And those are all kind of structured, important components in the flow that we hope it makes sense for people listening to the podcast and processing their experiences. But also we hope that this will be kind of the general flow that ends up in our book. So as we try and think about this flow in this process, the next thing that came to my mind was a discussion about understanding the conversion and the deconversion process. Because, you know, that's fundamental to pretty much any religious worldview, and especially to an orthodox religious worldview. Religions rely on conversion. And this is a little bit tricky in the Mormon context, because so many Mormons nowadays were born and raised Mormon. And so a lot of Mormons, really, they don't think about their conversion. They just kind of. It kind of just happened. They kind of just were born in the covenant, were raised in primary, became teenagers, and then hurried off to the mission, or got married in the temple, or went to BYU and then started their adult life. And of course, there was this time where they said, either I've always had a testimony, or, well, I've always been on borrowed light from my parents, but at some point I had to gain a testimony of my own. And then each person kind of goes through whatever their conversion process is, reading the Book of Mormon or praying or going to youth conference or EFY or whatever that thing is, and then at some point, they gain a testimony of their own. And from that point on, they're kind of usually committed and faithful until they're not. And that's the conversion process. And of course, there's a derivative of this, which is the Mormon convert, someone who joins as a teen or as an adult, and they have some conversion experience. My point is, if you're going to understand your faith crisis, number one, if you're going to process what you've been through, you need to understand how you got to the convert stage. And then secondary to that is, you know, in addition to understanding where you've been, you know, once you go through a faith crisis and everything falls apart, you have to figure out where you want to go. And it's very easy for us to fall into traps that aren't healthy or useful. In other words, we can trade one authority for another authority. We can trade one structure for another. We can trade one set of orthodoxy for another. And if we're not careful, we can have false prophets fool us, we can have unhealthy organizations, unhealthy organizations pull us in. Even businesses can do that. Not just religions, podcasters and books and cultural heroes. Whoever it is, we can kind of fall prey to some patterns that maybe not be healthiest for us if we're not mindful about how conversion happens. And then finally to kind of round that out, a really important part that all of you are interested in as progressive or post Mormons is communicating with orthodox family and friends. And what I've discovered, and Natasha and I and Margie have led retreats about this. Understanding the conversion process helps us communicate more effectively with orthodox family and friends and misunderstanding what it is that keeps people faithful to an orthodox religious mindset. If we don't understand the factors that keep people faithful to that mindset, then we communicate with them not only in ways that aren't positive in terms of healthy communication, we actually can undermine the intimacy that is required for us to have healthy communication. And so understanding conversion and deconversion is useful on so many levels. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And we want to invite you listeners. We have several people joining us through Facebook Live. We want to invite listeners to please join us, because when listeners share their perspective on this live episode, it makes it more interactive and it makes it more interesting. Okay, so, Natasha, do you have anything you want to add as sort of the introduction to this episode?

22:59 Natasha Helfer I don't think so. I do think that it's just important to kind of repeat that the whole process of understanding this is to better understand ourselves and to better understand others that we're wanting to stay in connection with. And I hope a lot of the principles that we're really talking about today, I think you're going to find out, are not that Mormon necessarily. In other words, they're kind of more about human interactions, human processes, developmental processes. And one thing that I hope that we'll talk about a little bit too, as a conjunction to this is tribal dynamics, you know, how we interact as groups of people as well. So these are things that. And theories that have been talked about, regardless of religion, politics and groupings. They just kind of seem to be somewhat universal. Now, there's unique aspects that I think Mormons bring to the table in this regard, and we'll definitely kind of sort through some of those. But in general, these are human dynamics.

23:59 John Dehlin I love it. Do you want to add anything, sweetie?

24:02 Margi Dehlin I think probably not adding, but I would probably just develop or highlight this idea, as you mentioned, kind of processing what you've been through. Also I really like the idea of understanding conversion and deconversion as a way of self understanding. Right. Because as you kind of reflect on the things that brought you and really attracted you to religion and kept you there, you get a piece of yourself. You get to see kind of what you truly connect with and what you value. And then the same on the deconversion side, it highlights those parts of yourselves that I think can point to values, it can point to what you resonate with in life. And those are really, really key things, I think, to, you know, navigating your life here and building, you know, another life, if you will, or a new life after the fact.

25:07 John Dehlin So I love it. So thanks to you both. Shout out to Casey. Casey is also one of our donors and we're grateful for him. Casey writes one of the hardest parts of a faith transition is how to reconcile and interpret the spiritual faith promoting experiences that, that led to our conversion. And we are going to be digging into that. Casey. So many of us had these experiences that felt very profound, that felt moving, that felt life changing. Almost like Saul on the road to Damascus or Alma the Younger or Joseph Smith for that matter. And we need a woman in there. Can anyone name a female conversion story that we learn about in the scriptures?

25:54 Natasha Helfer Uh, oh, well, in some ways isn't Esther one of them?

25:58 John Dehlin Okay, tell us about Esther.

26:01 Natasha Helfer Oh, now you're like gonna actually make me. You didn't say the actual story.

26:05 Margi Dehlin We'll leave it at Esther.

26:06 John Dehlin All right, Esther. Yeah, we gotta have a woman mentioned.

26:12 Natasha Helfer Yeah, but she's having to like be part of a whole other culture and family as an in law and that they were different religions, but it was just, you know, she had to do a lot of kind of, I think, self awareness and conversion to her own principles and ideas and thoughts about what she was going to be about in life for sure.

26:32 John Dehlin Thank you. Thank you for. Thank you for that. Natasha, our listener, Jamie writes Lamoni's wife. Thank you, Jamie, for giving us that from the Book of Mormon. I'm just gonna have to say how pathetic it is that our scriptures don't provide us with more named females as heroines. But it looks like Lamoni's wife is the best we could do for the Book of Mormon. I'm sure Sariah had. I think there's only five women named in the Book of Mormon, if I'm right about that, five or six. And so we don't have a lot of examples. But thanks, Jamie, for Lamoni's wife. All right, so good. So let's Talk about this. Let's talk about understanding the conversion and the deconversion process. What I want to do as we begin is make a point that, Natasha, we often make in our presentations. And for those of you who are watching, actually going to share the screen just to kind of make this point. And what I am, what I'm going to show, hopefully it shows on the screen, is this image that comes from a book called the Righteous Mind. And the author's Jonathan Haidt. It's pronounced Haidt, but it's H A I D T books, the Righteous Mind. And basically the point he makes in the book is he likens the different two major parts of our brain to a rider and an elephant. The elephant, the larger, the bigger, the more strong component of our brain is what I like to refer to as the amygdala, the emotional center. It's housed literally in the center of the brain. The brain stem kind of plugs in and goes through the amygdala. And this is where we experience our emotions, or at least primarily. It is also known as the fight or flight center or system in the brain. What's meant by that is that when we're walking along the savannah and we hear the rustling in the bush and we're fearful that a lion, you know, we maybe are about to become lion food, the amygdala kicks in and it literally starts your heart pumping fast. It literally pumps, you know, endorphins or chemicals through your veins that get your muscles ready. It actually redirects blood from your brain to other parts, the extremities, your arms and your legs. It gets your lungs pumping, your breathing. And the idea is to give you the energy and the oxygen and everything, the chemicals you need to either fight that lion to save your life or run away from the lion or climb the tree or whatever you have to do to protect your loved ones, to protect yourself and to survive. That's the emotional center, the amygdala, and that's what Jonathan Haidt refers to as the elephant. The other part of your brain is the cerebral frontal cortex. It's the part of your brain that's literally in your forehead area. It's referred to as the executive center, as the emotion center. It's your logical brain. It's your rational brain. And that is a very. It's evolved evolutionarily later than the amygdala. In other words, the outer parts of your brain are the newer components evolutionarily. And so if you go back a million years or 500 million years, whatever our Ancestors were, if you're okay with the evolutionary process, whatever our ancestors were as primates or as, you know, what are proto primates, whatever it was, they had a brain that was less evolved. And layers of the brain have been added over time. And this cerebral frontal cortex was added last. It's the newest developing part of our brain. And again, it's the thought process, it's the reason, it's the ration rationality, it's the executive functioning. And so Jonathan Haidt compares that part of a brain to this rider that's sitting on top of the elephant. And the main point that he's trying to make that I think is novel to many of us who think we're rational creatures because so many of us are like, well, I'm not emotional, I'm rational, I'm governed by reason, I'm governed by logic, I'm a logical being. And it's fine if we think that that's primarily what rules us. Oftentimes it's more men that like to say, I'm the rational one. And it's women who go, oh, I'm more emotional. And that's of course false.

31:43 Margi Dehlin Nice voices, by the way.

31:46 John Dehlin Natasha, do you want to. I'm really enjoying those. Why are you laughing, Natasha?

31:51 Natasha Helfer No, those are all very stereotypically accurate

31:57 John Dehlin and damaging.

31:59 Natasha Helfer But to your point, this is also, I would say, an American culture issue. This is not necessarily the case globally, but I think, you know, the American masculinity model, which actually the APA just came out and very interesting position statement on that shows how we really downplay emotion for men even though men and women tend to be equally emotional. And I always say that, you know, you can go to any CEO meeting with a bunch of men in it and see a lot of emotion. You can see a lot of emotion in our politics these days, you can see a lot of emotion, but we tend to downgrade emotion because we tend to correlate that with women in our American society and see that as less than. And both emotion and logic need to be working in partnership to make actually good decision making skills. If you have either too much logic or too much emotion, that's when you can dysregulate.

32:54 John Dehlin That's right. So even though stereotypically we tend to think one way or another, the truth is, unless our brain is broken, we are both logical and emotional creatures at different times. But the question is, what are we the Jonathan Heights wanting to answer? And one of our listeners, Judy Judkins, shout out to Judy, she tells us she's reading Jonathan Heights, the Righteous Mind. Right. Now, what Jonathan Haidt's trying to answer is the question of what are we primarily, when push comes to shove and the rubber meets the road, you know, who wins? The reason or the emotion? And the reason why he has provided this idea of the elephant and the rider is he likes to make the argument that we are primarily emotional creatures, that reason and logic is actually a bit more of a secondary emotion. And then when push comes to chop, just like if the elephant and the rider both got scared, who would win? And the answer is, who would win? Margie? If the elephant and the rider both got scared and they wanted to go in different directions, which direction are they going?

34:14 Margi Dehlin In the elephant's direction.

34:16 John Dehlin Right? Yeah, because the elephant is just way stronger. And that's what Jonathan Haidt is trying to say in his book. He basically makes the argument that we are primarily, we arrive at our conclusions primarily on an emotional basis, at an emotional level. And then if logic or reason is to be involved at all, we oftentimes bring logic in later or reason in later to justify the decisions that we arrived at emotionally. And they're able to actually do brain scans to show that when we've got a decision to make and there's a rational part of the brain and a logical part of the brain that's involved in making the decision, as I remember, they can actually see the emotional brain firing prior to the logical brain in sort of a sequence that shows that the logic comes after as a way to justify. And we all, I think, can relate to this idea of how this happens. And it's probably best portrayed in a Mormon context from the sort of orthodox apologetic point of view versus the liberal progressive post Mormon point of view. Because if we know anything about confirmation bias, which is another concept in psychology, you know, we can be presented with evidence, but we are either going to grasp and cling to the evidence if it supports our emotion based worldview, or we're going to reject and throw away any evidence that doesn't support our emotional worldview. And that's just one of many instances of confirmation bias where you can present this information. The CES letter, for example, which many progressive and post Mormons stumble upon. They can read the CES letter, and because they're primed in certain ways emotionally, they're loving every minute of it and absorbing it and reading it as if it's a soulmate, you know, but you can share that same CES letter with someone who's an orthodox believer and they can read that and go, oh, my gosh, the CES letter just strengthens my orthodox testimony. It just confirms to me that the church is true. And that's because I'm making the argument that Jonathan Haidt also makes that primarily, if we had to pick at our center, at our core, we're emotional beings. Now, Margie, I'm going to come to you in a second. Natasha, do you want to disagree with that? Agree with it. Add any color. Anything you want to say about that?

36:58 Margi Dehlin Can I just add a thought I had? I don't know if it's right, but one thought I was thinking about was, do you think that's most true in situations where you have, you know, emotions come up for you, like fear or so, like, if you're talking about your children, if you're talking about. So where survival actually is at the core, on some level, that's perceived survival. It could be psychological survival. But if you're dealing with things that have very little, I don't know, relevance, or they're more abstract, or do you think that could change a little bit, that interplay?

37:37 John Dehlin Are you saying the stronger the emotion is kind of tied to the subject

37:40 Margi Dehlin that you're talking about or that you're,

37:42 John Dehlin you know, that if you're talking about some subject, like, you know, whether or not this rock is. Is nice, you know, if we're. Neither of us are emotionally charged.

37:52 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

37:53 John Dehlin Maybe that maximizes our ability to be analytical, to maybe be.

37:56 Margi Dehlin Yeah. More on the rider side than the elephant side. But in those topics or areas of our lives where we actually have a survival component, a large fear component, then we get triggered into that amygdala.

38:09 John Dehlin Fear or joy or love or compassion or sensitivity. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. Natasha, what would you add?

38:23 Natasha Helfer So I think just the point of this is for all of us to take a, you know, humble pie piece, because we like to think that we're in control. We like to think that we're super, you know, smart and think through a lot of our things logically. I think that's a very natural way to think about ourselves. And yet, just through the study of social science and psychology, we find more and more that we are hugely impacted by what I would call subconscious or even unconscious forces that then lead to kind of involuntary reactions. The fight, flight, freeze response is one that most people have heard about, and that's very much an involuntary process. You know, you can, in nanoseconds, get to a point where your heart rate is up, your eyes are dilated, you know, your. Your IQ is lowered. Believe it or not, when you're in that state. State, you become actually stupider when you're feeling threatened, which can help you with running away from a lion, but it doesn't help you in debating the CES letter when your IQ is lowered. I think it's just a reminder for us to understand that we are affected by our biology, our genetics, past trauma, our environmental forces, mental health considerations, how our brains are wired, extrovert ism, introvertism, so many things that really are just such a huge component of who we are to begin with that we have very little to no control over. And yet we're trying to navigate a life where we feel like we're totally in control and we can make all these choices and decisions on our own. And why it's so easy to fall into that kind of narrative of like, well, I have figured this out, and if I figured this out with this, logical and smart as I am, why can't everybody else figure it out the same way? Like, that doesn't make any sense. And yet you take any passage, religious scripture, political statement, quote, and people have very different reactions and responses. Given a myriad. I mean, we could list probably 30 different factors and traits that go into who we are as human beings. So I think this model that John's talking about really nicely kind of simplifies some of these ideas in a way that is very, you know, you can consume it easily.

40:49 John Dehlin Love it. Okay, so why are we talking about that? Let's now kind of go back to our discussion a bit about the faith crisis, what we want people to do, to think about their own conversion for a second. And again, sometimes Mormons haven't really thought about this. And what I think it'd be fun to do is to go around the room and have each of us share our own personal conversion. And if we had one, or if we had multiple, or if we had sort of levels or moments of conversion, what was it? And so, Natasha, why don't you go first? Did you at some point feel like you were an orthodox, devout Mormon? And if so, can you pinpoint a moment or moments that contributed and whatever factors that contributed to that conversion for you?

41:52 Margi Dehlin Sure. Yes.

41:53 Natasha Helfer I absolutely would have considered myself a very believing, very orthodox Mormon member, wanting to do all the things that I'm supposed to do and be righteous and follow the life. Right. And so I would definitely put myself in that category. I was one that always felt a little bit like I wasn't quite having some of the experiences that other people were reporting, like in testimony Meeting. And it's interesting that my. A very spiritual experience I had in the temple as a young woman when I went for baptisms and things of that nature for the dead, was actually a spiritual experience about how I didn't have to be spiritual in the same ways as everybody else was showing up. So I was reading some type. I think it was the ensign, or maybe it was the new era for the kids, for the teenagers in the temple room, where you're kind of allowed to meditate for a while. The chapel, I guess, is what it was called. And I had this article in there about how we're all given different gifts, and for some people is their gift to know, to have that knowledge. You know, that when people got up and shared their testimonies and said, I know that this is true, and I always felt like, I want to think it's true. I think it is true. But I'd never had, like, some of those experiences that people talked about where the heavens were opened and they just knew and everything in their body just responded to, like Moroni's promise, you know, reading the Book of Mormon, for example, I never had something like that.

43:24 Margi Dehlin So.

43:24 Natasha Helfer So then the next paragraph talked a little bit about. And for some, the gift is to kind of rely on the testimony of these other people who know. And I was like, wow, you know, I hadn't never thought about that as a gift. And that moment, for me, I had a very spiritual experience. I felt very validated. I felt very listened to by heavenly parents. I felt seen. I felt like my experience in Mormonism mattered, too. And it didn't have to look like that classic traditional testimony for my testimony to still be of worth and of value to me. So that was kind of a moment I remember amongst others that were spiritually important to me.

44:07 John Dehlin And so you, in your narrative, sort of of your testimony, you would have sort of added that that experience in as like some pinnacle that was like, boom. That was this experience that solidified my testimony. Is that sort of right?

44:25 Natasha Helfer Yes, sort of. Except for I never felt like it was solidified. So I felt it was like, as a testimony that it was okay for my testimony to not be solidified. And it was. So it was kind of this, like, it's okay to go about your Mormonism in a slightly not rigid way like that, you know, where I felt like I had to have that type of experience or I was a subpar Mormon per se, but.

44:50 John Dehlin But it was accompanied with some type of flow or energy or, you know, warm fuzzies.

44:58 Natasha Helfer Yes, all the feelings you could describe,

45:01 John Dehlin how did that manifest for you?

45:03 Natasha Helfer Oh, it felt comforting. It felt like I said, I felt heard, I felt validated, I felt like I mattered. I felt like I wasn't necessarily subpar anymore. So it made me feel more confident in my Mormonism.

45:17 John Dehlin Did you, like, tingle in your back going down?

45:20 Natasha Helfer Yeah, for me, those feelings have always, you know, followed kind of this, like, you know, the hair's kind of on my. On my arms and a warm sensation all in my chest area that kind of creeps its way up and flushes my face and oftentimes emotion, like I might tear up in those moments. Just a feeling, you know, it's a very overwhelming kind of feeling that I can feel. And I felt those things, you know, that for me was spirituality. But I've felt those things outside of, like religious. You know, I felt that with songs or poetry or different types. I mean, it wasn't always in a religious setting that I'd have those feelings. But I definitely correlated all of that to my quote unquote, truth or testimony.

46:08 John Dehlin Exactly. And did you come up with that idea, like, you know, you could have had those feelings and thought, oh, that was a really good burrito that I just ate. Right. But you. That's not the association you made when you had those feelings. You associated it with the church being true or good. And I would just ask, do you remember if at any point you were taught to make that association?

46:35 Natasha Helfer I was absolutely taught to make that association. Although I don't think Mormonism is the only place place that taught me or that we are taught to make associations with our feelings. And so I just want to make sure that we're very clear about that. But I was absolutely taught that in Mormonism, and I was seeking those experiences because Mormonism encouraged me to have experiences where my emotions would match my truth. Now, you know, if I listen to a sonata that I felt that same way, I still would have seen that as truth. Like, this is beautiful. This is a good report. This is lovely. This is something of worth in my life. You know, I don't think you need to be Mormon or not Mormon to have that correlation be there. But Mormonism, I think, puts it on steroids.

47:22 John Dehlin Yeah, I remember the seminary scripture mastery verse that I memorized and that I used on my mission. It came in Galatians in the New Testament, Galatians 5, 22 and 23. I don't have the King James version, but I have the New international version. And it says, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, Peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against such things, there is no law. And as missionaries, we would sit down with these people, talk to them about Jesus, talk to them about a loving heavenly father, talk to them about families being forever. And if I had to talk about the mechanistic process goal of the missionary discussions, and I don't think the church would hide this, it was to get them to feel those warm, fuzzy, tingly feelings that you just described, Natasha, and then to interpret it for them and to say, see that thing you're feeling right there? Do you feel it? That's the Holy Ghost. That's the member of the Godhead, whose responsibility is to bear witness the truth. And so we would literally interpret it for them and say those feelings, the warm fuzzy feelings you're having about your family, about eternal families, heaven, God, whatever, a loving Savior that atones for your sins. That means the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the one true church upon the earth, which means that Gordon B. Hinckley is a prophet of God, which means that the Book of Mormon is true. And we had this big old heaping list. It means that you should get baptized. It means you should get confirmed, means you should get married in the. You know. And all of a sudden, we add a lot to those tingly feelings, don't we?

49:13 Natasha Helfer Yes, and I would agree with that. I just want to point out that we're not the only entity that does that.

49:20 John Dehlin You made that point. And I'm not trying to say that we are right, but I'm saying.

49:24 Natasha Helfer Yeah, and I totally agree with you.

49:26 Margi Dehlin It does.

49:27 Natasha Helfer Cut. It's a very either or approach. If this is true, it's a very equal equational approach. If this one thing is felt over here, then it has to mean all these other things are tied to it. And. And that's where I think it becomes very complicated for people when this one thing is very helpful and spiritual and wonderful, and then yet some of these other things along the way are not right. And so then you start that cognitive dissonance that you mentioned, Prior.

49:55 John Dehlin Yeah, I'm not. And then again, we. We liked your reminder, Natasha, that this podcast is for believers and non believers. This is not a condemnation or even a negation or a negative deconstruction of people's sacred conversion experiences. But it's important that we understand just how things are happening, how the missionary process works, how the conversion process works. And it's undeniable that this is kind of what's going on now. That doesn't mean people's experiences aren't divine. If you interpret it that way. That doesn't mean they're not real. That doesn't mean they're not important. But what's important is to understand that this is the context that so many of us, you know, constitute or come to understand our faith. And by the way, that doesn't mean that once you lose your faith, these experiences that are often sacred have to be thrown out as meaningless. And we can talk about that maybe in another episode, but I just want to make sure everyone knows that just because we're talking about this doesn't mean we're poo pooing or trashing these sacred experiences. We're just trying to understand it.

51:13 Natasha Helfer When I talk about this in workshops, I really talk about kind of taking off my Mormon hat. And it's just what we're really talking about is social science. And that these are. This is how in Mormon culture we correlate different experiences. And that's kind of the narrative and the script that we're offered. So if I was going to go to any social scientists out there who knew enough about Mormonism to kind of give an opinion, these are the things that they would say, just like you can talk about American culture or, you know, Italian culture or Mormon culture, Jewish culture, like, there's narratives and scripts that each culture has. And I think you've pointed out very well that in the conversion process, especially through missionaries, this is. This is the narrative. This is what we do. And we just. It is what it is. It's not bad or good. It's just what the narrative and script is. And we're all affected by that in. In different ways. So I'm just adding more kind of ways to frame what the same thing I think we're all saying.

52:17 John Dehlin Yeah, another. Another really important term in this discussion, for those who aren't familiar, is epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know things. And talking about these sorts of things is an attempt to explore how we know or how we think we know things. Because oftentimes, and this is just true in any aspect of life, we think we know something. When we really don't. We say, I mean, memory is faulty. People experience things in different ways. We grow and mature in our understanding. We explain things sometimes with limited understanding, but in a billion cases throughout our lives, we'll say we know something when we don't know it. And sometimes the opposite of what we think we know is true.

53:06 Margi Dehlin There's a TED talk about that which one? I'll have to look it up. But it's something about what it feels like when we know. And the whole point of it is like it feels like the same thing as when we actually don't know. Right.

53:21 John Dehlin And one of our listeners, Christine Nielsen Okey, reminds us of a really good book that's a resource. It's called Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. But that's one of many books that you can reference on this topic. So and of course, in addition to that, Ephesians or that Galatians scripture that I read, there's also the scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants about Joseph Smith, and he's encouraging us to study that in our mind. And if we know it's, you know, and then ask the Lord if it's not true. And if it's true, the Lord will cause a burning in the bosom to come into our hearts, which is this enrichment or this enlargement of the soul. It's this sense of flow of euphoria. And then, of course, Moroni 10:4 also talks about getting a witness as well through the same sort of setup. And so this is sort of how Mormonism teaches us to gain a testimony, and it's something we should all be aware of. Now, I'm going to come back to you in a second, Natasha. Margie, did you have a TED Talk you wanted to share with people?

54:38 Margi Dehlin Sorry. So the TED Talk that I was referencing earlier is Kathryn Schultz, and it's titled On Being Wrong.

54:46 John Dehlin Yeah. And so we should paste all these into the, into the feed so that people can reference these because these will all be useful. Now, Natasha, let's go back to your story and then we'll go to Margie's. You mentioned this, you sort of mentioned your testimony as and I'm setting up a straw man because I know it's more complicated than this. But when you talked about your, you talked about this moment where you were struggling and thinking about something, and so you were reading something and then all of a sudden you were kind of praying or in thought, and then you got some sort of really important feeling. And that's all part of your experience, and that's all part of all of our experiences. What it doesn't account for are all the other major factors that likely contributed to your testimony. So I'm going to just go through a couple on our list, and I'm going to ask you whether these things were also factors. The first factor that we talk about is familial. Most people who convert to a religion or who are orthodox in a religion happen to be raised or born into that religion or raised in that religion. In other words, if Natasha, with the same DNA, the same year, you know, the same you. If you happen to be born in India to Indian Hindu parents, right. Chances are you wouldn't have. At whatever age. What age were you when you had that?

56:19 Natasha Helfer Like 15 or so?

56:20 John Dehlin Chances are at age 15, you wouldn't have been sitting somewhere in, you know, Mumbai studying a Book of Mormon or Doctrine and Covenants or whatever it was, and having this emotional awakening that the Mormon church was true. Chances are you would have been having that. You would have been having some other experience probably related to Hindu or Islam, that would have been testifying of whatever religious understanding your family had bestowed upon you. Is that fair, Natasha, or would you reject that?

56:57 Natasha Helfer I think that's absolutely fair. I think I would have had emotional, spiritual experiences kind of asking similar questions, maybe even, or at least questions of the same, under the same umbrella, and I would have been having them through the narrative and script offered to me by that culture. You know, my parents converted to Mormonism when I was about 5. I remember the missionaries coming to our home. I remember the positive experiences we had with those. With those young men. I remember the meaning and the, you know, kind of intellectual and emotional aspects of my fought, my father's and my mother's conversion. And those were narratives that started becoming very important in our immediate family at that time. And, yeah, it was off to the racist. So, absolutely, this is what I mean by it's so important to make that tribal connection that we are members of tribes and we only survive in tribes. We are not able to survive in isolation. That has been proven over and over again. Even with food and water, we cannot thrive and survive in isolation. And so part of learning how to survive is acclimating to the narrative and the culture and the scripts of those around you. And we all do this. And this is why I take a little bit of, you know, when people start talking about indoctrination and brainwashing and these kind of terms that tend to be somewhat problematic or provocative for believers, I think you don't escape really those types of dynamics, regardless of the homes and cultures that you're a part of now, they can be more rigid or flexible. So systems do differ in how differentiated they are, but they all provide some level of an essence indoctrination to the beliefs, the scripts, the narratives that that culture and family system subscribe to totally.

58:59 John Dehlin And you've introduced the second pillar that we're going to get to in a second. You introduced the social pillar, the tribal one, and we're going to get to that for sure. But I just want to make sure you just said it, that your parents had converted to the church. I imagine. As a kid, did you feel like it would have meant a lot to your parents for you to have a testimony?

59:21 Natasha Helfer Oh, yeah, for sure. I don't. I don't know that we. I mean, we ended up being kind of a part active, inactive family, where I think in some convert families that can be a little bit different of a dynamic than in families where you've been invested for generations. You know, like some of those who've been from pioneer stock. We didn't have that much investment in the story of Mormonism, but I think especially when I was younger, yeah, it was very much a part of our family identity. And we didn't really have some of those struggles until, you know, some of my siblings were in college or so. And so in that moment, we were a military family. We were moving around. Mormonism was a family of its own. That it offered us a lot of structure, a lot of comfort, a lot of stability, and along with these spiritual experiences that we're all part of this new narrative in our lives that was very meaningful and helpful in many ways.

1:00:21 John Dehlin And so as that teen kid, do you think what would the parental influence have been on you, feeling like you wanted to arrive at that testimony? You would just. Without talking about any other factor, how might your parents have influenced your desire to and your ultimate arrival at that conclusion?

1:00:46 Natasha Helfer Well, I think that they influenced me from the beginning and they were very proud of me. What I do want to say, though, and this is kind of interesting because for me it became quickly. It wasn't my parents who were the people I was looking for approval for from. It was really the church leadership.

1:01:04 John Dehlin We'll get to their next. So you can just focus on your parents. Did they have any influence?

1:01:09 Natasha Helfer They did have some, but I don't

1:01:11 John Dehlin think that if I had influence, what was that influence?

1:01:13 Natasha Helfer Well, the influence was that especially as they were going through some inactive times, I became kind of the stalwart, like the. The one who would run the family home evenings as the teenager, the one who would bring scriptures to the family.

1:01:26 John Dehlin But even before that, had they primed you in the church?

1:01:31 Natasha Helfer Well, they did through their conversion, yeah.

1:01:34 John Dehlin And bringing you to church, did you go to church on your own?

1:01:37 Natasha Helfer Sometimes I did, but in those early years. Right. So when I started driving, I oftentimes brought myself to church. But earlier than that, they were more active and they brought me to church. And whether I was doing it on my own or whether I was doing it with them, they were super proud, super supportive, super happy that I was following that path, even if they weren't following it in the same, maybe orthodox way that we started out.

1:02:03 John Dehlin Yeah. And that's all I'm trying to say is we're. Many of us are primed by our parents to arrive at a conclusion that the church is true and that we're committed to it. And that can happen through family, home, evening lessons, scripture study lessons, taking us to church, bearing their testimonies to us, whatever that is. I think more often than not, family arrives as the primary pillar of someone ultimately converting to a religion. Now, there are exceptions, but I'm just making the argument that that's probably, for most of us, the primary pillar.

1:02:48 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I would. The only. The only exception I would say to that is I know a lot of teenagers who convert or a lot of, you know, kids in their. In their early teens. And a lot of times those kids are coming, not all the time from abusive situations or, you know, but some of them are, you know, like, their. Their family isn't the pillar that they needed to be. And so there are.

1:03:08 Margi Dehlin That's an important point.

1:03:09 John Dehlin There's a million exceptions. Yeah, that's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is the primary pillar for most of us is the parental influence. And I don't think we always stop to think about that. Like, why was I orthodox Mormon? Well, for many of us, it's what we were born into. And if we were born in Pakistan, we'd probably have become orthodox Muslims. And if we were born in Mexico City, the chances are we would have been orthodox Catholic. And it's obvious. It's kind of face value, but I just think it's worth mentioning.

1:03:47 Margi Dehlin Well, on some level, for both of you, I see the parental influence in both of what you're saying. You know, it's in what you're saying to Natasha that certain wounds or a lack of. In a family culture can also drive a child to seek meaning kind of elsewhere. So parental influence, it works, you know, both ways. Yeah, exactly.

1:04:12 John Dehlin So, Margie, let's introduce your story in here. So tell us a bit about your faith journey. And if there were, there's a time or two where you can pinpoint a conversion.

1:04:28 Margi Dehlin Okay. Well, I think the. Probably the best place to start is the beginning, because that really was the emotional route to My conversion, which is that my. So I come from a convert family, and my parents converted when I was around 7 or 8 years of age. And so my mom took the discussions for, like, I think six to nine months. And then my dad kind of followed at around a year. And then my brother and I were both baptized after that. But the emotional component to that, the actual conversion part of that was the ceiling and the promise of this idea that family matters, that it can last forever. And so I have that vivid memory in the temple. Warm feelings. We're all gathered. My sister Catherine is on the altar as a baby. As a baby. And then you have sort of the four. Yeah, the three other children that were born, you know, as a result of joining the church. So for me, the nest is sort of these. This emotional tie and promise of the family ideal. Right now, that would be the first kind of component.

1:05:53 John Dehlin And then talk about the stuff that I referenced later.

1:05:55 Margi Dehlin And then later I would probably say I had this reframing or on when this is probably teen years of, like, okay, I don't have this internal conversion. I'm not really feeling for, like, the. The doctrine, if you will. But then I thought, oh, I have this lived testimony, right. Where when I live the behavioral things, I feel good inside. It makes my life better. And so that's how I. What I adopted all the way through college was just this idea of, yeah, I don't have that testimony. Like, I really believe or I really know it's true. And I didn't. I didn't say those words amidst my teen. But I have this lived experience testimony. And that lasted all the way through college when I tried to meet that again and took the discussions while I was attending BYU over the summer with my dad in North Carolina.

1:06:54 John Dehlin Why with your dad?

1:06:56 Margi Dehlin Because I really respected my dad and I felt like our minds were similar. He was a poetry literature undergraduate and so on. High integrity, really thoughtful, loving, a psychiatrist. Just a beautiful. So I thought maybe I could see, like a testimony through his eyes and see what it looks like to him, and that will help me.

1:07:22 John Dehlin Yeah. So did it mean a lot to have your dad there?

1:07:26 Margi Dehlin So it was a beautiful experience to. My dad was a quiet person when it came to sort of sharing or putting his points of view on people. And so it was a great way to kind of see him. And he had a very literary. To me at that time, I experienced his testimony as, you know, something that was like literature and truth that way.

1:07:54 John Dehlin And do you feel like your parents ultimately would have or were pleased with you gaining a stronger level of testimony or conversion?

1:08:05 Margi Dehlin Absolutely.

1:08:06 John Dehlin And how would you have known that?

1:08:09 Margi Dehlin You know, I think because we were firmly invested in family home evenings. We were firmly invested in cultural things in the church. My mom was young Women's president, so. So I was very behaviorally, like, I had to go to dances, I had to go to all those things. So that level of sort of conformity and really desiring. And I also had a brother who at times was kind of in and out, and it caused a lot of pain and disruption. So I think watching that, I could see and I really cared about my parents. And so, you know, I felt very. A sense of responsibility to be good.

1:08:58 John Dehlin Love it. Okay. And I'll just, I'll throw my experience in really quick and then we'll go through some of the other pillars. I, you know, I was. I'm a sixth generation Mormon. My mother is related to Ezra Taf Benson and, and Samuel Rose Parkinson. She grew up devout and faithful. My grandmother was the daughter of a polygamous wife. And so my grandmother, whom I knew remembered her sharing her mother with the other wives of her father. And so all that sort of devout, orthodox, pioneer, religious Mormon stock certainly framed my upbringing in the church. When Ezra Benson came to Houston for some sort of area conference, we picked him up at the airport, drove around with him, returned him to the airport. You know, it was this idea of royal Mormon pioneer lineage in our blood. And that definitely was a solidifying force, familial solidifying force for me from the very beginning. And then, of course, you know, we did the reading the illustrated pages of the Book of Mormon and the New Testament and the Old Testament. Growing up as kids, the best we could, we had family evening, the best we could. Even though we fought, I would hear my parents bear their testimonies regularly. And even though my parents got divorced, I still felt like both my parents had strong testimonies. Just the idea of being Mormon and all those years prior of being raised in the church was all because of my family. And so, and so for me, very much my family also was a very integral part of my commitment to the church. I could remember my dad and mom, whenever they bear their testimony in church, how passionate or touching it was for them to share. And it made me want to have my testimony of my own. And I did feel like my parents wanted me to serve a mission and get married in the temple. And I would see these babies get blessed in church by their fathers, where the fathers would say, I bless you that you will get a testimony, I bless you that you will serve a mission. I bless you that you will get married in the temple and have your own kids and the patriarchal blessings as well. It was all wrapped into this idea of family, and family was center. And so I think we're probably belaboring the point. But I do think that this is important because what makes a faith crisis so hard for me, if I had to say, what's the number one hardest thing that people deal with in a faith crisis? It's family, isn't it? Like, what's the number one thing? It's disappointing your parents, disappointing your spouse, disappointing your children, aunts and uncles, grandparents. And so that's not a bad indicator. What your testimony was predicated upon is if you start doubting and leaving it, where is the pain? And Natasha, would you disagree? And again, you're really good at coming up with the exceptions, and I love that because there are a lot of people, even our listeners, who are resonating. So Victoria writes, I was raised in an atheist family. I was the only one to join the church and the only one to leave. Cynthia also writes, I converted at age 17. I was the only member in my family and didn't have any parental influence. So, yes, Natasha, your exceptions are always valuable. And is it true as a marriage and family therapist to people in faith crisis, that if you had to pick the single most difficult or painful variable to having a faith crisis, it would be family?

1:13:18 Natasha Helfer Yeah. So maybe a slight way, I would just say it a little bit differently, although I primarily agree with you, I think the most acute part of a faith transition is individual. I think the most chronic part of a faith transition is familial.

1:13:33 John Dehlin So tell us what you mean. Focus on the family part for now because we're going to talk about the other stuff later.

1:13:38 Natasha Helfer Well, just briefly, what I mean is, I think initially it's existential for you individually, and that's a very acute. Like all of a sudden you're wondering, you know, your own identity and stuff. But then the whole, the whole process becomes relational. The whole process can't not be relational. And that's what I think you mean by it's the primary kind of ongoing chronic concern. Am I, you know, my letting people down, my own kids, my spouse, my parents, my siblings, my friends, my ward, community, you know, it just. The whole thing cannot not be relational.

1:14:13 John Dehlin Yeah. And, yeah, whether it's fearful of losing your marriage, fearful of being disowned, fearful of disappointing your kids, these family issues are so interwoven. And again, when you think about communicating with now, let's say you're the non believing standpoint, you're progressive or post Mormon, and you're figuring out you've got this desire to get people on your same page and you want to deconstruct their faith, you want to ruin their faith so that they can be empathetic with you and go where you go and feel what you feel and see what you see. The point I'm trying to make there is what you have to understand is you're messing with people's family. You're messing, in Margie's case, with those memories of her sitting around the altar with her baby sister on the altar and her family feeling this warmth and connection. You're messing with my ancestors. You're messing with my pioneer ancestors that crossed the plains. You're messing with my marriage and we were sealed. And you know, that ceiling is like what I'm living for as an orthodox Mormon. It's, I'm going to be together with my loved ones beloved and our children in the eternities. So you have to understand that instead of dwelling in your anger and your reactivity to want to win a convert to your disaffection, you have to realize that what's standing between you and the person and what's standing all around that person that you're trying to influence is all these deep and intense and emotional family ties that are as profound as almost any influence upon us. And so we should all have pause and care and take deep care as we start venturing into those waters, realizing that these are very powerful and sacred associations that so many of us, but not all of us have.

1:16:27 Margi Dehlin Well said.

1:16:28 John Dehlin Is that okay?

1:16:29 Natasha Helfer And they're legitimate, they're spiritually. And I think back to the. One of the original comments of Casey is, you know, how do you start making sense of these things when you're in the new framework? But that falls right back into that either or, or equational thing. I think it's okay to have legitimate spiritual, meaningful. You know, you make meaning in that context and you can make meaning in a new context. It does not have to be either or.

1:16:54 John Dehlin Yep, totally. And that's what this whole podcast is about. It's about creating new meaning and context from a new paradigm.

Episode 8

0:20 John Dehlin All right, so now the next pillar that I'm going to advance is the social one. You, Natasha, brought this up. And let's start by just going back to each of our faith journeys. I know for mine, I'll start with mine this time. Because my parents got divorced when I was in middle school and you know, they got remarried quickly and some of my older siblings were really struggling. My family was in disarray. And so because I was a transplant to Katy, Texas and I wasn't, you know, one of these homegrown, multi generational Katy, Texas families where I knew everybody and was connected with everybody, the LDS Church, the Katy branch that turned into the Katy Ward, was my primary social community. I, I started attending it as a seven or eight, as an eight year old, eight or nine year old. And I'd go every week and I'd go to scouts during the week. Later on I would go to mutual and ward and stake dances and young men's and young women's activities, not to mention the three hours at church. And those social connections, the leaders, the peers, the, the girlfriends, the scouts, the fellow guys that I hang around with, the youth leaders that believed in me and told me I was great and that told me I could achieve things when I would have otherwise had a really low self esteem as a kid from a divorced family, it would be really, really hard to overestimate the influence that that social group had on my testimony. And even as I was trying to gain my own authentic testimony, what was the context? For me it was those youth conferences and those EFY meetings where I'm in this, you know, in a youth conference at a university with a bunch of other Mormon youth or in a temple trip with a bunch of other Mormon youth. And all these youth are bearing their testimonies and adults saying they know the church is true, saying the church is true, they, or you know, for women, it's girls camp, right? But such a powerful social context of social pressure and influences and associations that for me was, was central to the formation of my testimony. And when did I have those feelings of, of tingling and flow and exuberance and uplift? It wasn't when I read the Book of Mormon, because for me, when I read the Book of Mormon, I got no answer. I got crickets, right? But I did get those powerful emotional feelings of tingling and warmth and overwhelm in those testimony meetings with youth and adults. And that was the, that was where I hung my testimony for many, many, many years when I couldn't get it otherwise. And so for Me, the social context was crucial to the formation of my conversion. Now, how about you, Natasha? How central was the social element for you?

3:54 Natasha Helfer Well, I think for me socially, you know, that really does go back to my family as well. And this whole concept of families can be together forever was really probably the number one thing that happened for our family. You know, my mother had lost her mom when she was only a year old. My dad had lost his dad when he was a teenager. So both of them had had a premature death of a parent. Like I mentioned, we were a military family. So I was very connected with my immediate family, my siblings. The thought of anything happening to any of us was always high on my anxiety list. So this kind of promise of social connection in the afterlife was very, very important to me. And therefore the whole system became very important to me. And as part of that social context, and me being kind of a people pleaser in my temperament and also being slightly perfectionistic in my temperament, it became very important to me to be seen by the community as a good girl, right? As a righteous member and wanting to fit in. And also, I think there was also that, that little bit of a convert kind of complex where I kind of understood I didn't totally fit in. I didn't fit in with all of you polygamy pioneer stock. And so I kind of got the sense that I was kind of like an adopted child and so like a redheaded stepchild. Yeah, I was the redhead stepchild. And so kind of that constant desire for me to feel like I could learn enough or do enough or be enough to really be part of this familial, contextual ward family that I desperately wanted to be accepted by, so it became very socially construed. And of course, anytime I would bear my testimony or anytime I would give a talk or anytime I would do anything, be part of the young women's organization, go to girls camp, I was rewarded with that acceptance, right? And that lovely community that we do so well in, Mormonism. And again, just a reminder that these are things that happen in a lot of communities. If you behave in the way that the community wants you to behave, you're rewarded. And I was rewarded. And then as my mother fairly quickly started understanding more about polygamy and things like that that she was very uncomfortable with and that we had not been told about, right. In our convers, I resisted that. So that's where I think church became not more important than my parents. My parents, I would say, would the number one influence in my life. But when it came to the religious part of my life. Kind of church became more of my parent in that regard. And I would resist my mother's kind of concerns or critiques about the church, and I would kind of double down and become even more wanting to either assage her fears by coming up with information. So I became the family apologist and also just kind of being, you know, wanting to make sure that our family would continue to reap the blessings and benefits and promises if we would have family home evening, for example. And that's why a lot of times, I'm the one that held it, because it became less important for my parents. Those things became less important for my parents.

7:21 John Dehlin Love it. How about you, sweetie? How important was the social. I think about the Hunters and the Folgers and all those people in that Potomac, Maryland ward and how dear friends those. How dear those friends remain to your mom even to this day. How important was the social structure to your conversion or not?

7:48 Margi Dehlin Okay, well, the first part is more our familial experience when I was younger. And for sure, that social piece was huge, if you can imagine, because they, of course, took the discussions over a longer period of time, and we had ward members come and sit in the discussions with the missionaries. So over time, my parents got to know really standout, lovely ward members who would come and discuss things openly with my parents. And so they were quite, you know, they knew people from the ward pretty well. They got to know them very well through that process and families in the ward. So it was a really, really social conversion for sure for my parents. Now, for me personally, I was really thinking about this because I always kind of felt I was very introverted, even more so as a teen growing up. So in thinking about sort of this social construct, for me, I feel like this. It influenced me most. We moved quite a bit when I was growing up. And so it was kind of symbolic of this security, if you will, of having a community any place you went. And it was kind of that ritual. So for me, I feel like it kind of went along with these emotional needs of just sort of feeling known, feeling like there was familiarity no matter where I went. We moved from Maryland to Ohio to Florida to North Carolina, and in every place, we had a community rise up to meet us. And so for me, it was kind of hitting on those deeper emotions versus the individual relationships or how connected I felt to ward members, because my experience with that, I feel like I was a bit more protective myself and wary.

10:01 John Dehlin Love it. Yeah. So, like, Natasha helps us remember we're going to have a variety of experiences and not everyone's going to have the same factors weigh in at the same

10:12 Margi Dehlin level, and that they, they point to different aspects of ourselves and what we value. The fact that I, for me, it really hit me in this place of security and stability, which I really longed for in my teen years. Whereas the social for you, I feel like, was like family and belonging and, you know, even a sense of fun, right?

10:34 John Dehlin Totally. Yeah. The steak dances and, you know, steak dances and, you know, road shows and temple trips and dance festivals and Saturday's warrior performances, those were a blast. And the church was the funnest thing in the world to me for a long, long time. Really quickly, one of our listeners, Brandon, he writes, hate to interrupt, John, I didn't get notified of you going live. How can I get that set up? Great question. I'm going to answer that right now. So for listeners that want to be notified as soon as we go live, and we're trying to do these on Tuesday, late morning or, you know, right at noon, that's around when to look for us. But what you need to do is type in on your Facebook right now the gift of the Mormon Faith crisis, the page, and you'll go to that page with the big bright yellow banner and you'll see an option that says like the page. And so you'll want to like the page. And then you'll. Then there's a little box next to it that says following. And you want to not only follow the page, but you'll want to turn on see first in your news feed and turn on notifications. And if you have those things said, if you've liked the page, if you've been told to see it first in your newsfeed, and if you've turned on notifications, you will be notified when we go live. That is a great question, and I want to thank Brandon for asking it. We have a couple comments from our listeners that I'm going to read, some of them online and some of them off. Mark writes, if the social element wasn't friendly, I wouldn't have continued as long as I did. It was socially worshipping God and softening of their attitudes. Sorry. And the fact that we had to be friends in the church. So Mark is basically saying the social element was huge for him. Jennifer writes, the value placed on approval and fitting in often overrides the cognitive dissonance and doubts. Isn't that true, Jennifer, that we may think, huh, we're an awful small church to be God's one true church, we're only less than 1/2 of 1% of the population. Oh, never mind. That girl's really cute. And I want to get married in the temple and I want to please my family. Those doubts can easily be trumped by how much fun or joy or meaning or fear, frankly, that we have in association with the social or familial connections. Sam writes, I resonate with John about the church being my primary social outlet in my youth. For me, this was one of the hardest parts when I had my faith crisis. It is so hard to manage these kinds of relationships when you suddenly feel so different from your whole social group. And another way to say this is, you know, we've evolved. We're wired in our brain to feel like a lone monkey is a dead monkey. In other words, 10,000 years ago, if we decide I'm leaving my tribe and I'm going to go out on my own, you know, evolution would select against that decision. And the types of people who would survive and whose DNA would survive evolutionarily would be the ones who stuck with the tribe. Because more often than not, who protected you on the savannah when the lion was about to eat you? It would be your parents or your uncles or your aunts or your cousins or your tribe members. And so you are evolutionarily and emotionally wired to fear, to be terrified at separating from the tribe, from the group. And that's why. So I think so many people who go through a faith crisis publicly and are willing to do that are courageous because you really are defying how you are evolutionarily wired. That's not to say that it's not courageous to stay in the church. Go ahead, Natasha.

14:50 Natasha Helfer No, I was just gonna say that's beautifully said. I do think it takes a lot of courage to go against our natural wiring. And to your point, doesn't mean that people who stay in the church are less courageous. Just, you know, just take each one of those as they are individually.

15:06 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We do have a couple people who wrote in. I'm going to give a shout out to Margo. Margo writes, my conversion into religion had everything to do with desire for community, belonging, meaning and safety. I didn't have a dad and was driven by desire for physical, social, psychic safety and found all those in the wholesome, fun crowd at church, kind, welcoming, cool kids in a nest that felt safe. I wanted the life modeled there for my adulthood and family. My belief was principle based, not literal, and allowed me to be comfortable and contribute meaningfully to the community. I love that Margo Margo, you're awesome. Shout out to you. In Houston, nationally known author Margo Katz Jonathan writes. For me, conversion at the age of 19 was about community. Becoming a member of a group with a distinct and shared history and communal set of fundamental values and guiding principles. Only on the margin was it about prophets, visions, books of scripture, doctrine, or answer to prayer. That's brilliant. So many of you would agree. And so, yeah, that's the second thing. Family and then social. Anything else we want to add before we move on to the next pillar?

16:36 Margi Dehlin I'm ready.

16:37 John Dehlin Natasha?

16:38 Margi Dehlin Nope.

16:39 John Dehlin All right, the next one that I have listed intellectual, educational, and this one really does bleed into other ones. But you know, you mentioned that word indoctrination, Natasha, which has sort of a negative connotation. And of course it's going to be a standing policy for those who are navigating a faith crisis or communicating with believing family and friends to never use the word culture with anyone who is a believer because it's only going to create negative feelings and resistance. So avoid those terms like brainwashing and cult. Having said that, a really important part of conversion is education or indoctrination. Because if you think about it, what you know, some of our earliest and most dear memories of the church are what sitting in primary, being taught by those primary teachers, singing those songs, listening to those primary lessons, right? Where we're taught what's the purpose of life. We're taught why we're here. We're taught what families should be, what the ideal family is. We're taught how God works with humans through prophets. We're taught what God's word is. It's the scripture. And it is really hard again to overestimate the power of this intellectual and educational component to our conversion. And that's why stories and music are so heavily involved. They invoke emotion, but they also teach us these stories and all these myths are these stories of Nephi and Korihor and Nihor and Laman and Lemuel and Jesus and Paul and Jonah and Adam and Eve and Joseph and Emma. All of these stories provide an educational and an intellectual and a myth based component to our conversion. And it's no accident that our conversions happen. When reading the Book of Mormon or the Doctrine and Covenants or thinking about Jesus or Joseph Smith or Mary or Sariah. It's because those are the myths and the heroes and the stories that we were educated with from the very beginning there. I don't know that there's ever been a Mormon who had their conversion contemplating Buddha or, or Allah or Mohammed. Right. It's. That's not the, Those aren't the figures and the myths and the stories and the texts that we have developed affection for. And so for you, Natasha, to what extent was education or some sort of intellectual component an important part of your conversion?

19:52 Natasha Helfer That was a very important part of the conversion process. Especially as I remember as a five year old, even, you know, the story of Joseph Smith and he saw Jesus Christ and God the Father and you know, that that whole narrative started right there, you know, and having the priesthood and the restoration of the gospel and all of the, you know, how it made historical sense even. I mean, that's really, you know, my father, who was very much an introverted intellectual, possibly on the high level spectrum of autism, took a very logical approach and it felt very logical to him, you know, that in the story of Christianity, which he had been raised, you know, kind of in general kind of Christian ways, that this would, this narrative fit into that historical kind of narrative that we were given, that we're given in Christianity even, you know, here in the United States as one of the primary places where that happens. So, yes, all of that fit right in. And so for me, I'm not ever disagreeing with this. The only reason I bring up the concern with the word indoctrination is that I don't want Mormons to feel like we're the only ones that are having these meaningful stories, you know, like you mentioned Buddha and Allah and Mohammed and even other Christian sects, you know, that have the biblical stories that are very much about this narrative and how we otherize, quite frankly, other people in all religions. Because if you don't fit that narrative, it just becomes very problematic.

21:28 John Dehlin Yeah. And how about for you, Margie, was were there intellectual, educational components to your conversion?

21:37 Margi Dehlin I definitely think in as much as they addressed existential feelings for me. So around.

21:44 John Dehlin What do you mean by that?

21:45 Margi Dehlin Yeah, so, you know, having a plug of sorts for death that allowed for me to kind of not think about it as much. Like, I don't think I dwelled a ton there, to be honest with you, but I do think it allowed for enough of a plug that it didn't come up to my brain anymore. It kind of felt like, oh, it's covered enough for now. Also, structurally, like, what would be expected of me in my life, I really loved. And that was another education kind of component. Is your purpose, your meaning, your. All those things are the things that I gravitated to amidst kind of that intellectual or educational structure. Those Things were the things that stood out for me.

22:33 John Dehlin Yeah, and I think you really nailed an essential component. Margie, One of our listeners wrote. This is Spencer. He wrote fear of death is the primary factor that drives us to religion. In the case of Abrahamic derived faiths, we tell ourselves that we're not really going to die and that placates the fear. In the case of dharmic faiths, which I'm assuming Buddhism and Hinduism are members, we let go of self as a way of placating the fear. So that's interesting. For Judeo Christian people, it's about living after we're dead. For Buddhists and Hindus, we've always been part of the One and we'll return to the one. So there is no death either way. We're trying to cope with this idea that we are conscious, sentient, feeling beings with relationships that we care about. Spouses and children and parents and nieces and nephews and cousins and uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters and family members. Death has such a sting to it for Joseph Smith. I've been reading Dan Vogel and the Making of a Prophet. Death was the prevailing influence for the Smith family because they had had children die. This is Joe Smith Sr. And Lucy. They had children die. Their son Alvin eventually died. There were people dying all around and everyone was thinking about, will I see these people again? And then there are these religions saying, well, if you have the wrong baptism, sorry, you're going to hell, or if you don't have a baptism at all, you're going to hell and you'll never see your family again. And I think it was the Presbyterian Church that told Lucy that Alvin was in hell because he didn't have the right baptism. And that was this galvanizing moment where Lucy's joining. She joins the Presbyterian Church or whatever it was. But Joseph Smith Sr. Didn't want to join a church because he was a Unitarian Universalist and he didn't think he needed to join a church. And then Joseph's trying to. Joseph Junior's trying to navigate the tension between his mom and his dead brother and his dad. And so he's investigating the Methodists. And then ultimately he's praying, if you believe in the story that he's praying to God to find out which church is true. All of that was rooted in this fear of death. And so death really is for many this, this central question that religion tries to address. And not just death and afterlife, but like, what happens when we die? And so when religions, you know, it's no mistake that the primary conversion tool as a missionary is do you want to be with your kids forever? Right? You go to these families and you say, hey, we have a message about how you can be together forever with your wife and kids or your husband and kids. Who's not going to want that? And so we would show this video, Families are Forever, or the eternal family, or the one about Jaime or little James. I'll build you a rainbow where the kid dies and the parents are sad and they're wondering, how do we see Jaime again? You know, and the church swoops in with the plan of salvation and it's this education that oftentimes fills the existential voids. Again, also about meaning and purpose. What's the purpose of life? Why are we even here if we're depressed about life and life sucks, we want to die, so we need to get a purpose or else we're going to just want to end things. Right? And so religions will say, hey, I've got a purpose for you. And it's through that educational component that religion can convert us. And so many people who are converts as teenagers or adults are feeling. You're right, Natasha. They weren't converted because of their family, like Victoria. They weren't. Maybe they were raised by atheist parents, but maybe those atheist parents didn't give their, their kids a sense of purpose and mission, didn't help them resolve the existential questions. Or maybe they were socially isolated, maybe they were disconnected in some other way. And all of a sudden those secular people or non religious people, when they hear the missionary message about eternal families, about heaven, about the celestial kingdom, about becoming God someday, all that stuff just fills all those existential holes and then gets them excited about signing up through an emotional conversion for commitment to the church.

27:11 Margi Dehlin You're on fire.

27:12 John Dehlin Sorry. Do you want to add anything, Margie?

27:18 Margi Dehlin I was thinking too. I wonder. And Natasha, I'm curious what you think about this too, but sometimes I think there's a certain draw for relief of suffering too, right? Because I think sometimes religion can offer the idea of this path, right? That if you just do these things, right, then you can, you'll be protected or you'll be. And so clearly it doesn't work that way in practice. But sometimes I felt like there was sort of this, this promise or kind of an ideal and this way to sort of can we get out of this, you know, mortal thing of suffering. What do you think?

27:58 Natasha Helfer Well, I'm going to go to one of the comments that we haven't mentioned yet, Brittany, at the Very beginning Hellquist, she says, I was actually healed from a physical ailment while a prayer was being said at the temple. Imagine trying to work out my cognitive dissonance after that one. Then she goes on in a different comment to say, which by the way, my interpretation now is when our brain believes something strong enough, it can heal the body, which is why placebo drugs also work for people, which has been shown to be true. I think that we're kind of talking. What I don't want to have the message be is, well, of course you're going to be vulnerable and you're going to have all this social influence and parent influence. It's all kind of crap to begin with. But of course you're going to fall for it because, you know, how else are you? How can you not? Because I do think that there is. Although all of these things that we've mentioned are absolutely part of the equation, they do have actual value. Like they actually heal us or comfort us or bring peace and they, you know, help us bring meaning into our lives and all of those things. And why, I think whether it's within the Mormon church or the Jewish religion or the Muslim religion or atheism or agnosticism, people are constantly striving for meaning and comfort and healing and all of those things. So I guess I would just. I'm not sure if I'm totally directly answering your question, Margie, but I think this idea that we seek, we seek relief from suffering, and that I think is a very normal thing to do. We seek relief from fear. We seek relief from the unknown, from ambiguity, from things that we don't have control over. And I think the older we get, the more realize, the more we don't have control over a lot of things. And so having these spaces can be very helpful. And so if you're transitioning away from those, what used to be helpful spaces, if they were helpful for you, that can be very challenging, you know, and finding new spaces with new meaning. But I just always caution people to not just throw the whole baby out with the bathwater and say, well, all of that must have been a farce because of the. Of the way that we're presenting this. It's like, now there was real value there. Honor the person you were then, you know, honor how it was helpful for you then and now find new ways to honor however that's showing up in your life now.

30:37 John Dehlin Love it.

30:38 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

30:39 John Dehlin And we'll try and conclude with. With some of that language as well. But it's great to sprinkle it throughout. Very important. And. And yeah, I love what you both are contributing in our listeners as well. I love your point, Natasha, that there's real value here. There's value in family, there's value in community, there's value in spirituality. There's value in plugging those existential holes, not getting discouraged about life being this nihilistic, empty, meaningless pit of misery and sorrow, but seeing hope and optimism and a purpose in life. And frankly, that's why religion is so powerful and so resilient and so pervasive in spite of all the reasons we would have in modern day to jettison religion. If there's any organization that should have ceased existing, it would be the Catholic Church. From one standpoint, you watch that movie Spotlight and you see how leaders in the Catholic Church systematically covered up supported pedophile priests for decades all over the world. Something like 7% of priests, this crazy number. And then they covered it up and paid people off. You would think, oh, the Catholic Church should quickly disappear, but it doesn't. The Catholic Church is as strong and as vital as ever. And I'm not saying that it's evil. My only point is that it exists because it's delivering so much value to so many people across the world that even something as heinous as, you know, a systemic pedophilia scandal involving its own paid clergy is not enough to even really significantly damage the church. Now, I'm sure it's paying out a lot of money in settlements. I'm sure that it's losing some members, but it's also thriving in many ways. And that's all a testament to the value of religion. And I think it's too easy for progressive and post Mormons in their pain and their anger and their disillusionment to be angry at religion and to conclude that religion is worthless and bad and stupid and only does harm. And I think that's not only counterproductive in terms of your own healing and growth and in your communication with believing family and friends. I think it's just factually wrong.

33:18 Margi Dehlin Well, I love this quote by Jennifer that says there's value because we generated it, because we created it. We can take that with us wherever we go, regardless of where we attend church. I mean, what a beautiful comment.

33:33 Natasha Helfer I love that. And where I want to also make sure I offer a little bit more on the other pendulum. Is that back to your, you know, how you conceptualize narratives, John? It is. We do have to kind of just face that if we're only given one narrative we miss out on all the other narratives. And if, and especially when we're given the narrative as the only possibility, which is what many religions do, right? This is the one and only way. We're not the only ones that say that. And so then you miss out on the narratives that the Buddhists have to offer and the narratives that the Jewish people have to offer and the stories and the meanings. And so there is something limiting about that as well that I think we just all need to own up to that. If we're going to buy into only one narrative and one script, then that comes at a cost.

34:23 Margi Dehlin Love that.

34:24 John Dehlin And this is a paradox that, you know, liberal, progressive and even secular people face because you. Okay, so the Mormon Church isn't what we thought. So we want to raise our kids. Maybe we raise a Mormon, but maybe we don't. But we recognize that it's not fair. It's not just on some level that we weren't taught about all the churches growing up. We were taught that ours was true and everyone else was false. We weren't given a chance to visit all the different churches in all the points of view. We were warned against other churches and against secular people. We were taught that they were dangerous. Right. And so ideally, you know, the only way conversion would ever happen, maybe someone would argue this, is that no child should ever convert to any religion. No person should ever be allowed to join a religion until they're 18 or older, till they're adults. You know, if you can't vote, if you can't drink alcohol, certainly you shouldn't join a religion that you know will take 10% of your income potentially and, you know, five to 10 hours of your week and your reputation and, you know, the rest of your life. No one should be able to make that decision as an eight year old, on the one hand, because so much information has been withheld from us and we haven't had a chance to, to evaluate all the different religions and secularism to be able to make an informed decision. But I would say that there are probably child psychologists, that's, that would, that would argue that perspective, that it's damaging to give the kids a framework. Natasha, do you have anything to say about that? Whether child psychologists would argue that it's, there's goodness in giving children a framework, even if it's an incomplete or imperfect or even untrue framework, that to some degree some framework for a child is better than none. What do you think?

36:25 Natasha Helfer Well, yeah, so we do know that structure is important for child development. And at the same time, even what you just described is kind of impossible for any of us to be, you know, completely educated and completely, completely knowing of every single option out there. It's just not a very realistic way to approach life. And if we wanted to participate in any type of community with that level of informed consent, including national community. Right. So country community, with the way we learn, just national history is oftentimes very colored by bias. You're just setting us all up kind of for another type of failure. So I think any system we belong to is going to be imperfect. Any structure that we are able to create in our homes or families is going to be imperfect. My only hope is that we can lead with flexibility versus rigidity, so that there's openness for understanding, that there's other options. So there's openness for saying, you know, this is how we can best do it right now. Maybe in the future we'll do it differently. Or if one of your children or your spouse or family members decides to do it differently, that there's space for that possibility. So I don't expect anybody to have the perfect system. And if we're all waiting for the perfect system, well, you better start having kids when you're no longer able to have them, like in Perryman. Yeah.

37:53 John Dehlin One of the very first Mormon stories episodes I ever did was on James Fowler stages of faith. And it was developed by a non Mormon. Right. Somebody who is probably Christian. James Fowler is one of the early sort of epic titans of psychology. And it's just this idea that there are different phases of religious participation. And you start out as a baby, maybe that's one, and then a child is part two, and then you develop this sort of faith, the simplistic, literalistic faith. Stage three, where you take the Bible as, you know, literally true. The church is the one true church. Whatever the prophet says is of God. It's just this very totalistic, comprehensive, literal, orthodox view. And that's true no matter what religion you join. And if you were raised secular, you would probably engage with secularism with the same level of dogmatism and absolutely literality and orthodoxy. And then Fowler goes on to say, at some point you're going to have an unraveling of whatever it was that you were raised with, where you become, you discover its imperfections, you realize that it's problematic, you see all the flaws, and then you realize that it isn't the one true paradigm or perspective. And that then becomes an invitation to picking up that tradition again with a less literal, less orthodox, less Totalistic devotion, seeing stories as mythical, seeing leaders as good but flawed, seeing the church as not the one true, but as one of many organizations you could be a part of. And that's going to be true in our faith crisis as well. We're going to have to let go, see everything get destroyed, see it get dismantled, and then decide what we value and what we want to pick up again. And that can be remaining in the church or leaving it. But what it speaks to in a more abstract sense is just the idea that whatever it is we're raised with, Mormonism, Catholicism, secularism, Margaism, Natasha ism, whatever it is, Buddhism, you're gonna have to have that framework and then see it get destroyed and then have a rebuilding. And it's just part of the process. So.

40:22 Margi Dehlin And I feel like we're doing that throughout the rest of our lives. It doesn't stop constantly assessing. And that flexibility Natasha alluded to, I think comes in handy in many ways.

40:34 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I really like all kinds of developmental models because. And I think it goes very well whether you believe in it literally or abstractedly, or if it's just kind of symbolically at this point is the eternal progression. Right. This idea of we're continually shifting and changing and progressing, and every decade comes with its own developmental kind of tasks and processes that we're all a part of.

41:00 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

41:01 John Dehlin So I guess to conclude that section. Yes, as children, we weren't given multiple perspectives. Yes, we were taught that this was the one true church. Yes, we were taught to stay away from anyone who had different beliefs. Yes, we were taught that doubts were bad. Yes, we were taught that alternative thoughts were bad. Yes, we were taught to stay away from anyone who leaves the church or criticizes it. The criticisms of are bad. That's all true. And that's all problematic from an intellectual and educational standpoint. And I guess I'm arguing to some extent it's unavoidable and it's going to be part of the developmental process. So we can be frustrated with it, we can rage at it, we can try and raise our kids differently. And I'm just trying to say that on the other side of that, we're probably going to experience similar dynamics if we raise our kids, Unitarians or atheists or whatever it is. And so the point is, wherever you end up, how do you heal and grow and develop with whatever you were with whatever you inherited as a kid.

42:08 Margi Dehlin Yeah. And I think that's that shift again between external receiving from other people what you believe and actually shifting to internal and that can happen. I mean, I just think that's a key element wherever you are, from external

42:23 John Dehlin authority to internal, intrinsic authority, where you're

42:25 Margi Dehlin able to shift through and for yourself, be able to see what you resonate with and what you want to carry and hold, however loosely, for however long.

42:35 Natasha Helfer And recognizing that neither one of those are going to be pure.

42:39 Margi Dehlin Exactly.

42:39 Natasha Helfer You're never going to purely be able to be only external or internal because there's just too many other factors at play, most of which are subconscious and unconscious. Back to the elephant.

42:51 John Dehlin Yeah. And speaking of the elephant, the next dynamic that we have as a pillar, that we alluded to at the very beginning, but we're going to come back to it, is emotion spiritual. So, again, we've talked about family, we've talked about social, we've talked about intellectual, educational, and existential. Now we're going to talk about emotional and spiritual. And, you know, this is something that's undeniable. Why. Why are churches architected to have good acoustics? Anyone want to guess? Natasha? You want to guess?

43:26 Natasha Helfer I'm sorry, I was reading a comment and I missed your question. I'm so lame.

43:29 John Dehlin Sorry, Margie.

43:31 Margi Dehlin Because music evokes emotion, and especially communal, like singing together or in small groups or. It brings a sense of emotion that you can be difficult to achieve through other means.

43:46 John Dehlin Yeah. So why do we sing hymns at church? Why is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir so important? Why do we all sing congregational hymns? Why, you know, do. When the church has commercials, do they have these touching songs that pull on our heartstrings? They call it Heart Sell. It's even a patented technique in historical Mormonism. It's because music pulls emotion, and emotion is a crucial part of conversion. And so we've already talked about it, but, you know, we're just gonna talk about it again. Whether it's an emotional sermon in an evangelical context, whether it's a heartfelt story that Thomas S. Monson tells about this widow who lived on his block and the kids threw the baseball through the window, the widow cried. And whatever it is, whether it's stories or music or sermons or music or instruments or choirs or art, a huge component to religious conversion is emotional uplift, is emotional flow, Natasha. It's euphoria, its elevation. As Ryan Otley wrote in a comment he wrote, from my own body, giving me something I want more than anything, a feeling I could attribute to God, a story I could tell without a doubt. It worked great socially, since I was surrounded by Mormons. It's oxytocin. It's serotonin, it's dopamine, it's all those chemicals in the brain. Religion optimizes itself to unleash those chemicals in our body. Natasha Agreed.

45:41 Natasha Helfer I would agree with all of that. We are emotional creatures. We seek out emotional experiences. Emotional experiences is the filter through which we then reason why we're having those experiences. Emotion really does come first, so it's very powerful. And again, religion isn't the only space where this is done. I mean, every movie script, right, the music is a huge part of that. They give awards for that because it evokes fear or sadness or it makes you resonate with the characters that you're watching on screen. I mean, we are primarily emotional creatures. So of course, any, any community, any religion is going to see. And I don't, you know, I don't think that it's manipulative. I don't think people are like, ooh, how can we get everybody to, you know, feel exactly what we want them to feel and be puppets on our strings? I think we all, whether we're the leaders or whether we're the followers, we want to elicit or have those experiences. And it comes very honestly for most people now, there's always some evil intent everywhere. But I think for most people, you know, when the young women's leader is thinking about which song, though young women are going to sing in Sacrament, she is looking for something that's going to elicit love and emotion and connection. But that doesn't come from a malicious standpoint or a manipulative standpoint necessarily.

47:12 John Dehlin Yeah. Were you going to say something?

47:14 Margi Dehlin I was going to say just structurally, there are so many places where, you know, we're ritualistic about this, whether it's fast and testimony meetings or EFYS or youth conferences or girls camps, like, we have a lot of, I feel like rituals or structures within the church paradigm that allow for the opportunity of emotion. Which isn't to say every fast and testimony meeting hits it, but there's this space provided.

47:50 John Dehlin But that's where it's tricky, because on the one hand, what do we crave more as humans than good feelings? I think at the end of the day, you could almost explain any phenomenon by does it make me feel good? Right. Why do we eat? Because it makes us feel good. Why do we have sex? Because it makes us feel good. Why do we fall in love and have families? Okay, that doesn't always feel good with kids, but eventually it does, right? It feels good. Snotty teenagers can sometimes be not feel, always so great. But just generally speaking, we operate by feeling good.

48:30 Natasha Helfer We are seekers of pleasure 100%. And even when we're willing to sacrifice pleasure, it's because of a bigger pleasure that we're hoping to get. So it's. We are seek, we are wired to want to experience pleasure.

48:44 John Dehlin Yep. It's core. And so if a religion does nothing more than make us feel really good on Sundays, there's inherent value to that. So you're right, Natasha. It doesn't need to be pernicious, it doesn't need to be manipulative, it doesn't need to be devilish. It can just be healthy and good and well intended, which is, let's just make sure all those members feel great by the time they leave and feel hopeful about their week. So they want to be excited to live and excited to be a better wife or husband, excited to be a better father, mother, excited to be a citizen, to serve people. And that's all awesome and dandy. And, you know, whether, you know, the history of religion is replete with charlatan preachers and charlatan priests and cults and unhealthy religions that used music, used emotional sermons, used powerful stories, used multimedia to indoctrinate and control their people through emotion. Emotion is one of the four primary elements that cults use to indoctrinate and control people. And so it's a wonderful and a very scary or dangerous element to religiosity, the incorporation of emotion and emotional uplift into the conversion process. True or not true?

50:26 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I think, I think I would agree with all of that. I think it's like anything. Sex can be used for amazing things. Sex can be used for horrific criminal activity. Right. And I think most of us are in the middle. Like, we're not at either of those extremes. So we're kind of trying to use it for the most part. I think what happens though, when I'm conceptualizing this at church, we don't go to church saying, I am a seeker of pleasure. Church makes me feel good. I want to go listen to the hymns and feel connected to people and etc, etc. We go because we're committed to this idea that it's true and that it's what I should do to be able to reach exaltation. So when people transition, I think that's where it feels manipulative. Because if all along we had all agreed that we're going for these social, familial, emotional types of rewards, then when we change our minds, it's like, oh, well, I'm just not going to get those rewards from that particular place anymore. I'm just going to go get it at this place. But when it's now tied to, I thought I was going for this one reason, but now I feel like those reasons didn't pan out. And now on top of it, I can see how I was potentially manipulated by the emotional aspect of it that was tied to this meaning. I think that's where people feel very betrayed and where it can feel more manipulative than I think maybe was even intended by some of the people that created some of those rituals.

52:00 John Dehlin Totally, totally. Yeah. So it's just something to guard against. And by the way, for progressive and post Mormons, you know, you don't escape it if you're gonna leave religion altogether. You still can be vulnerable to social manipulation, you can be vulnerable to familial manipulation, you can be vulnerable to intellectual or educational manipulation. And it's true with emotion that whether it's a essential oil salesperson or a multi level marketing thing or just some business investment or, you know, any sort of thing, a professional anything, we have to both seek joy or drug use. Right. So many Mormons or progressive and post Mormons say, hey, I don't believe in the word of wisdom anymore, so I want to have really good feelings. So I'm going to experiment with drugs because they can make me feel good. Right. And it's true they can make you feel good. It's also true that they can torpedo your life. And so in all of these instances, we have to both seek positive emotions and feelings, find ways to get that, and beware of people or substances or anything, behaviors that would provide us with the right feelings, but that ultimately are destructive to our well being. Because positive emotion isn't the only important thing in life.

53:36 Margi Dehlin Absolutely. I might even add, like for growth mindset, you know, kind of cultivating coping skills so that we become more comfortable holding feelings that feel unpleasant to us as that's part of the human experience. And then it allows us not to feel quite so controlled or vulnerable to our emotions. So I love this whole conversation because I love the idea of being aware of our emotions and then going a little bit deeper so that we can choose kind of how to frame what we're feeling, hold them loosely and decide kind of what we want to do in an awareness context as well as, you know, versus a reactive context.

54:28 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I love that.

54:29 John Dehlin Really quickly Angie writes, wow, what a slam to the essential oil business people. Sheesh. Let me be clear about something, Angie. I really appreciate that comment, Angie. We want your feedback. We use essential oils. Margie and I use essential oils just like Natasha said, with sex or food or drugs or anything. There's a healthy, proper use and maybe an improper use. We're not saying essential oils are bad. We use them for various things. I had a really nice massage the other day and they dropped some essential oils in the place where I put my face. It was a really nice thing to experience. It's not about that. What we're trying to say is sometimes essential oil business, like any business, can fall prey to manipulation through social peer pressure, through music, through information that's withheld or information that's twisted so that we can maybe, for example, take the usage of essential oils or any other product too far and use them in ways that either unhealthy or not actually efficacious. So again, no slight to essential oil people. We have dear friends and we ourselves who use that stuff appropriately. It's more about that broader point of anything can be misused if we're not aware of matters of family influence, social influence, emotional manipulation, educational, you know, intellectual sort of misuse, etc. We just have to keep all of that in mind.

56:05 Margi Dehlin Can I make a joke?

56:06 John Dehlin Yeah.

56:06 Margi Dehlin You can quote John de Lin as saying, we use essential oils appropriately.

56:14 Natasha Helfer Oh, my gosh, that's so good. I want to touch really quickly.

56:19 John Dehlin Yeah, go ahead.

56:20 Margi Dehlin Sorry.

56:20 John Dehlin No, go ahead.

56:22 Natasha Helfer Oh, she writes, agreed, that's fair.

56:23 John Dehlin She writes, agreed, that's fair. So we've salvaged ourselves with Angie and all the other doterra and Young Living salespeople out there. We love you all. Go Doterra. Go Young Living. Okay, go ahead, Natasha.

56:37 Natasha Helfer So Melissa and Evans Burton writes, the good feeling they are trying to deliver is masked as the spirit. Any good feeling you feel at church is explained as the spirit touching your heart. And so it seems manipulative. I think my thing with manipulation, the word manipulation, feels a little criminal. And so I just want to distinct between people who are stating their truth. So if somebody says, well, that's the spirit and that's their belief and that's, you know, that's how they are framing the world. I'm not sure the intent, although it could still be manipulative. It's not the intent. Where there are people who are intending very much to manipulate, where there's meetings like, how do we market a certain product so that we can manipulate the consumer to purchase this product? And things like that. Now, I know in the church setting we have some of that, like how do we convert people? How do we raise numbers? All of that stuff. And that can feel very manipulative as well. At the same time, for most people, that isn't necessarily tied to economic profit. It's tied to this sense that they're doing good in the world. So it becomes complicated. I just want to complicate the word manipulation, because I think the purest form of manipulation is with intent to put your needs above somebody else's. And I don't think that's what's always happening, even though I think it's still very legitimate to feel manipulated.

58:06 John Dehlin Right? Absolutely. Someone else writes, and I think this is a really, really important comment. One of our listeners asked an important question. She wrote, this is Sarah Lewis Johnson. She writes the 15, the quorum of the 15, the first presidency of the quorum of the 12. Like to try and differentiate pleasure from joy. What are your thoughts about this? And I had read that as saying something different. I think also they try and distinguish between feelings of happiness or feeling positive emotion and the spirit, that somehow there is a difference between positive emotion and the Holy Ghost. And I think what might be inferred there is basically saying that they themselves are trying as hard as they can not to be manipulative and to distinguish between manipulative positive emotions and what they would consider to be authentic spiritual witness. Anyway, thanks for our listeners who are willing to share. So here's the deal. We are out of time and we have a lot to go. So what we need to do is quickly just wrap up with this section. We have covered several components to conversion, and we just want to kind of make this final point. Two points that we've already set up that relate to deconversion. Why is it important at the beginning of our journey through helping people understand the gift of the faith crisis, why did we pick conversion and deconversion as an essential topic to talk about right up front? And I'm going to say it again. I said it before, I'll say it again. If you want to understand and process what you've just been through, you have to understand how it was that you got there and what it was that you were in and experiencing. You were converted to a religious system through family, through social context, through emotion, through information, through education, and through the behaviors that you were taught to follow. Those are major components to how you became converted. And that's important because if you want to understand how some people go, how did this happen to me? How was I so dumb? How was I so foolish not to say that to believe is dumb or foolish. But for people who feel misled, who feel fooled, who feel betrayed, who think I should have figured this out years or decades ago, and they're beating themselves up and they're feeling angry and sad at themselves, the answer is you were converted through very powerful forces. If it wasn't your family and normal, it was your family or it was your social groups, or it was the educational process that involved emotions and emotions ultimately converted you. Like the elephant going back to Jonathan Haidt and the elephant, it was your emotions that converted you. Now why is that important? It's important for two reasons. Now, number one is you are going to have to figure out how to rebuild a life. And you, you need to realize that you need to seek joy and positive emotions, but you need to guard against any attempt at leading you to a place that you don't want to end up through the same means. You don't want your family to lead you to a place that you don't want to go going forward. So if you and your spouse leave the church, but then your husband is trying to pull you through familial influence into practices or beliefs or organizations that don't feel right to you, don't necessarily let that family tie override your own. Like Margie said, intrinsic moral authority. Don't let social groups push you into things that aren't healthy and positive for you. Don't allow yourself to be manipulated through emotion. Don't allow yourself to be subjected to education that's one sided, that tells you to fear questions that prohibit your questioning, that prohibits your doubting, that prohibits skepticism, that warns you against former members, that tells you there are only appropriate questions to ask and that teaches its own truth as the one and only truth. Anything that teaches you that it's the one and only truth, have extra skepticism against that. And so that's one main reason why we need to understand conversion in our deconversion. And then the other thing is that when we're dealing with believing family and friends, it's so often that we want to use logic. Use the CES letter, use Mormon think, use polygamy, polyandry, Book of Abraham, papyrus, peep stones, folk magic, whatever it is, we want to deconvert people through logic. And the point that I always make in our retreats and workshops, Natasha, you make this too is you cannot, first of all, you shouldn't want to deconvert somebody because that's their own path and you're a jerk if you try that. It's disrespectful. And you don't know whether their beliefs are helping them. You're not smart enough to know whether they'll be happier or healthier once you've deconverted them, you may wreck their life. So you shouldn't want to deconvert them. But you should also know that it's a fool's errand to even try to deconvert someone through logic from a position that they arrived at. What? Through emotion, emotionally. And so when you are communicating with believing family and friends, you need to realize that their positions are emotional, not logical. And they're woven into their family, their identity, their friends, their social groups, their education, their existential view on the world, their views in the afterlife and death and in God and in sickness and in life. And so that stuff you need to be thoughtful and sensitive about and realize that ultimately you won't ever deconvert anyone other than yourself. If somebody's going to deconvert, it's going to be an emotional process that they go through and experience in their own time, in their own way. And the more you try and mess with that, you're going to create the backfire effect which actually makes them cling to and believe more in their religion than less. So that's my final summary of why we're talking about this. Margie, is there anything you want to summarize? And then Natasha will give you the final word for this episode.

1:05:26 Margi Dehlin Are we going to come back to deconversion or are we kind of summarizing?

1:05:29 John Dehlin We need to end for now so we can do that in another episode if we want. But for now, especially because of you and your commitments, we're wrapping up for today.

1:05:39 Margi Dehlin My end thought. Well, will take the conversion and deconversion kind of approach, but one thing that I think is really valuable about this process is just awareness, an awareness of how we got to where we are and then second, as we move forward. So, you know, we talk about the gift of the faith crisis is realizing that the conversion pillars usually show up on the deconversion on the other side. And so that awareness and going through this process and identifying some of these pillars, being able now to process in your brain. Where were those? On the other side as well. And oftentimes they show up in loss. Right. And so that's what I feel like is so helpful about this exercise. And I hope we'll do homework so segment around that maybe for them. But yeah, yeah, that's kind of my. My final thought. Natasha, how about you?

1:06:38 Natasha Helfer No, I would just second everything. You're Saying I think the pendulum swing is a very helpful metaphor, that we go from one side to the other. These dynamics exist throughout. I love teasing post Mormons or ex Mormons, you know, in sessions and they're explaining something to me and I'm like, oh, that's so Mormon of you. You know, we all laugh because hopefully by that time I wouldn't say like that if we hadn't joined to the point. I can tease them, but you know, and I even see this in like the psychology field, like I can't tell you how many certification processes or conferences I've gone to or new theorists are like, this is, this is the way, this is the way that we should all be doing therapy, right? And this is the one and only. And this is better than all the other types of therapies out there. Boy, every time I hear that, my red flags go off because I'm like, we are way too complex of a human race for one thing to fit everybody. So these dynamics show up. They're not unique to Mormonism. Mormonism does tend to put them on steroids, like I said before. So we do need to be extra cautious I think with some of our cultural kind of processes that we have within our communities, but they exist outside. And so black and white thinking, perfectionism, thinking errors that you had in Mormonism, more than likely you're going to be taking some of that with you. And it really can be very helpful to become more and more self aware. And self awareness, remember, is only the first step. We can be super self aware. But when that elephant hits, when that fight flight freeze hits, we revert back to what's most comfortable to us and why post Mormons and ex Mormons are having just as much conflict as believing orthodox members in these types of back and forths and tug of wars because we go back to that self protective defensive stats, statutes. And so just be warned, it's a process. We're all in it, we're all swimming, we're all growing and we're not just gonna, you know, switch just because we've changed an idea.

1:08:45 Margi Dehlin That's right. I love the word practice. We practice.

1:08:50 Natasha Helfer That's right.

1:08:52 John Dehlin And Margie, I'm glad you're bringing up the idea of another episode on deconversion because so many progressive and post Mormons will cite the CES letter or MormonThink or even, you know, the church's November 2015 policy is the reason that they lost their faith. And I do think that there are often intellectual, doctrinal or historical components to A faith crisis. But what I found more often you have to ask the question, what made you open to learning about polyandry? What made you open to caring about LGBT people? What made you open to worrying about the church's finances or the mall, or reading a book by Fawn Brody or listening to a podcast like Mormon Stories? And what people often determine is they thought that their disaffection was intellectual, but what they found out is they first, like the elephant, experienced some sort of emotional shift that preceded their intellectual faith crisis. So maybe they weren't feeling happy at church. Maybe they were feeling unfulfilled. Maybe they had a gay or lesbian child come out who was suicidal. Maybe they were abused. Maybe they experienced some sort of abuse in the church and it was some big emotional shift that opened them up to learning more about the problems in the church or caring about social justice. And that leads us to our homework assignment. I think our homework assignment for our listeners should be to ask yourself what was the emotional precursor to. To your faith crisis? In other words, you think that it was, you know, polyandry or peep stones or masonry or whatever, but do a little bit of digging and ask yourself, were there any emotional shifts or events or precursors that cracked you open first, that made you open to some of the other issues that you tend to cite as the reason for your faith crisis? Is that a good homework assignment? And maybe the next time we get together, maybe it'll be, Natasha, when you're out of town, we'll just follow up and do a mini feature just on. Just on this topic.

1:11:23 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I think that'd be great. I think we can't emphasize so much of this because it is where I think a lot of the communication breakdown happens when. When people don't understand these concepts.

1:11:33 John Dehlin And that way we won't start a big topic until you're back.

1:11:36 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

1:11:37 Natasha Helfer Cool.

1:11:37 Margi Dehlin That's great.

1:11:38 John Dehlin Because you're going out of town for a couple weeks, for a week and

1:11:41 Natasha Helfer a half, and I'm super excited. Yeah. So. And for fun this time.

1:11:46 Margi Dehlin Yeah, that's right.

1:11:48 Natasha Helfer That's what's going to be on my it works category. Next time. Go out of town for fun sometimes.

1:11:54 Margi Dehlin Yeah, that's right.

1:11:55 John Dehlin What? Margie and I are going on a 25th anniversary vacation in Mexico.

1:12:01 Natasha Helfer Oh, that's great.

1:12:04 John Dehlin We are grateful for that.

1:12:05 Natasha Helfer Awesome.

1:12:06 John Dehlin All right, so thanks to everyone who's joined us today. Your comments on the live Facebook stream were amazing. Thanks to everyone who joins us through itunes or on our website mormonfaithcrisis.com. Thanks to everyone who donates. Again, your donations are going to make this possible or they'll keep it alive. We may end this if people aren't willing to support it, but we are optimistic that we'll continue to get donors. Thanks to those who have donated so far. For those who want to contribute, go to mormonfaithcrisis.com Click on the Donate button. Whatever you can afford. 10, 50, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. It will go to keeping this podcast alive and supporting others who are in crisis. And even if you've worked through your faith crisis, you can look at your contribution to this podcast as Paying forward to future generations. Because the idea is that we leave this up forever. Even after we've stopped podcasting, even after we're no longer collecting any support for this. This will be a resource that will be available to help tens and hundreds of thousands of progressive and post Mormons process their faith crisis and heal and improve their families, save marriages, bring families together and promote health and well being for generations to come. For eternities of time, Alpha and Omega without end, go ahead.

1:13:34 Natasha Helfer As long as there's an electrical grid. John

1:13:38 John Dehlin so thanks to everyone who makes this possible. Thanks to you, Natasha.

1:13:41 Natasha Helfer You're lovely, as are both of you. I always enjoy our conversations and being able to offer these to types of resources. I also think it's so important. So thanks for everybody who's supporting us

1:13:53 John Dehlin so far and spread the word. You can like our Facebook page. You can give us a positive review. You can share this with family and friends. You can give us a positive review on itunes. You can reach out to any of us for coaching if you need help. We want to help you in any way we can and we appreciate all the support that we can. So take care everybody. We love you. We'll see you again soon on another edition of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. Take.