Identity: Mormon or In Christ?, Pt. 2

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. We were all born and raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, more commonly referred to as the Mormon faith. All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on biblical teachings. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects John 1-9, which calls Jesus, the true light which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be, and the light we have is not our own.

It comes to us from without, thus, outer brightness. Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to His Son. We have conversations about all aspects of that transition, the fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between.

We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around. You are listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post-Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. I'm Matthew, the nuclear colonist. I'm Michael, the ex-Mormon apologist. I'm Paul Bunyan.

Let's get into it. Matthew, what would you say? By the time you were an adult, was part of your identity Mormon, kind of like I've been talking about, and how strongly did you have a sense of yourself as Mormon as an adult? Yeah, it was when I was preparing for my mission, serving my mission, and returning home from my mission where I did feel that sense of, this is who I am.

This is my identity. It's interesting how you described how you felt like you were going to be a Mormon and a Christian. I was trying to think, did I feel the same way? I did have similar feelings like you, seeing the lights at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. I just always loved Christmastime, just the weather.

I love snow, except driving in it, and I hate it. That's the time of season where you're reading about Jesus. You're reading from the Gospels, usually. You're not really usually reading from the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants and everything like that. You're reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I'm trying to return from my mission, and I was active for several years, so all the way through from probably age 20 and onward.

That's kind of how I saw myself. I realized I forgot to share the other experience that was the ending bookend to my mission. I talked about the experience of going to Temple Square and seeing the lights before, and then the first Christmas after I came home from my mission, we went to my great aunts' and uncles' Methodist church for a Christmas Eve service. That was one of my first experiences with a Methodist church. They had a female pastor, and I remember coming out of the service. It was a beautiful service, and it was a Christmas Eve service, so of course I felt like I could partake and be a part of that. Although I was a Mormon, I was a Christian, too. I remember stepping outside after the service, and the pastor came out and was saying goodbye to her congregation and shaking hands. My aunt and uncle and my family, my mom and dad and my siblings, we were all standing around just kind of talking. I mentioned before, my great aunt was from Brooklyn, and she was outspoken. She said to my dad something about when are you going to come back to the Christian faith?

His family was always giving him a hard time about that. I remember thinking at the time, why can't that Christmas Eve service be a time when we can come together with other Christians was the way I was thinking about things. I did realize there were doctrines that set Latter-day Saints apart in vast ways from the broad swath of Christianity, but as a Latter-day Saint, I didn't see those as significant. I think that's weird because on the one hand, I did see them as significant because they were supposed to be important, those distinctives.

Else, why would there be a need for a restoration? But for my sense of self, I think I didn't see them as significant. Why should they separate us from people who should share our beliefs? By the time I was an adult, being Mormon was definitely entrenched as part of my identity. The mission gave me this feeling of being both different and special. Yet there was this desire within me to be accepted by broader Christianity. When I got married, I married into a Southern Baptist family. I think I talked about earlier in another episode about how the Southern Baptists had held their convention in Salt Lake City the year I was leaving on my mission.

I had this sense that the Southern Baptists didn't like us. I remember the first Easter that Angela and I were together, I wrote an email to my future mother-in-law to make that case. Easter Sunday is coming. We both celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. I know there's some doctrinal differences between us, but I think this is a time when we can come together as a family and celebrate together.

I don't remember exactly how I worded it, but that was what I was going for. I just had this desire to be accepted by other Christians. It's funny, but at the same time I was fully in missionary mode when I was at work. I told everybody at work that I was a Mormon every chance I got.

I'd give away copies of the Book of Mormon to co-workers. When I transferred to a different division within my company in 2006, I remember talking to somebody and mentioning that I was a Latter-day Saint. Then they told someone else in the company that I hadn't met yet that I was a Latter-day Saint. A guy came around to my cubicle and was like, hey, we do this Mormon scripture study every Wednesday morning.

If you want to come in a little early, we'll do that. It's just interesting that there's this group of Mormons doing their thing at the company I was working for. I remember one time in a business meeting, we were doing introductions going around the table.

Business meeting, your introduction should be focused on what's important, what your role is within the company, that kind of thing. I remember introducing myself and saying, yeah, I'm a Mormon, but I only have one wife. I think about that now, and it's so cringey. It was really awkward. It was really awkward because what does that have to do with what I was doing at work?

Nothing. It was such a part of who I was that I was like, everybody's thinking about us, so I've got to make a joke about it. It just ended up being really awkward.

Yeah. Michael, what about you? By the time I left my mission, I definitely viewed myself as being Mormon. I really couldn't separate myself from that identity. I wanted to pretend that I could separate myself from that identity because I would constantly just feel like I didn't belong in the culture.

I think that was just a huge part for several years after the mission. I just kind of felt like I didn't belong for whatever reason, but I did love the doctrine. In a sense, I kind of felt like, you know how in the church you call everybody your brother or your sister because we're all children of God, but in a sense, I felt like I was sort of just their half-brother. Eventually, the ward that I was in started to view me as kind of being a really good speaker and being the smart guy. They wanted me to give presentations, especially after I published my first book, A Biblical Defense of Mormonism. They wanted me to present, and people would ask me questions a lot more in church and things, so it kind of softened that blow. I felt a little bit more like I'd been accepted by the ward. I guess once that happened, I was pretty much content to be Mormon in every single way. As you know, Paul, what that led to was basically me using a huge swath of my time defending the church.

I did that online for the most part, and you got to see that. I'm sorry that you had to deal with me as a Latter-day Saint apologist. You were one of the better ones to deal with, for sure.

Just your personality and the way you handle yourself with people. It was not like dealing with some other LDS apologists at all. It's really interesting for me now to interact with LDS apologists. I do see a difference with the personality that they have as opposed to what I had, but I do think that their conviction runs just as deep as mine did. The difference with me is that I think I just learned to play a part or to be more polite about it and almost act like I was open to the idea or that I was open to something else being true so that I'd come off as being more fair and unbiased.

But deep down inside, I really believed that even if the whole church fell apart and there was just a few of us left, I would be one of those select few, that nothing on earth was going to separate me from the church. So that's how entrenched I was with it. I probably spent every waking moment during those years just thinking about arguments that people had made and just trying to think about every single angle and how can I come up with something to beat this argument. And I remember I was actually, this is something I was really proud of at the time, but I was debating Rob Bowman Jr. in one of the forums and he ended up kind of having to tell me like, look, Michael, just because you're creative doesn't mean that what you're defending is true. And I totally took that as, you know, being like, oh, like he's basically admitting that I'm right. Oh, wow.

Like he's backing down from the fight because he can't take me. That's awesome. Have you talked to him about that since? No. No, but I was such a brat. I mean, I just look back at myself. I'm like, what the crap, Michael? I think so highly of myself.

I don't know. But I remember speaking of Robert Bowman Jr., I think he's awesome, by the way. I'm just going to throw that disclaimer out there right now, because there's this secret group on Facebook with all the Mormon apologists, you know, it's called Anti-Mormonism Unveiled, but you basically talk about all the anti-Mormons there and kind of make fun of them and their arguments is pretty much what it's for. And I was like, hey, guys, did you know that there's a biblical prophecy about Robert Bowman? And they're like, what are you talking about? You know, so I pull up the Genesis account where Joseph is blessing his son Ephraim. And as former Latter-day Saints, I'm sure you remember this blessing because you basically take it to me and like, oh, his branches run over the wall, you know, like, oh, he's going across the ocean and that's the Nephites, his descendants. But it says that the archers have shot at him sorely and hated him.

And I said, guys, what's another word for archers? Oh, that's good. Yeah, they're like, oh my gosh, you're so brilliant, Michael.

And I just ate it up. And I'm like, yep, see? He's an anti-Mormon, just like Genesis said that he would be. Are you still in that group, by the way? I'm not. No, I was kind of hiding out in there for a while, but I eventually outed myself. And I'm like, yeah, I guess I'm an anti-Mormon out there. Like, wait, what? You are?

Like, get out of here. So I've heard you reference that group before, but not by name, just as the secret, you know, LDS apologists group. And so it's interesting that you mentioned the name. Because I was brought into a group like right when I was leaving the church. So it would have been like 2009, 2010 timeframe and I was probably still in and I was brought into a group with that name. I don't know if it's the original or if it's another one that somebody started.

Because the one I was in just seemed to be one person posting a bunch of stuff, right? It was, what was, what did he go by? You know him, Vicente.

Vicente de la Paz. Yeah. So I don't know if it was, I don't know if he like started his own where he just made lists or if that was the actual group. But I was invited into that group by him and was in there for a while. That's different?

That's a different group. Yeah. Okay. So I never was in the super secret.

Okay. I'm sorry. I thought I was part of something. This is like the eagle's nest all over again, man. I feel bad now.

I should have just let you live that delusion. But it's like, this is like the one time ever in my life that I've been able to be like, oh, I was part of a secret exclusive club and you weren't. You know, besides the chess club or something. But, but yeah, well, I was in that group too. I mean, that's when, you know, there's this, there's this huge secret plot. So a lot of us were members of this debate group called Mormons and evangelicals at the time. And we just didn't like the way that the admins were treating us. We felt like it was like we were being attacked all the time and, and people started kind of talking in there about taking over the group.

So, you know, where that where that's heading, because, you know, they kind of started talking to me. I was an admin in the group already, but I kind of had left because I'm like, you know what, like, I think I was starting to have a little bit of a faith crisis. I was like, this probably isn't a good place for me to be.

So like, peace out. But then I found myself drawn back. And I couldn't explain why. But I'm like, I kind of want to be back in that group where everybody's constantly attacking the church. And I don't know if it was just, you know, morbid curiosity or what, but I ended up going back in the group and one of the other admins added me as an admin again without really telling the owner that he did it. And since I wasn't official, I kind of had this rebel mindset anyway. I'm like, oh, I'm like this renegade admin now, like, how fun. And so they started talking about taking over that that group and they started kind of telling me like, oh, the owner's M.I.A. Like, nobody's seen him in forever and we need to get rid of all the admins and clean house and make it, you know, so it's more fair for us, Latter-day Saints. And I totally bought into it because I'm like, oh, my gosh, like, I can't have them attacking my tribe when I have the power to do something about it. And so, yeah, I went in one day and I kicked out all the other admins, which, you know, is funny because I own a group now, Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints. By the way, I made that group when I was LDS and it was totally a knockoff of Mormons and Evangelicals to get people to join my group instead of that one.

So it was very kind of a bitter thing to do. So the owner shows up asking for his group back. I'm like, oh, my gosh, he's not M.I.A.

Like, he's not deceased. Like, he's really here and he wants his group back. So I gave it back to him. And oh, my goodness, the LDS people in that secret group, they were having a heyday over what I did.

They're just like, oh, my gosh, this is the best thing that's ever happened on the Internet, you know, which I put D. Lawrence Barksdale as my admin, which is crazy. But, you know, I ended up giving it back. And they ended up kicking out, like, a lot of the Latter-day Saints in that group. But I was really surprised because I was expecting them to give me the boot, too, and they kept me there.

They never booted me out of the group and they all just basically forgave me. And I was like, wow, you know, I wasn't expecting that. And I think as a Latter-day Saint, when you're dealing with Christians, you kind of test them, you know, try to drive them crazy so that they react, like, aggressively almost so that you can say, like, oh, you're not, you guys aren't Christian.

You know, you're not acting like a Christian. But they totally just, you know, turned the other cheek and they accepted me. And I was like, man, you know, I almost feel like these guys are my clan right now more than the Latter-day Saints are. And it was such a turning point for me because it just made me really respect Christians. And it just, you know, I think it could have gone the other way if they'd just been really bitter towards me. But they just didn't.

I mean, they just forgave me so openly. So that was a big change for me, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I want to address an elephant that might be in the room. If Latter-day Saints, if there's any Latter-day Saints listening, you know, we've talked a lot about how the LDS church and LDS culture has a kind of focus on Mormon distinctives that set Latter-day Saints apart. And there's a sense in which we've each kind of described this tribe mentality, right? The Latter-day Saints were our people.

We were part of that group. We saw ourselves as set apart, as special, right, as part of the Lord's army and all of that kind of stuff. But I think there's a sense in which tribe mentality can also affect Christians of various denominational affiliations. Would you say that's fair to say, Matthew?

Yeah, I would say that's the case. The thing is I don't have personally a lot of experience visiting different denominations myself, just because I spent almost a year studying everything out before I decided to go to the church that I attend now. I was attending two churches for a while, but I don't really have a huge spectrum of churches where I've been to and talked to people.

But talking to people online, you do see that there is kind of a tribal mentality to an extent, and it can be either small, you know, it can be, it's an entire, there's a whole gamut of how it ranges in terms of the tribal mentality. I think in Christianity, we've spoken previously about how there are these core doctrines, these core values and ideals that all of Christianity, all Christians, they can rally behind. We have the early creeds like the Apostles' Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed, where all Orthodox Christians, not Orthodox in terms of Eastern Orthodox, but within the realm of Christian orthodoxy, we all rally behind these creeds or the doctrines within those creeds. And so there is something that ties us all together, but at the same time, I do feel like there's this kind of friendly rivalry between denominations, and I try to keep it friendly and, you know, not too serious. I think it's okay to debate these types of things, and you'll see a lot of Christian debates about baptism, you'll see Christian debates about gifts of the Spirit, about worship, you know, church structure, like all these different aspects of church life and Christian life will debate. And naturally, when you've studied the Scriptures and you've studied out the arguments, and you've come to the conclusion that you feel is biblical, and you want to unite with the denomination that lines up with how you view Scripture, you feel, at least I can understand the feeling of feeling like you're at home and feeling like this is the way that we're supposed to view Scripture on these particulars, and I feel like this is true, and that's why I'm lining up with this denomination.

But it also requires a lot of humility to recognize, you know, I don't know for certain if I'm right on all these issues. We really have to humble ourselves and remember that, and remember that what matters is in Christ. But yeah, you do see kind of rivalries, some friendly, some not so friendly between the denominations and the distinctives, and sometimes it can get ugly, and I really don't like it. Especially because I go to a Reformed Baptist church, we feel very strongly about what's commonly called, you know, Tulip, the Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, there's different names for it, but the soteriological view of Reformed Baptists and similar denominations like Reformed Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, etc. So we feel very passionately about these distinctives or this view of Scripture and how God sovereignly decrees all things for his glory and choosing his people to glorify himself and his mercy and his love and demonstrate that in the world. We feel very passionately about that because we feel it's God's truth, and I think whenever you find something to be true and something to be important, something that you hold close to your chest, you're going to be passionate about it, and when you find someone that disagrees with you, I think it's natural to find that you get into conflict with them to a certain degree. So yeah, there can be a tribal mentality, and so I am one to try to, I don't know if I always do it, but if I have a brother that's Reformed and we're criticizing someone's arguments on the other side, I try to think about this and step back and say, okay, we've got to remember we're all in Christ. There are men that I disagree with firmly about certain things and certain ways they teach certain things. I won't mention their names specifically, but they're public figures, and they go vehemently against the doctrines of grace and the Reformed theology, and I have real problems with them. But I also recognize that they don't really believe anything that's downright heretical.

They accept the deity of Christ, they believe in the triune God, they affirm that we're saved by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone. So even though we disagree on these things, I have to recognize that he's my brother in Christ and that I need to love him as a fellow brother. But we don't always do that. We're sinful beings even after being justified. We make mistakes, and we can be taken over by pride at times, and we also get shortsighted. We're still humans.

We still think our way is the best way, and it's hard sometimes for us to put ourselves in other people's shoes and understand their situation or their understanding or their walk with the Lord. So it's a really long answer. I hope that addresses it, but yeah, basically too long to read yes. No, that's really good. That's really good. Michael, how would you address that elephant in the room? Well, you know, I was just thinking about back when I was an LDS apologist, one of my favorite tactics to use, especially if I started getting painted into a corner, was to find something to make the Christians argue with each other. And it was really effective. Oh, you were that guy.

I could be, yeah. I remember there was one time where I got two people in my forum to debate, probably for a couple of hours. And I was back in that secret group, and we were just lounging around like, okay, who's making the popcorn?

Basically, we just won because we're making them argue with themselves. And I had an experience like that in real life too, because after that first discussion I had with Ed Enochs, I ended up going back there and talking to them a couple more times. And I went over one time, now Ed was reformed. And one day I went over there and he had a Greek scholar with him, a Christian. And so he was all happy because he's like, we're going to set you straight now. And so they started talking and they started telling me about predestination.

And I'm like, okay, so I grabbed this whiteboard and I kind of drew a mark on it and threw the marker down like, you know, real chaotically. And I'm like, was that predestined? And they both answered at the same time, but they answered differently. One of them said yes and the other said no. And so then they looked at each other and they started arguing with each other for, you know, a couple of minutes.

I mean, they're just going at it. And then, you know, they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, like, the Mormons are here, you know, and then they stopped, you know, and like kind of repositioned themselves. So it just all that stuff really reinforced the notion that, you know, there was a great apostasy and the church is fractured and, you know, it's not a cohesive unit anymore. Now, after coming out of the church and seeing things from my new point of view, I do have to say it doesn't look like it's as fractured to me as I thought it did when I was a Latter-day Saint because, you know, there are these unifying doctrines. And for the most part, I feel like, you know, people on the different sides of the divide do view each other as Christian, you know, and it's not a deal breaker.

It's like, yeah, it can get heated. But at the same time, I realize now that, you know, debate is a lot more of a Christian cultural thing than it was a Mormon cultural thing. Because when I was Mormon, I saw people debating, I'm like, oh my gosh, it's, you know, they're contending in anger, you know, this is the devil's, you know, they're servants of the devil or whatever. And now I'm like, no, this is just a normal thing that people do.

And I do think it can get a little bit heated and like Matthew said, there can be some tribalism, you know, and it's like, you know, I have some Calvinists in my family. And it's like, I just got out of the church and they'd be asking me, you know, all the time, like, so have you become a Calvinist yet? You know, and I'm just like, really?

Like, give me some time, guys. I just left, you know, the church. So I would just kind of like give a comeback. Like, I don't know if you asked God about it, you know, something like that. So, yeah, sometimes I just feel like, you know, people are just trying to drag you into a certain position or something like that. And it's like, you know, I think I'm in the spot now where, you know, I've said in the past that I would never be Protestant, that I would never leave the church and things like that.

And it seems like every time I say I'll never do something, it ends up happening. So at this point, I just say, you know, I don't know what the future is going to bring. You know, I may become Calvinist someday. I may become any number of things.

I don't know. But I'm pretty accepting of any position. You know, as long as somebody is indeed a Christian and they hold to the Orthodoxy, you know, Christian Orthodoxy, then yeah, it doesn't really matter to me.

Yeah. Yeah, I threw this question in because, you know, we're talking today about identity and that really goes to, as we've been talking about, a person's sense of self and how they feel about themselves, you know, the view they have of their beliefs, their values, everything. So I know a lot of times as a Latter-day Saint, you know, I internalized the way other, the way Christian denominations would interact with Latter-day Saints. And I took that at times as a personal attack because I, as I said before, I wanted to be, I wanted to be Mormon and have those distinctives.

But I also wanted to be accepted within the broader river of Christianity. And you see that a lot talking to Mormons online where, you know, the question will come up, why can't you just accept that we're Christian? And, you know, the debate rages and goes on and on about are Mormons Christians? How do you define what a Christian is and is not?

That kind of thing. And so I wanted to throw this question in because, you know, a lot of times you'll see the argument made by Latter-day Saints. Oh, you know, Protestantism is so fractured.

There's 46,000 or how many ever, you know, whatever number they're throwing out these days, you know, denominations. None of you are aligned. And, you know, there's this sense in which they feel like, I think that, hey, we've got some distinctives. You have some distinctives. Why can't you just accept us as Christian?

Right. And, you know, Matthew, you touched on it. We're not aligned on the essentials. And that's where there is alignment between, you know, Christian denominations with each other and there is not alignment with Christian denominations and Mormonism. But I did want to throw this question in there because I think it's fair to say, you know, hey, you know, tribal mentality can affect Christians of various denominational affiliations. I remember when I was coming out of Mormonism and into Christian church, an independent Christian church that's affiliated with the American Restoration Movement. I remember going to a Sunday morning Bible study and one of the elders at our church was in the class and another of the elders at the church was leading the Bible study. And they, you know, there was a discussion going on and I could kind of sense like the church was going through a transition in lead pastors.

Right? The guy who had been leading the church for a lot of years, I think like 30 years, was retiring and a new young lead pastor was kind of taking over right at the time when we were coming in. And so there was that transition taking place, but there was also, you know, kind of like a cultural shift taking place, which you learn kind of sometimes happens when there's a change in pastors. But I could kind of sense that there was maybe a shift taking place away from some distinctives towards a more evangelical stance because within that Bible study, that one Sunday morning, the one elder was asking the other about some of the distinctives of the Restoration Movement. Like, you know, there being a view of, you know, that comes from, you know, broader Protestantism of there having been a great apostasy and baptism by immersion, you know, as being the proper method for baptism. And some of the other distinctives and just kind of making the case that some of those distinctives seem to be taking a back burner and kind of where does that leave, you know, the church.

And there was a discussion going on and I kind of felt like an outsider listening in because I was new, but I was also fascinated because I was trying to understand what, you know, what was being talked about. And then as I went on to study in seminary, you know, I read books, you know, like Evangelicalism and the Restoration Movement where it was kind of became clear to me, there were a couple of books like that. And it kind of became clear to me that, you know, kind of late 90s, early 2000s, maybe there was a focus on kind of a shift towards a more evangelical stance within some Restoration Movement churches. And I asked a trusted pastor friend of mine about this this morning because I wanted to get his take on it because he grew up in the American Restoration Movement churches.

And he said, yeah, like when he was a youngster, like there was definitely a more of a focus on Restoration Movement distinctives than there is today. And I kind of have been wondering and thinking about this question, you know, if it's not maybe just a product of Mormonism because we've talked a lot about how the LDS church instills its distinctives in young people, children. And I kind of wondered if that wasn't just a product of Mormonism, but maybe a product of early to mid 20th century approaches to denominationalism within the US. And then maybe since, you know, the rise of modern Evangelicalism, since the Jesus Movement of the 1960s, that maybe that, you know, more broadly within Christianity from a sociological perspective has kind of shifted.

And I think that's probably the case. But like I said, I wanted to ask this question and throw it out there so that any Latter-day Saints listening, you know, won't feel like we're saying, hey, you know, the fact that Latter-day Saints focus on distinctives. And we all kind of had this feeling like we were Mormon.

It was a part of our identity that that's nefarious in some way because I don't think it is. But I thought it was fair just to throw this question in there. I had a thought when you were talking, but then I lost it again. I swear I'm getting old, guys. I'm sorry. Give me a second. Please don't say that if you're... Grand Matthew.

That does not have the same flow to it. Grand Ma Thew. Grand Paul and Grand Ma Thew. Is that kind of like Grand Moff Tarkin? Yep.

As long as he's not CGI. Well, yeah, it was just talking about distinctives. There's one quote that I really like from Spurgeon.

First I was going to share that and I clicked out of it and I lost it. Okay. So Charles Spurgeon, he is a reformed Baptist pastor in England. It's funny because he's quoted by many Baptists and they don't even know he's Calvinist.

So when they find that out, it's kind of a surprise. But anyway, it's a short quote and I've said it before, but it's one I really enjoy. He says, I do not ask you whether you are a Wesleyan, a Baptist, or a Presbyterian. My only question is, are you born again? And I thought it was a good quote to reiterate just because I think it summed up a lot of what we've all been saying is that I think Christianity is... Well, it's interesting because I think Christianity as a whole really needs a second reformation in the sense that we need to go back to biblical doctrine because so much of it is straying away from that.

And at the same time, but at the same time not sacrificing, not watering down the gospel or watering down scripture, if you see what I mean. I don't know if you guys know, you guys probably know C.S. Lewis more than I do. I've only read a little bit of some of his works. But he wrote the book on mere Christianity and I hear what other people say about it.

I haven't read it myself, but kind of this idea of saying we need to boil it down to the basics. We need to go back to this core of Christianity and that's what we need to focus on. And I was thinking about that and wondering if that ties into what you were saying, Paul, about the sociological shift in terms of how we view each denomination and how we share the gospel. Because I wouldn't call Joseph Smith a liar when he said that all those people back in the 19th century were fighting over each other over the topic of religion. I believe that was certainly the case.

They called it the burned-over district for a reason. So we can't just push that under the rug and say, oh no, Christians have always gotten along, we've never fought, everything's been great. Yeah, exactly.

That's the elephant in the room, right? The three of us on the podcast, we talk about how we have Christian unity between us and we do. You and I, Matthew and Michael, we don't agree on everything and we found that out as we talk.

But we talk and we view each other as brothers in Christ and we treat each other with grace and try to have an approach towards one another that's humble. And I just wanted to make the point that, yeah, I recognize that maybe earlier in the last century there was more of a focus within denominations on distinctives and maybe that's fading a little bit. But that doesn't mean that we give up biblical principles, as you said, and that doesn't mean we give up the essentials. So just a nod to any Latter-day Saints that may be listening that, yeah, there probably has been some disagreement. But the essentials have always been part of the faith and not just since they were enumerated at the beginning of the 20th century as part of the fundamentalist movement. Even before that, the essentials were part of the Christian faith.

And if I can just jump in here, too, because I mean, what that really brings to my mind is having some differences is a really positive thing, if you ask me, because I can see some of the different thought processes and I think that they're good for different people. And when I was in the church, it was a one size fits all. And if you didn't completely agree with something, then it was just a nightmare being in the church. So I think it's great to have that freedom to belong to a denomination that fits your beliefs and your personality even, and to still be part of the body of Christ.

Yeah, good. So as you made your faith transition, did you experience a disturbance in your sense of self? And if so, what was that like? So, you know, earlier, Paul, you said you were kind of talking about that song, I'm a child of God. And that was one of the things that just gave me my sense of identity to growing up is, you know, I'm a literal child of God and all the things that that entailed, you know, it meant like my father told me when I was when I was young, you know, as a literal child of God, I had the potential to become a God myself one day. And I always thought that that was really cool. I thought that that brought me closer to God.

I'm like, oh, well, I'm his literal child. But as time went on, and as I came closer to my faith crisis, and I think what really brought me into it was studying grace and trying to answer the impossible gospel approach, which says, you know, that if we're not perfect, then we are not worthy of grace. And so I was trying to be worthy and I was really watching myself and I was seeing that I was not, that I wasn't perfect, I wasn't even close to it. And I wasn't getting closer to it every day, like a lot of Latter-day Saints claim that they are. And because of that, you know, I was also kind of looking back and it was really far and few between whenever I would receive revelation from God or feel like the Spirit was talking to me. And so I really felt like I was a child of God, but I was an estranged child of God. It's like, yeah, by blood, I'm his child, but because I'm not worthy, he doesn't want to have anything to do with me or talk to me.

I just didn't feel worthy of that distinction most of the time. And then when I started going through the faith crisis, you know, I started to really question my identity because it was completely wrapped up in the church. I mean, I think I've talked about it before, but I would just, I'd wake up having panic attacks and just not knowing where I was or, you know, what year it was almost. Just like I'd wake up thinking that, you know, I'm still Mormon or I'm going to get sucked back into the church. So it's just I guess unraveling the, you know, I want to say mind control, but maybe that's not the appropriate word to use. But just everything that had been tied into the church in my mind. I remember calling my pastor even a year after I left the church, I have issues trying to piece my identity back together and ended up calling my pastor.