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- [00:00]
Sarah Perkins Sabie
Hi, this is Sarah Perkins Sabie, one of the authors of the Bible Storybook. We're so excited to have partnered with Faith Matters to bring you beautifully told Scripture stories as a podcast that you can listen to with your kids and share with your friends and family. We're making half of the stories available completely free, is a podcast called Scripture Stories for Little Saints, and the other half are available to donors and friends of Faith Matters as a thank you for your financial support that makes this collaboration possible. If you have trouble accessing them, you can email faith matters@infoaithmatters.org and they'll be happy to help. Thank you so much for your generous and ongoing support. We're so excited to share these stories with you and can't wait for you to hear them. Now, on to the podcast.
- [00:46]
Aubrey Chavez
Hey, everybody. This is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. Today we're joined by our friend Patrick Mason and filmmaker Robert Reynolds. Rob is the director and producer of a new docu series called An Inconvenient Faith. It's a project that is already opening hearts and starting some long overdue conversations. This series is raw and honest, and it takes on some of the most difficult and tender topics in our faith tradition. Things like women and authority, LGBTQ belonging, race in the priesthood, and lots more. It brings together voices from across the spectrum. People who have stayed and who are still engaging these issues, and people who have decided to step away. But all of them have one thing in common. They've wrestled with these big questions with their whole hearts. And for many of us, this is going to hit close to home. These aren't abstract issues. This is about our families and our friends and our wards. And so it can be hard to hear a story that challenges your own. But Rob explains that his intention here is to help us love better, to help us listen longer and more generously. It's a glimpse into the inner wrestle of people that you may know and love, to remind us that behind every decision is a real human being. And behind these questions is a heart that wants to do what's right. This episode is for anyone who loves someone who has landed in a different place in their faith. If you're looking for peace, for more trust, and for more compassion in the middle of complexity, we think that you'll find something meaningful here. We're so grateful to Rob and Patrick for showing us what that can look like. And with that, we'll jump right in.
- [02:05]
Tim
All right, well, Rob and Patrick, welcome. Welcome back. Patrick and Rob, it's so great to finally meet you in Person. We're just honored to have you on to talk about an inconvenient faith. So thanks for being here.
- [02:16]
Patrick Mason
Yeah, of course.
- [02:17]
Robert Reynolds
Nervous, anxious. But you guys have a great podcast, and I feel strongly the need to get this out there, so.
- [02:24]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
Oh, thank you. Well, thank you for doing it.
- [02:26]
Robert Reynolds
Yeah.
- [02:26]
Tim
It means a lot that you would say yes. I'd love to, actually. I expect that a lot of people in the audience will have watched the whole series already, so we're excited to be able to kind of dig into this, the genesis of the project and what you were hoping it would become and how it has evolved over time. And I know that this has been such a long time coming. So how did the idea come about and what were you sort of imagining for it?
- [02:48]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
So.
- [02:51]
Robert Reynolds
A couple things. So how it came about. It started during the filming of Believer, a documentary featuring my brother Dan and on LGBT issues. And there started to. I started to get this. This feeling or impression from edits that the film was suggesting people couldn't be a good Mormon and disagree with the church on something. And I. I just thought that we need to model more and see more members in that space. That's one part. Other part of it is, at the same time, I had two experiences that really hit me hard. One is a close family member felt the need to. To leave the church. He felt that certain doctrines were harmful and felt that it wasn't moral to belong to the church because. And he was. He was sincere. I really believe he was sincere. That hit me hard. Exact same time, one of my best friends, lifetime member, returned missionary, byu, whole family's members, reads the CES letter and really gets disturbed over certain historical issues, doctrinal issues, things he came across that he couldn't reconcile. And he told me, he said, I don't know how you can be a Mormon and be honest, know these things and be honest. And that was the genesis of this project, is I felt really compelled to go out and film people who have faced these challenges intimately that knew the problems in depth and chose to stay, that reconciled these things. And I didn't want to just know why they did it, but I really wanted to know how they did it. And at the same time, seeing all these people and loved ones leave, I thought that members of the church really need to better understand the seriousness of some of the challenges in our religion in a way that allows us to have more empathy for those who are leaving. I think there's a lot of disrespectful dialogue on all sides of faith and Activity that sometimes is not productive. And this is not a church product. It's not a missionary tool designed to convert people, to get people to join the church. There are better ways to do that. This is not that. This is also not designed to tell people that genuinely feel compelled to leave that they're wrong. That's. It's not an apologetic tool like that. This is to build empathy and understanding for why people leave and to practically demonstrate how others who are fully informed reconcile some of the bigger challenges and stay.
- [05:55]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
And what's the reaction been so far? I know at least, you know, for several weeks it seemed like a lot of, you know, a lot of chatter. I'm curious what. What some of the takeaways have been for you.
- [06:06]
Robert Reynolds
Man, such mixed m. Mixed responses. I can say that people, I. I have people close to me who it's been anecdotally, really helpful for. I spent way too long, way too many years, way too much money doing this thing because I really felt it was needed. I felt there were people like myself who wanted to really understand the issues and know. Know them and know why people were leaving and have a resilient faith. And I know people who have wanted to stay and didn't know how and feel more honest and moral in the way they navigate these waters and stay. So those anecdotal experiences have been very meaningful for me. I also have had people bothered by, on both sides of faith and activity, the guests I have, or things said or not said, which. But honestly, I want to spark conversation. It's not like this ends the conversation, so talk about it. Right. If I hope that people that, that feel the need to see more and learn more on these issues, that it sparks respectful conversation.
- [07:18]
Tim
Thank you so much. I think the sort of authenticity that you. That, like, I can feel right now in the way you're talking about this is really like, that is exactly how this whole series feels. It's just like, oh, wow, they're really just going for it. We're just talking about what feels a little prickly and hard to pin down and, like, scary to say out loud sometimes. And I want to ask you specifically about the participants and how you decided who to invite. But I, I'm curious first. Patrick, I know that you've. You've done for a long time these conversations in your own home with students at Utah State. And, and so I'm. I'm just curious, like, how relevant those two issues feel. Like, can you stay and be moral? Can you stay and be honest? Like, how live are these Are these questions?
- [08:01]
Patrick Mason
Yeah, in. In a lot of ways, I think those are the two questions right now for. For a lot of people who are on, you know, who are. Who are trying to figure this out and who are kind of wrestling with these issues, you know, And I think that's one of the interesting things about the series is that it introduces some of these kind of traditional, kind of historical questions, you know, kind of CES letter type stuff. And those still. Those things still matter. Those are issues that I wrote about, implanted 10 years ago. And we've been having those conversations for a decade, decade and a half, maybe longer. But I think the framing of the questions is just a little sharper and in some ways, I think more urgent now in 2025. And it is around this sense of ethics. So it's not just like, do I have my facts lined up? Although the facts matter. Right. To different people in different ways. But how does this actually resonate with me as a person of conscience? And is this community, is this church going to be a place that develops me as a person of conscience, where I can actually feel honest and feel moral? And obviously, people who stay in the church, including me, feel like the answer to that is a resounding yes. But other people come to different conclusions. And so that's why I admired the way that Robert included people who had come up with different conclusions to those same questions.
- [09:35]
Tim
Yeah, I think that's so much about what I appreciated. And I would love for you to address how you decided who got invited to be in this conversation, because there were. I think there's. There was probably at least one guest who would make every single potential audience member very uncomfortable. Nobody's gonna watch this and just be like, wow, I just love everything everybody offered. So how did you decide what was worth including? What was the goal there?
- [10:02]
Robert Reynolds
I think people figured I was trying to offend everybody, make everybody upset.
- [10:06]
Tim
Yeah.
- [10:07]
Robert Reynolds
And I did see that. So I saw there were people on, you know, there's members that weren't just troubled, that this exposes challenges and difficult issues, which I understand that concern. Close family members shared that concern with me, but not just that, that I was giving airtime to the strongest critics of the church. That. That is certainly. That was. That's upsetting to some people. On the same time, there are people who have left the church that this is for also equally who are bothered that I've got Patrick Mason on there explaining how to reconcile things that they feel are irreconcilable and even triggering for some the way that some people, you know, navigate these waters and stay and you feel compelled to leave. It makes you second guess on either side of it, you know, And I think it's. I think it's definitely made people uncomfortable, and I think that that discomfort is necessary. So I chose people that I felt were honest and respectful. Well, chose them and of course, encouraged and fostered that dialogue and edited accordingly. I think. I think we wanted to show respectful, non defensive, non argumentative people on that come at these issues differently that. That also. That face the most intimately. Right. That was. That's what it's all about is I was tempted to interview. Let's just interview Joe on the street Mormon and how they deal with these things. And that's great. That's just not what this is. This is people who, you know. You think I know how much you know the issues of Joe Smith and polygamy. Well, Richard Bushman knows more. So Richard Bushman, you tell us you've read everything Joe Smith has ever written. How do. What do you think about Joseph Smith and the plates and translation and polygamy? And how do you stay when you know these problems and, you know, John Gustav Rathal, you know, I, I think I've got compassion for someone who is LGBT and goes to church. You go to church and you've been married to a man for nearly 30 years. How you face these challenges way more directly than I do. How do you do this? And so they're all people that, that know the issues as a scholar or a professor or an apologist, for lack of a better word, very well or, Or a critic of the church who is also very informed, knows these issues very well and can speak to those issues well so that we don't whitewash them, so that we present them in fair and. And in their full strength and address them honestly.
- [12:53]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
I, yeah, you mentioned that that discomfort that might arise is you. You think necessary. I also think to some extent it's unavoidable in the, you know, in our day and age. Like, I think this, in many ways, this represents the variety of viewpoints that show up around our extended family gatherings, dinner tables, in a lot of ways. And I think the trap that we often fall into, and I'm, you know, I'm a part of just, you know, a couple of families, not everyone's, but like, is it just doesn't get discussed. And that's not really a way to. To move a relationship forward in a lot of ways. And so I think there was some modeling here that was really. That was really important. I am curious for, from either of you, what your take might be on how we can start to create spaces in our own families and our own. In our own circles where people can sort of like, freely discuss these issues without, you know, without getting too defensive or without, you know, wanting to shut down the other, other side.
- [13:49]
Patrick Mason
I think the, you know, the key is, is really to recognize. Well, I'll put it this way. It's to not reduce people to positions. It's really easy for us to do that and to forget that there are really people who hold those different positions. And this is. We talk about it all the time. But it's true that I'm not sure that very many people would have a social media algorithm that would expose them to all of the voices that were featured in this docuseries. Your algorithm probably takes you to some of these voices, but probably not all of them. And I think this is just where we need to be so much more intentional than we often are. Not let our algorithms dictate everything for us, but actually show some curiosity about the humanity of the other side. That doesn't mean you have to be infinitely curious, right. And sort of never land on anything yourself. I don't think that's what it means. But at least these are, you know, the kinds of voices that Robert curated here. Now, you may seriously disagree with some of those people, but these are not people who have taken their positions on a whim. Right? These are not people who have staked out a public Persona around these issues just because they woke up in the morning and read their Twitter feed and then decided to do something. And so, yeah, this is a serious conversation. I just think that in our community, and this has broader application for politics and for other kinds of things, but it's just getting outside of our silos. Just listening to each other doesn't mean you have to agree, but at least to listen long enough and seriously enough to recognize that these are real human beings out there who have real reasons for believing the things that they do.
- [16:05]
Robert Reynolds
I think it's thinking about conversations with family and friends, and I imagine if I had one of my younger brothers broke his leg and he's in pain. It's easy for me to say, you know, tell me about your pain, right? How does it hurt? And. And, you know, And. And talk about it. But there's a lot of pain in wrestling with some of these issues for people. And it's not quite the same on. On one level, we want to want to hear and understand the perspective, but somehow it's threatening to our own. At times, our faith maybe feels too fragile. And so these conversations, we feel a need to be defensive or you're afraid what you might learn or what you might hear or what it pulls up in yourself. And. And you don't want to be challenged in these areas. In a church that means so much to you, your faith and activity means so much to you, and you don't want. I mean, I selfishly don't want my friends and family to leave. I don't. I can be honest about that. I miss them in the second hour. I love them and want them to be where I am. And at the same time, you know, I. These are real challenges. It's a complicated. Religion is complicated. Faith is complicated. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is complicated in doctrine and policy and history. And we have different. It's hard. And so we need to, like, have the conversations in a way that is way more empathetic and loving and respectful, knowing that our lives are long, infinity's long, you know, eternity's long. Be, you know, be loving and patient with each other.
- [17:45]
Tim
I would love for you to both address that specifically, because I think that what's complicated in these conversations is that probably deep down we have some sort of feeling of responsibility. Like, we need to convince this. This person we love to see this the way we do. And, like, how do you think about the way you show up in a relationship with someone who has decided something different?
- [18:11]
Robert Reynolds
You want to go, Patrick?
- [18:15]
Patrick Mason
Yeah. I think my responsibility towards them is. Is twofold. I think one is to be as honest about who I am as I can. I think I owe them that. If I love them and they love me, and then my second responsibility is to do them the favor of giving them space to be the exact same way with me. And I think that's what love is. I mean, there's lots of definitions of one of love, but one definition that I like is that, you know, love is. Is being mindful and paying attention to what is needed and required of the other person. Right. Not what you think is needed and required for them, but what, you know, taking care of their needs and being mindful of that. So I think I do have a responsibility to show up in ways and to speak with whatever kind of truth that I've settled on in this moment, recognizing that we're all. It's just a snapshot in time. One of the things. Of course, when Robert dropped the videos, I immediately went and scanned through all of them to see my face. Because I'm horribly vain. But, but mostly to. To check, do I. What did I say? And do I still believe it? Because he actually filmed me several years ago. And to. To my great relief, yes, I do still believe all those things. But, but, but I think that's. I think that's a responsibility that we have to each other is to actually be honest with each other about what. What we believe. Not in any kind of overbe, but. But in a way of this is who I am. And now, now share with me who you are. And the relationship that we have is going to be big enough and have enough space for. For both of those things.
- [20:35]
Tim
Yeah. Thank you.
- [20:37]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
How about you, Rob?
- [20:38]
Robert Reynolds
I think maybe another thing to add is humility. No matter how strong my faith is at any time, it's very unique to me. And, you know, as Latter Day Saints, we're what, 1/10 of 1% of the world? And I often think that loving spiritual parents surely don't give all the good stuff to only 1/10 of 1%. I think there are other good things that people are receiving all over the world and in many different ways and many different ways within faith and activity of this church as well. And if we say it's a still small voice, you don't want to drown out somebody's still small voice with too much noise. You need to respect them and love them. And absolutely, Patrick's right. Be honest. Don't. Don't shy away from. You know, if someone asks, what do you believe and why do you believe it? And they want to hear, yeah, you know, you. You share with them, and hopefully it's helpful, but you also listen to them, and hopefully that's helpful, too.
- [21:47]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
Yeah, I'd love to get a little bit into some questions that have come up for us around apologetics, in part because if you were to scam through the titles of the episodes, you would see the Book of Mormon and race and LGBTQ issues and various other things, and you could take away from that, that this is going to be apologetic in some way. I mean, really, whether on one side or the other, and, you know, as part of my own faith journey, apologetics played a pretty important role early on. At least it seemed important at the time. You guys mentioned at the beginning that, you know, these questions are for many people revolving around, you know, whether the church is true and whether the church is good and, you know, whether you can be honest and whether you can be moral and be a part of it. And I think the first question for me was whether the church was true, you know, whether the church was good came a little bit later. But when I first experienced what I still consider to be a faith crisis, it was around truth claims. And I was deep, as deep as you could get in those fair Mormon articles. You know, just like trying to convince myself that the things that I'd always thought were true were in fact true. That seemed, that seemed to be a very high stakes question for me. And so I guess I want to ask you both, maybe just to start out in, in this area of apologetics, like, to what extent, to what extent do you think, you know, for someone who, for someone who has the church, you know, the church's best interests at heart, or that would like for other people to stay, to what extent do you think apologetics is, is a tool worth using? How helpful do you think the practice of apologetics is? Does it get us out to the right questions? I guess.
- [23:40]
Robert Reynolds
Can you define apologetics? I know that sounds really stupid, but.
- [23:43]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
I think that, yeah, Patrick, you might have a formal definition, but to me, apologetics are formal defense of the faith, often engaging very particular questions with very specific and rational arguments.
- [24:00]
Robert Reynolds
I think defensive defense makes sense, but defensiveness maybe isn't the best posture.
- [24:08]
Patrick Mason
I was thinking. A few weeks ago, we, we tuned into a preacher from a local church here in Cache Valley who was giving a sermon, and we just kind of tuned in as a family. We didn't know what he was going to be talking about. We just tuned in to the service that day online, and he ended up giving a sermon about basically religion and science, which is, that's kind of like a classic category for apologetics, right? You know, faith and reason and religion and science. And he gave what was a pretty good sermon, marshaling a lot of reasoned and rational evidence for why there's a God and why it's reasonable to believe that there's a God. And talking about the complexity of the universe. I mean, he kind of went through a handful of sort of, kind of classic philosophical arguments for the existence of God, and he did it compellingly. And we were sitting around and my teenagers who were watching, they said that was awesome. They said, we've never heard anybody talk like that at church. And in fact, our daughter specifically said like, you know, it's just like people in the ward like, getting up and like, talking about like their, their, their lives and their stories and, and, and stuff. And, and like this guy like went and like did some research and like, you know, and, and, and she was, she was very compelled by, I mean, he was Doing like classic apologetics with like a capital A. And, and for her, as a totally convincing, I mean, it was to me too. Again, I knew those arguments, but he reinforced a lot of things that I really believed. So on the one hand, she saw something that was really valuable there, but then it also, her comment opened it up for us to say, well, why is it that in our church we have people just like our neighbors get up and talk about their experiences and bear testimony. Now all she's ever heard her whole life is just like people bearing testimony. So that just, you know, sometimes a little emotional and it's like, based on life experience. It's kind of anecdotal. So, so, so for her that just seems so normal and, but, but, but the conversation and, and, and not fully satisfying because she wanted this sort of reasonable part of it as, as well that she doesn't hear in sacrament meeting. And so it was actually a great opportunity for us to talk about, like these are both ways to, to, to talk about your faith, right? Your neighbor, your young women's leader, your primary teacher. Right? Getting up and talking about what God has done for them in their life. That is every bit as compelling and convincing as this guy making a philosophical argument about the existence of God. It's just in a different way. Right. And so I like Robert's thing, you know, defense without defensiveness, but defense, you know, and reason can actually look a lot of different ways. And sometimes reason talks about, like, what has God actually done in my life or what are the evidences I see in my life? And that's what we call testimony also.
- [27:26]
Robert Reynolds
It's. We learn by study and by prayer. Right. I was thinking that, you know, what you, there is your heart and your mind should both be engaged in these challenging matters of faith. And apologetics maybe is more focused on the mind.
- [27:42]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
Yeah, yeah, I think it is. And I think that, I think that gets out for me why apologetics have come to play at least, you know, play a lesser role in, you know, my own faith development. And it's some, in some cases have annoyed me just a little bit because I tend, I tend to think now that the key questions that, like the questions of eternal import are actually not the questions that apologetics engages for the most part. These questions of whether the Book of Mormon is true in the sense that Joseph Smith had plates and, you know, it represents a historical artifact or, you know, I mean, I could list 20 others, but like, that's almost a red herring to me and Thomas McConkey in the, in the Intro actually gets at this. In the intro episode where he says, you know, something like those types of questions, you know, whether the Book of Mormon is historical, you know, and, or where somebody comes down on those questions actually tells you very little about a person's, a person's heart. And so maybe, I guess what I see, and feel free to push back on this, but I see it maybe as engaging in, or using apologetics as an important resource maybe is more representative of a, of a stage rather than, rather than something that really gets at these lasting and important and important questions about how we, you know, how we live our faith.
- [29:10]
Robert Reynolds
Maybe the Book of Mormon is a good, like you mentioned that, a great example to use in this category where I think about Moroni's promise, you know, and we're to pray to know if these things are not true or true. And the question is, are we praying to know if the, the, the historical battles in the Book of Mormon were true or to know about those people? You know, I don't think that's what we're praying to find out when we say if we're praying to find out if these things are true. It's the, the gospel of Jesus Christ and those principles that we're praying about as it's embodied in the Book of Mormon. And so, I mean, I really understand the issues of the Book of Mormon translation and historicity. They certainly do matter. But it's also important to step back, you know, like, like you said and like Thomas McConkey said, you know, what really matters is is this book teaching you to be a better person and drawing you closer to God and your neighbor, or is it not?
- [30:15]
Patrick Mason
The band Wilco has a great line in a song where they say, theologians don't know nothing about my soul. And I think that's so right. I say, as a sometimes amateur theologian, that there, there can be so much of the, the spinning and the arguing and the debating and the, And I love that stuff. I actually think, I think there's a. There's a place for it. God gave us a mind as well as a heart. I think a religion that engaged only the heart and not the mind. There's, there's some danger there, too. And, and so I think religion has to engage our whole bodies. Mind, heart, body, hands, feet. All of those different parts have to be fully engaged. And there has to be this kind of balance for it. And so look, some people, and we know that everybody's wired a little bit different way, some people are going to be more attracted to sort of Analytical thinking and sort of rational reasons. So, okay, great. Apologetics are going to work well for them and go do your theology, but don't pretend that that is the limits of the soul. Let's never pretend also that you're going to get to some kind of end point because so much of it is, I think it's really this game and it's about competition, it's about how many dunks can we do on the other side. Right. And there can be a lack of charity now, not always, but there can be a lack of charity. So I think we just always have to check ourselves when we get into that mode. I have to do this for myself for sure. And I guarantee I've gotten it wrong sometimes and I've approached it the wrong way. Not with the spirit of charity, but yeah, let's just not confuse matters of the mind with being sort of whole souled.
- [32:02]
Robert Reynolds
Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things. And so the most important matters of faith you can't prove, you can't disprove. That's why they're faith, that's why it's religion. And so to the extent that apologetics is proving something, it's kind of a worthless endeavor. But we do have to at least get around the obstacles of, of provable items of literalism in our faith that are challenges to the opportunity to have faith. And maybe that's where apologetics comes in, is to leave room for you to look at the problems of the Book of Mormon historicity, for example, to settle that just enough that you can gain a testimony of the, the elements that matter the most. That's having an honest faith right through understanding ways that, that people like in this docu series wrestle with these problems and, and know the problems and don't necessarily know all the answers, but are able to hold some complexity there and focus on what the Holy Ghost tells them in their life regarding these matters.
- [33:10]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, I think that makes a ton of sense. Sorry, Aubrey, were you going to say something?
- [33:14]
Tim
Go ahead.
- [33:15]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
Oh, just that I really agree with what you're both saying here that any religion that engages only one heart or mind is incomplete in some ways. And I, you know, it's fairly easy to come up with examples of religions that are, I mean, religion that gauges only the heart and not the mind, you know, very often probably falls into cult territory, you know, and can get pretty scary pretty quickly. Like you do need to engage your mind, there's no question about that. I think to offer just one piece of additional pushback. I feel like in the engaging of the mind, it's important to me to not begin with the end in mind. Like, that's not how, that's not, you know, typically how good science works. And so like, that's the other thing where that sometimes apologetics tend a little bit. For me, it's like, okay, I've got something that I'm going to prove and I'm just going to trace the steps to get there as opposed to, you know, as opposed to what would be a more intellectually honest engagement of the mind to me, which is I'm going to, I'm going to look for evidence, I'm going to, I'm going to use, you know, the scientific process as, you know, as a compass for how I, you know, end up believing and in the end end up living. But I'm a little, I'm going to be a little bit open ended about where I might end up, because that's the point of engaging in the process is that you don't know where it's going to, where it's going to take you.
- [34:31]
Robert Reynolds
Such a smart comment. That idea of begin with the end in mind I think is also why when we have these conversations with friends and family members, it's so tense, is we want to begin with the end in mind.
- [34:44]
Patrick Mason
If, if, if our apologetics is just a game of jeopardy, that we start with the answers and then come up with the questions, then it might be kind of fun. But it's, it's, it's not the kind of honest inquiry you're talking about, Tim. But I also think it's, I think sometimes it is okay to work backwards in the sense of, like, I've had real experiences that I know are real, right? I've, you know, to use Book of Mormon language, I've tasted the fruit, right? It's good. It's made me a better person. It's made me a person more oriented towards love, towards service, towards compassion, towards all of these things and then sort of working from there to like build out around that and what are the reasons for this? And I'm trying to make sense of this and some parts of this don't really make sense, but how do I square that with my experience? That's all just, I think part of the wrestle that we do that does engage our mind. So I think in that sense it's okay to work backwards from experience. But I think you're right, Tim, that if, for, for us to confuse that and, and this is why apologetics Actually very rarely convinces somebody who isn't already convinced. Right. Because it. It is oftentimes kind of working backwards that, again, might do really good at sort of like, filling in the gaps or like, shoring up the foundation. That's fantastic. But. But just being sort of understanding what. What work that is doing and what work it's not doing.
- [36:24]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
Yeah, that makes total sense to me. And I think we're. I think we're circling around something really true here and getting. Getting closer with each, you know, with each back and forth. I. To me, what you've described, Patrick, resonates very deeply with my own experience. Like, I. I have had experiences as well that have meant something to me. And what you describe, I think maybe the slightly nuanced difference is that what you described or just described, and this isn't the only thing you're saying by any means as sort of like the end. And then you build around that. To me, those experiences are the evidence. They're the steps on the. On the way to something. Yeah. You know, so. And I don't. I'm still. Even though I've had the experience, I still may not know what it means, you know, in terms of the. In terms of the outcome, you know, like, I've had. I've had deeply spiritual experiences, for instance, at. At church, like in sacrament meeting, you know, and that's meant something to me. And I think there is a part. There's a portion of my life in which I would have said, okay, well, it happened at church. The church is true, therefore, how can I prove the church is true? But there's, I think, more recently, I'm saying, okay, that means something, but I don't know. Like, it's. It's real and I shouldn't throw it out by any means, but I don't yet know what it means, but it becomes part of a collection of evidence as I try to circle around something. Something true.
- [37:36]
Robert Reynolds
Yeah, I like that.
- [37:38]
Tim
Can I just add, too. I, I think that my sort of, like, aversion sounds strong, but I do have this kind of, like, aversion to. To some of these. Some of these arguments that just feel very literal. Like any, Any problem you can think of, there's a really logical answer, like for anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, for example. And I think for me it's been because. Because when I care, when I really latched on to those things and cared about it, I think in some ways it made my faith experiences feel more brittle. It was like I. I became more rigid because it became really important that those particular arguments were true because everything was leaning on. On, like, such specific, reasonable facts. And so it. I think it made me a more rigid person. It was scarier to engage in conversations because in some ways I was solidifying around my one interpretation of faith. And so I think my experience over the last 10 years or so has been that there is something that feels like growth, that when I. When I can lean into the opposite of that, like, just like this feeling of not knowing and being okay and that practice of being, like, I can't explain this very particular question, and I. It still feels like good fruit, and it almost feels paradoxical sometimes. And. And that it feels so expansive and there's, like, so much more there. It's not something that can be so easily collapsed. And I remember hearing Brian McLaren when he was kind of talking about phase stages. I remember him talking about how painful it is to. To move into a place where you.
- [39:11]
Aubrey Chavez
Where.
- [39:12]
Tim
Where two things can feel true, like two competing things can feel true. And that exact feeling has always felt like such a problem. That's the thing I'm trying to resolve. And. And so Apologetics has felt like this side door where I can completely dissolve all the dissonance immediately. Like, turns out there was an answer. There was no problem. It was just easy. And I just started to feel like that whatever that is, that doesn't feel like growth, it feels like opting out of the. Of the wrestling part. And I can't even explain why the wrestle feels important because it's so not tidy, but it. It just feels like more and more that that experience of being so uncomfortable itself, like, that feels valuable. So I. So anyway, I. I think. And I think, Rob, that's part of why I appreciated the whole series, because people are offering sometimes super. What felt kind of apologetic to me, and sometimes they're saying, like, this isn't really the question that matters to me. And it just feels like all of that is part of this fabric that is part of a life of faith. And I just feel more and more like that untidiness is good for my spirit. Like, it's just. It's hard and good, and that's why. And we're doing it in community, and that's refining all by it, all by itself. So, Patrick, I want to quote to you something you say in. In this kind of conversation in the Book of Mormon episode, you say something like that maybe if we did have concrete proof of the Book of Mormon, maybe something about that would actually diminish. The power of faith. And I was like, I wanted to pause and say, say more.
- [40:43]
Robert Reynolds
What do you.
- [40:44]
Tim
What do you mean? Is there something about uncertainty that can actually fuel a more resilient faith?
- [40:51]
Patrick Mason
Yeah, I think it goes back to something Robert said earlier about the nature of faith and what does it mean to exercise faith and to have faith. Now, look, I mean, I would love for the gold plates to be around, right? And that would. And let's, you know, and you can play out that experiment in either way, right? Either we still have the gold plates and we get some Egyptologists and some other people like that, or, you know, who, who study it and say, wow, actually, yeah, that's it. It turns out there is a Nephi, right? And like these, these plates are totally legit, right? How many people would convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because of that? The answer is very, very few. It would be a very interesting historical factoid, right? We find new historical documents all the time, right? And those historical documents make all kinds of claims about gods in the ancient world and so forth.
- [42:03]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
So.
- [42:03]
Patrick Mason
Okay. And Joseph Smith found them and translated. Okay, that's interesting. And then I file that away and then I scroll through TikTok. Right? That's exactly what would happen, right? Or let's say that Egyptologists came along and said, no, right. This has nothing to do with. This is actually maybe like an Egyptian funerary text. I don't know if we ever gone down that road before, right. And people say, you know what? But it actually teaches me something about Jesus. Right. I don't know how we got from point A to point B. There was inspiration, it was a catalyst, something like that, right? But the book that I held in my hands and that changed my life and that made me a Christian.
- [42:46]
Robert Reynolds
Right.
- [42:47]
Patrick Mason
I don't really care what is going on on those gold plates. So that's what I mean. So it would be interesting, but I don't think it would not transform me into a Jesus follower. And so that's where I think faith is doing something else. It's doing something transformational. Again, I'm super interested in history. I care about data, I care about the sources, I care about accuracy. But I also know what the limits of those things are in terms of transforming the human and making meaning of this super weird cosmos that we're all a part of.
- [43:24]
Tim
I love that. And we didn't really talk about the title, Rob, but I love An Inconvenient Faith and it feels like one way that things. It's seriously inconvenient it would be great if it was just obvious, if every truth claim felt like there was an obvious answer. But you also kind of explore that there are inconvenient things about our faith that are more about our lived experience and living in community and living faith in community. And so I think just to kind of wrap up, I would love to just hear you both talk about, like, what. What is the fruit of. Of. Of living this way of being in an inconvenient faith space? Whether that's about truth claims or whether that's about, like, being with neighbors you disagree with. Like, is there something about the inconvenience that is actually not a problem, but a gift?
- [44:11]
Robert Reynolds
I think the inconvenience is beautiful. I don't want to minimize the challenges faced by some people by calling them inconveniences. I realize. I thought it's a catchy title. It shows this juxtaposition of faith and the inconveniences. But obviously, for some inconveniences puts it lightly. But I think it's necessary. It's inconvenient to seek personal revelation in all things, but I think we're supposed to. And I think that a resilient faith finds its way through the inconveniences by using the spirit every day in your life. Also. One quote that I just. I want to share on this was President Oaks. It's in our last episode where he says, as a general authority, it is my responsibility to preach general principles. Whether an exception applies to you is your responsibility. You must work that out individually between you and the Lord. And that is not convenient at all. That's. That's challenging. At first, when I was filming this, right, I. For myself. Even if it's just for me, right? It wasn't. Even if it was. I wanted to know how does Patrick Mason and Richard Bushman and the Gibbons and Deidre Green, all these. All these people that stay and know these issues so intimately that I consider honest, moral people. How do you do it? And I had this idea, I was going to present what I called pillars of a sustainable faith, where I imagined, like hiring a graphic designer. And it was like, these are the pillars of a sustainable faith or resilient faith. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And as we were filming, I'm watching for this. Every time I'm interviewing people, I'm asking them, you know, how they do this? Not just why, how looking for that. It really only one thing stood out every single time. And it was owning personal revelation and understanding prophetic fallibility and when you're in those places, for you to seek and receive personal revelation and follow your conscience is.
- [46:23]
Patrick Mason
Is.
- [46:23]
Robert Reynolds
Is just essential. John Gustav Raffle. He's in episode two on the LGBT section. This guy is the. The strongest example of this, of a resilient faith, of holding complexity I have ever seen. So here he is, married to a man for nearly 30 years and saying with pure confidence and tears in his eyes, he knows God has blessed that marriage. At the same time, God has told him, go to church. Be an active member. This church is true. This is where you need to be. And so he's going to. This not be an active member. Right? Be active. He can't even be a member. He's attending a church he cannot be a member of, and he does not know how to reconcile these things. He has that. He holds this complexity. He holds this massive inconvenience, and he continues forward. And it is the. The optimism that he has, the love that he has for. For the church and for his heavenly Father and his. His ability to. To trust his own self in obtaining personal revelation, I think is a model that I really wanted to show. And it's not for everybody, right? Not everybody can do what he does. That is not easy. It maybe isn't healthy for everyone. But in our own lives, I think we are all John Gustav Rathals in our own ways. We all have areas where we are. We're struggling with something. If we're honest and we're really informed and we're morally or intellectually, we are struggling with something. And for those that want to stay, we need to see better examples of how to stay. When you struggle without just putting your head in the sand, that's not. That's not the way the Lord would have us do it. I don't believe.
- [48:15]
Tim
Thank you so much. I totally agree, Patrick.
- [48:20]
Patrick Mason
Yeah. The last thing I'll say is you. You know, you know what's inconvenient is that there's like 8 billion other human beings and none of them are like me. It is so annoying. It is so annoying, and my ego hates it. And what was amazing for me watching this, so not as somebody who was in it, but just somebody who watched the docu series, is that as I watched John Dehlin and Bill Rheil and Maxine Hanks and Sandra Tanner and Fiona Givens and Richard Bushman and go down the list of all the people who are in this, I felt love for every single one of these people. And so it's just, you know, it's like what Paul says. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that we can do. We can talk till we're blue in the face. We can do all kinds of things. But if it doesn't produce love, then what are we doing? And for me, the thing that I was really grateful to Robert for and for this series is that, like, I loved all of these people and I saw them, that they are different people than me. And that's really inconvenient for my ego. And it's exactly what I need to know and hear and feel about my sisters and brothers. And so I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to you, Robert, for opening my heart a little bit more to sisters and brothers who are different than me.
- [50:01]
Tim
Yeah. Thank you so much, Rob. I couldn't agree more. That's really what this did for us. So thank you so much for your work and to both of you for joining us.
- [50:09]
Unknown Female Host or Moderator
Thank you both so much.
- [50:10]
Robert Reynolds
Thanks, Aubrey.
- [50:13]
Aubrey Chavez
All right, thanks so much for listening. We really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Patrick Mason and Robert Reynolds. You can find the docuseries An Inconvenient Faith on YouTube and see all of the episodes there for free. Thanks again for listening.