is empathy good can it be bad can it lift a people up a nation a
church can it destroy a nation can it destroy a church this is a fascinating
discussion I think you're really going to enjoy with Jeff benan and Dan Ellsworth but before we get to this
interview I want to bring up gospel on the Nile that is our trip to Egypt the crws down the Nile talking about the
temple you can't learn any more about the temple outside of being in the temple then going to Egypt you're going
to see the ritual Embrace everywhere the abrahamic Covenant all over the walls
and pillars of the temples in Egypt join me and Scholar Bruce Porter this
September 10th through the 19th for a bucket list trip you need to go on this
go to Quick media.com go to trips and events and scroll down to gospel on the
Nile to find out more here we
[Music]
go all right welcome to Quick show my name is Greg Matson and I am your host in this episode we bring in the dynamic
duo of Dan Ellsworth and Jeff benan welcome guys glad to be here Greg you
guys recently wrote an article uh published in Public Square magazine called called empathy or Echo chamber
Chambers I was very interested in this because you get very technical on looking at what empathy is how we
express this when it's good when it's bad Etc and I've I've talked a little bit about this I've used the term
malevolent compassion uh you guys are using a couple of different terms here misguided
empathy primarily can we start with this as a foundation here so we can work off of
this what what is empathy what if I'm thinking of empathy because we're in a very
empathetic culture right now what what is empathy so Jeff is the therapist so
we're gonna let him answer this one we usually you know contrast empathy with
sympathy but I think uh empathy is an attempt to relate to the feelings of
another person The Experience their sub their sort of subjective phenomenological whole
emotional experience and I think if we start about the good what's good about
that uh we'll talk about his downsides later but I think what's good about that
is as humans it's really hard for us when we feel alone when we feel and and
it can be physically alone right like if you're in solitary confinement or stuck on the quintessential desert island but
here uh even when you know I work with married couples and sometimes one or both of them is incredibly lonely and I
think when we when we can feel like other people can share our experiences can understand what we're going through
then we can feel less alone and when we feel less alone it gets easier whatever our burdens are will get easier when we
feel like people get it that we feel like other people understand and are kind of with us in going through it and
I think scripturally we have this scripture which also is weaponized and misused but mourn with those that mourn
and comfort those that stand in need of comfort right when people are mourning when they're having
difficulties uh to be able to be with them in that can help us get through it
so what then you're using the term misguided empathy Dan what would misguided empathy be misguided empathy
is when someone is doing something
self-destructive or they their experience their experience
consequences of you know embracing a lie or a delusion or some kind of a
self-destructive uh pattern of thought or or behavior and you know it hurts one of
the consequences of sin is pain sin it can be exciting in the moment but
eventually it leads to a lot of pain you don't have to watch like a lot of true crime shows to know that I mean uh most
of us just know that on some level from experience but if I sin or if I embrace
lies about the world and I'm experiencing the discomfort and pain
that results from that from that and then somebody comes along and says oh I'm G to share that pain with you so
that you can keep doing whatever you're doing and not feel alone in that
right that's not necessarily helpful now you know if my dog dies and
I'm in pain as a result of that and somebody and my neighbor who loves dogs
too uh comes over to talk with me about it that's different um again if I'm
doing something self-destructive and experiencing pain as a result then it's it's almost kind of a
pathological empathy sometimes uh for somebody to come along and say I'm going to share that with you and you
won't have to adjust your thinking you won't have to make any course Corrections or anything I'm just going
to validate whatever you're feeling yeah if you have a pain like that's coming
from a wound or maybe a broken bone that hasn't healed do you give somebody an
anesthetic or do you maybe recast that bone which might be a little painful but might get you on the path to Greater
healing so some sometimes empathy is an anesthetic when you need uh a new splint
or something so right I I'm think of this empathy in this sounds I know some
people are going to hate this is empathy neutral and it depends on how it's used
for example money if I have money I can use it for good or I can use it for evil
is empathy something that can be misguided or it can be targeted to the right place so is empathy itself a
positive value or is it how we use it
that matters I'd say it is treated as a as
always a positive thing you know in popular culture it is viewed it is it is
talked about as being you know the highest of Virtues and if you lack it morally defective right right but that's
not true I I do believe that it is neutral it's it's a ham it's it's kind of like a hammer you can build or you
can destroy with a hammer in your hand right um empathy can be a wonderful
thing as far as connecting with people when they're going through hard times and stuff like that but it can also
really be destructive it can be terribly destructive well it's it's like any
economy right if I've got money in an economy it it it's a tool it has to be
there some some type of something of value has got to be there but what am I trading that for how am I using it and
an emotional economy or a spiritual economy right then then I've got empathy
it's there it's got to be there something has to be there for connection for social uh uh understanding you know
for relationships Etc and let's par it let's compare with the idea of Love
which there's a lot of warped definitions of love out there I'm not sure this is a complete definition but I
like this one the best in me seeks the best in you or I seek your greatest good
and so you know at Northstar that I help co-found or whatever sometimes I'll talk
to parents when their children are making choices they're taking them away from the gospel and they'll say well
should I pray for them to be miserable should I pray for them to be happy and my friend Becky bordon uh she
gave me the best answer to that which is pray for your child to have the experiences they need to return to you
Heavenly Father help my child have those experiences and help me be a part of
those experiences that will promote that that may mean pain it may not we leave that up to God you know uh and and we
let him because he knows what we need better than any of us and I sometimes think about
that I had I had a recent interview with Bruce Porter on I think it was called something
like where did exaltation go what happened to exaltation that's what it was what happened to exaltation like we
don't talk about it much anymore there's this again this emotional world that
we're starting to move into and it's it's happiness it's Joy it's affirmation
it's what do I feel all the time I've never liked the term Planet happiness it doesn't make any sense to me but
um isn't that I mean that's God's work in glory is the immortality and eternal
life that's exaltation of man so if I'm let me put it this
way if empathy is not necessarily charity
empathy is not necessarily the love of God isn't isn't that correct because the
love of God to me would be participating in the same work yeah I
want your long-term well-being that is what is important to
me and that could be sometimes resetting the bone as you said which will make you
scream right you will yell in frustration and pain while that bone is
being reset yeah but it's what you need and I I know you know we're not talking
about just therapy but this article Dan and I wrote It's been in the hopper quite a while and since we we first
submitted it Abigail shri's book came out bad therapy which does talk about
this kind of overly feminized or unbalanced feminized I I don't want to
just say anything feminine is bad right but it's an unbalanced kind of feminization that I'm talking about here
that is so nurturing and so unoriented to the reality principle uh which Freud
said came from fathers fathers helped their children Orient to reality and mothers were the nurturing and and as
children develop he said they needed both of them I don't agree with a lot of Freud but I think he got that right and
so if you have too much of that mother uh we see what Abigail puts her
finger on there Dr Miss Abigail shrier she's not a doctor but uh where
these kids now are and not just kids sometimes they are already adults young adults are afraid to go in the world
have to have their therapist or their mom call their Professor if they're late to class or need a paper right we've
we've we've uh oriented them outside of being able to engage and relate to reality that's what over empathy does
and it's unlike love it's which is as you said Greg it's focused on this uh
Eternal perspective that goes beyond Beyond even mortality uh empathy is all about
pallative feeling in the moment and that means it can be misused yeah um I'm
going to get back to the therapy here in just a minute but you talk about uh the
churches uh spending a lot of time on their policies about empathetic
listening okay that seems valuable to me right I'm going to listen and and and
you know I do a lot with uh Interfaith work for example I mean I can I can talk with someone and we'll talk right past
each other if all that matters is that I'm right right it's nothing gets
anywhere it's all accusations and in that world is you're going to hell and if you don't agree with me you're you're
toast right but if you can if you can focus on at least understanding where
they're coming from and that can matter more and on I will say also on building
a relationship then you can talk about those other things in a completely
different light yeah and and there's a there's a reason why we bring that up in
the article this how sometimes we're encouraged you know when we're when we
talk about going to minister to people who are having a hard time we're often encouraged to engage in empathetic
listening I'm gonna tell you you know a hard story I I ministered to dear dear
friends of mine years ago who left the church and when they left the church
their Ward sent people to minister to them and that couple LED those people
out of the church okay the couple that was being ministered to led the ministering couple out of the church
they ended up leading several families out of the church who were sent to
engage in empathetic listening okay so empathetic listening obviously is not in
and of itself a valuable thing if the result of that can be that you leave the
church over it right and and that is the core of what we are saying in the
article is okay empathetic listening you know there's entire podcasts
uh devoted to empathetic listening uh uh you know listening to
the stories of sexual minorities in the church uh what we call the LGBT community right and a lot of people
listen to those things and they think that they are gaining knowledge like oh
I know what's going on with these people I know I understand these issues now and
what Jeff and I are saying in the article is no you don't when you engage in empathetic
listening what you're going to receive is a person's Narrative of their
experience okay and that narrative may or may not be true if you have lived
life long enough with even just a basic level of self-awareness you will revise your own
narratives of your life experiences over time that is totally normal it's it's
what it means to grow into adulthood and maturity right you end up revising your
narratives of your schooling and your social interactions and stuff because
you see better you you you're growing you're developing right now so
narratives are just a a story that we tell about things that we observe and
experience and if I go again if I engage in empathetic listening I'm going to be
hearing someone's narrative that may or may not be reflective of reality it's
just a narrative and what we're saying in the article is if you don't do the
work of actually asking questions of
that narrative you can be led into you know a
toxic kind of view of reality that this person might hold
it's unhealthy it's like a computer virus you know you get a computer virus and if you load that program and run it
if you're so empathetic you run that program well you've just yeah yeah crashed your computer
your mental whatever yeah I mean you see that you give up the the lgbtq examples
you see this so often with parents of lgbtq individuals especially
in the church I mean we have the example recently David archeleta right it's like
you go into the you go into a different world and to be fair right because we're
not usually ahead of the outside world narrative we're not we're insulated in
the church in many ways and and so then all of a sudden this new view is brought
up and people don't have the tools normally to work with this and to deal with this so you see parents that you
know you've got a son they've come out as gay and kind of blows up your world
view because of the empathy and the love the real love that you have for that
child how do you reconcile these things and and work with that right it's
it's to be fair in my view and I get a lot of feedback from this type of thing
it it's an almost epidemic level of this happening it might be time to pull up uh
the pyramid we have okay uh because people's Dan talked about narratives and
just think about how many podcasts are like have that word stories in it right
and there's good reasons for that too we love as humans we love stories I mean
from thousands of years ago when we'd sit around the campfire I remember in Scouts you know we tell ghost stories around the campfire we love stories uh
and we do try to glean lessons from those stories but what a listener an
impath an empathic listener needs to understand is these elements in this
pyramid that we have this because anybody's narrative is going to be formed of these so when someone is
sharing with you their story their experience uh they have gone through
this process of selecting the data you know the things that a computer could see or agree on
the the you know I got pull I was going 65 M hour in a 40 mph Zone the police officer pulled me over that's data right
uh but then what do you remember oh the police officer pulled me over it was so unfair because I was uh a certain color
skin or something right that is now where where we put the narrative in there and that can start to color things
so and and as important as what we select that's why that select I think is
so important there's so much we ignore right there's so much information coming in our five senses and our brains are
discarding 995 99% of that what do we remember what do we focus on and what do
we choose and here if we want to stay on the lgbtq example people will say well I
always knew I was gay well how did you know you were always gay well when I was young I felt
different and uh I I really had this hero worship for this this same seex
Pier when I was in in first grade uh and so all of that um is is
true I think I mean they're not lying about any of that but then what are they
taking and forming those narratives in this second second bar you can see here which then forms their knowledge all
right okay I am now this thing called Gay well what does that mean um and so
all of it is built on top of each other and then it comes out to that but there's other data I don't Dan you
probably didn't send our uh it's because I'm trans uh thing did do no but but
that's a that's a common uh example that we're seeing now
nowadays you have these people who go online into various groups and are told
that they are trans and they actually undergo some amount of transitioning and
then they detransition and they say wait a minute how did I adopt that narrative
you have girls saying I was just a tomboy you know what's why did somebody tell me
I was actually a boy well why did you know why did they give me that Narrative
of just being a tomboy which is a totally normal human experience right and a lot of people feel different and
there's a lot I've looked at uh first graders there's a lot of hero worship going on there yeah uh and again I'm not
trying to diminish The Experience because there's a lot more that goes into it and and I'm oversimplifying here
but but in essence still we build these pieces into I am and then we get this
identity label and then it becomes reified and reinforced uh and then we tell these
stories and you hear enough of those stories you think you're an expert but then you find out the data which Dan and
I hammer on we mention it briefly in this article turns out the research and
evidence base for uh sexuality being lifetime stable and uh something you're
born with is weak to false to non-existent uh right so either
unprovable unproven or shown to be false depending on how you want to exactly
operationalize it so and you can have a thousand people tell you they they feel they were born gay certainly that's
their experience can it really be true probably not I I mean I would have
been a little more tentative 10 15 years ago but today uh I I'm I'm more
confident saying uh yeah that's just not what the data shows and that's where the information
comes in okay here's my question I'm just just a little off I don't know if this is off topic or not but it's so I
know people though I know kids friends kids that from the time especially boys
by the time they were two or three years old it was like okay he he he seems like a gay
child to me he acts like a gay child and it's not just a matter of just being
feminine so so to speak it's the characteristics that you would usually
put around uh a a fuller Persona of of
of a gay man right from a very early age I've seen this I mean people I'm close to
this is great though I love you bringing up this example because why why do you say he seems gay I think a more precise
way to put what you're observing is gender non-conforming there are certain
gendered Norms that that two or three-year-old boy is not conforming to
and we have noticed that and that this part is true uh you're right about this
much Greg those who are gender non-conforming as children tend to to uh
become uh what we call what I call sexual minorities or or I often do will adopt identity labels such as gay
lesbian uh and so forth so yes in that sense that is true there's certain
temperaments or certain gendered uh ways that they interact with that that tend
to uh predict uh predict those things uh but but the question is
why right don't ask me I'm asking you well but but the the point here is you
know these things these are data if if a child is behaving in a certain way those
behaviors are data now we tell a story about those data and that is what we
call a narrative and that's information information and narrative we're using those kind of synonymously here but it's
not necessarily the The Narrative that we create is not necessarily true we
haven't moved up into the area of know you know I brought up the the example of
tomboys there are a lot of girls who uh when they're young they want to
play the way that the boys play they want to play with the toys that the boys play with they want to play you know
football and these sports right and so
if we were to automatically put onto those girls this Narrative of oh you're
actually a lesbian or your trans or or one of those other things those are
narratives a lot of these girls who are tomboys they you know their desires and
their Outlook changes pretty remarkably when they enter
adulthood so what that's why you know we we really do need to make that
distinction between narratives and knowledge don't treat a narrative a story that we
tell about our observations and experiences don't automatically assume
that that reflects knowledge that it reflects concrete another example would be if you look at 14-year-old boys and
ask them about their sexuality there's a good quarter of them if not more that say they're not sure or
I might be gay I might be this way you go 10 years later and you knock a zero
off it's 5% right it's it's an order of magnitude less so what if we froze all of those
14-year-old boys that are unsure uh and said all of them are gay
right we would we're now in the process of of creating a reality through what you might call a self-fulfilling
prophecy uh yeah to look at gen Z I mean gen Z I mean you've seen this grow two
years ago it was that 20% of all gen Z's stated that they were
non-binary or LGBT or now it's 30% plus
this this is in two more years not all of them were born that way couldn't be right no I get that yeah no no question
I understand that part I mean trust me that's what we talk about a lot about here it's but that narrative then that
you're talking about that is being built that it's a worldview pretty much
oftentimes but it's that's what I think people really need to understand with all of this there is a Nar
as compared to the data right that those things are distinct and therefore
narratives also are easily adopted or created for political purposes or other
purposes for other purposes period that's right yeah and and so you've got to if you're a parent for example
someone who's lgbtq you've got to be able to say here is my son or daughter
and this is what they are experiencing and I need to offer charity and and and and overall uh hope for their well-being
okay secondarily you've got to be able to parse this out and say okay there's
also an agenda and storylines and narratives
that exist in our culture that have become more and more pervasive that is not concerned with the well-being of
your child in fact H exactly exactly and so you know
people sometimes you know often times you'll get for me if I'm talking against the agenda if I'm talking against the
narrative it's well you're homophobic or transphobic or something else like that it's like wait a minute that that this
has nothing to do with that there is a storyline and an agenda behind many of
these narratives that has nothing to do with my care and love for this
individual or this individual or this individual right and so to be able to pull those apart you you have to be able
to do that or you're going to get sucked into the the narratives are more and more popular with social media yeah
you're you're and if all you have in in your toolbox is empathy if that's all
you have then you are going to meet with you know a a kid in your ward who says
um I identify as zzer and I think I'm a dog right I'm a
furry or you know and and you're going to be like okay I feel so much compassion and empathy that yeah you are
really an animal and not a human be you're gonna end up adopting
delusions because all you have is EMP empathy you're not actually applying
some critical thinking and saying okay what's really going on here and this kid
has these data points well maybe they've been you know watching too many cartoons
and playing video games where they're an animal right you know things like that
and and they just have not had a healthy kind of differentiation between their
play activities and their identity you know if if all you have is empathy
you're not going to ask those kinds of questions and you will actually contribute to somebody's
downward spiral in a lot of cases so so empathy again on its own is
you I mean you're saying it's not enough you can just have empathy it is not a
positive or A negative other than it's a stepping stone to build relationships and to have Society if we
choose to use it that way right you you need to bring empathy
in so so another big point of our article
is empathy needs to be brought in alignment
with knowledge knowledge comes from asking good questions it knowledge comes
from you know really uh like I said asking those
questions what is really going on here looking past your empathy sometimes and
saying okay you know if I if I only express approval and affirmation and
validation toward this person am I contributing to some really harmful
delusions that they've adopted right so you have to do that work of acquiring
knowledge now another one of the the graphics that we produced for this article is a quad chart of empathy and
knowledge and what we're showing here is you have these arrows where as you
increase in knowledge you move you know in One Direction in the chart as you
increase in empathy move upwards and so you have these four different different
uh quadrants here and you have down in in the bottom corner you have low
empathy low knowledge and that's somebody who just doesn't feel any kind
of sympathy or any kind of love or any kind of doesn't even care to relate to
anybody's difficulties in any way and it also isn't curious about finding out
more about what that person's going through that's that I mean that can be a
dangerous person yeah Absol they do a lot of harm they drive a lot of people out of the church or yeah yeah they do
this is just kind of an angry bitter person who's they've decided they know
everything too but and they don't care right right now above that you have high
empathy and low knowledge okay it's better but still not good right
High empathy and low knowledge is somebody who just listens to podcasts of people saying oh I'm a gay member of the
church and I'm dating men and or faith
crisis podcasts whatever they are right yeah yeah there's a lot of of or yeah
and and their whole podcast devoted to people basically complaining about the
church oh it's hard and this church this concept is confusing and people will go
on and and just empathize and be like oh that must be so hard and but they never
actually ask questions like okay what do I bring to this equation right am I just
putting forward a narrative here and is that narrative accurate or is it not you
know they don't they don't do that work of actually asking questions because they might feel like they're not being
empathe pathetic right if they ask any rigorous or challenging questions and
there are a lot of podcasts and a lot of books and a lot of articles that are in that excuse me in
that quadrant of high empathy and low knowledge um very very popular that is a
very popular quadrant okay now let's go down uh there's
another other one of the lower quadrants is low empathy and high knowledge and that's where I just have all the facts
but I'm not interested in the human Dimension I'm not interested in like actually giving somebody a hug right
when they're going through a hard time I just I can recite facts to somebody but
I I don't care about their actual story you might be a teacher rather than a minister right yeah do people really
need teaching yeah yeah now now I'm just going to be really blunt and honest with
you I often go into that quadrant because I I I get cerebral
about things and I sometimes forget that they're often is like this human
Dimension and people do have a story and it is important to just kind of
understand hey you know whether or not their narrative is accurate they are
going through something and I need to love them right um but I tend unless I'm
conscious about it I kind of tend toward this quadrant I think low empathy High
knowledge now what Jeff and I and sometimes we Rebel because empathy can
be weaponized or used to manipulate correct yes emotionally UNP spiritually
manipulate people sorry Dan I interrupted you no no I I think you're making a good point like sometimes I'll
get angry angry at you know activists in the church and I will just like Jeff
said you kind of rebel and and react and reflexively okay I'm G to jettison my
empathy because I'm mad at these other people who are empath who are who have this misguided empathy right so they
have this misguided empathy I'm gonna have no empathy right I do that sometimes I I think that's just kind of
a normal that's an interesting take they have misguided empathy and no empathy right I'm going to respond to that by
having no empathy I'll show them right not that is not what the Savior would do
not to sound manipulative myself but yes but but I do think that is kind of a
normal human response to a lot of the activists in the church who are
weaponizing empathy who who are pathologically empathetic and are trying
to shame other people and and so forth now let's go up you have an old meme you
did mourning with those that mourn doesn't mean participating in someone's Psycho
Drama what were your other ones yeah it doesn't mean it doesn't mean embracing their delusions about the world it
doesn't mean um validating their lying and their poor Behavior it doesn't
joining them in their anger yeah yeah but every time General Conference comes around you know people respond to it in
terrible ways very immature ways and then when we call them out on it they say oh mourn with those who mourn right
no you you can't weaponize your empathy against me I I'm gonna hold firm and you
know anyway it's it's something that that we need to pay attention to and not
get so consumed with our frustration toward activists that we lose our empathy alog
together so you can have misguided empathy and that is a little bit more of a passive slightly more innocent approach
but as you're saying you can have weaponized empathy also yeah you can have not the same thing you can have a
path the weaponized empathy yeah I I I've heard the word
pathological uh used to describe a lot of empathy and I and I agree with that
it's it's like a sickness it's like you're using people by exercising your
empathy toward them you're you're deriving something twist from exercising
empathy in in situations where you shouldn't be there's a wonderful book I I think you've referred to it before
Greg called against empathy written by I believe a Catholic man and that's Paul
Bloom Paul Bloom yeah he makes an excellent point that uh first of all
empathy is exhausting um if that's all you're doing you a therapist would would be exhausted
if that's all they do and because empathy is kind of valued neutral you can empathize with the mass murder you
can empathize with Gandhi and Mother Teresa because it's value neutral that way it can end up
uh it's just going to turn into partisanship with those two things because you can't really empathize with
everyone and it's value neutral effectively at least in the public
sphere in the therapy chair great but in the public sphere empathy always is
going to devolve into part A partisanship and someone and you're going to care about someone's feelings
more than others and that's who you're going to go to bat for and the others you don't have empathy for because you
can't really have empathy for anyone everyone are just going to be out in the cold forget them right so principles are
better I love uh GK Chesterton uh he wrote this a hundred years ago in uh
Orthodoxy but it's more true than when he wrote it he said the modern world is not evil in some ways the modern world
is far too good it is full of wild and wasted virtues when a religious scheme
like Christianity is shattered it is not merely the vices that are let loose the
vices are indeed let loose and they wander and they do damage but the virtues are let loose also and the
virtues wander even more wildly and the virtues do more terrible damage the
modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad and the
virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone thus some scientists
care for truth and their truth is pitiless thus some humanitarians only care for pity or what we would call
today empathy and their pity I am sorry to say is often untruthful so Dan and I
say let's bring them together yeah and and that's what we see up in this top
right quadrant High empathy High knowledge one of the great frustrations
with the leadership of the church these days is that you have a lot of people
who do have this toxic empathy and they want church leaders to
adopt that and forget about knowledge forget about grounding empathy in
reality in facts Commandments right yeah in Commandments Commandments all they do
they ground Us in reality yes right and
uh so you do have a lot of people who get really frustrated with church leaders because why can't you just be
empathetic like me why do you insist on you know actually asking hard questions
of society or they will say the acist say if you just knew more of whatever this uh people there they they have the
empathy for if you just heard more of their stories you would come into my high empathy low knowledge sphere right
you know they don't put it that way but but effectively if you knew more of these narratives if you heard more of these stories you'd believe what I
believe yeah you know there I had a friend a couple weeks back show me
something he there's a uh it's still in it today I think it's the Oxford dictionary under the word charity and
people can look this up and see if they still see it there but it's I think it's the fourth it might be the fourth
definition of charity and this goes all the way back to I think it's Webster 1828 uh definition also on charity it's
also one of the top three or four that are in there but it's it's judging with
empathy and and I thought that was so profound it's like you can't really have
charity without justice justice is that part that grounds Us in real
Justice is there are consequences to choices and and this idea of judging
with empathy in other words you're you're going through what they go through you're mourning with What They
Mourn through but you're grounded in an understanding of right and wrong yeah and and their Eternal again
their Eternal well-being and it's what you're explaining to me is kind of that
same thing right it's that mercy and justice and and and Where Mercy just goes all the way up to the top and
pretty much just wants to get rid of Justice right and and all there is is an abundancy of mercy and it's like that's
that's not God that is that is half of God and it just doesn't work so one
thing that that Jeff and I can say with a high degree of confidence and I I I
think this claim Rises to the level of knowledge is that the leadership of the church and I'm talking about
the Quorum of the 12 apostles the first presidency um the the general officers
of the church they have very good
sources of knowledge about so many different things and they have so many
interactions with people for example who are living as sexual minorities in the church they have just a vast amount of
knowledge they study these issues they inter interact with people they know people's stories they can tell the
difference between actual facts versus narratives right so they are in that
high knowledge quadrant and they also have high empathy
like church members who are struggling they are very empathetic toward church members who are
struggling and once again you know a lot of people get
frustrated with the leadership of the church if you are a low empathy High
knowledge person you're going to jump for joy anytime church leaders lay down
some knowledge some difficult knowledge right but you're going to have a hard
time when they express empathy because you don't have that um when they talk
about the importance of just welcoming people who may not have it all together
quite yet right M uh in into our church buildings um so it's it's they are in
that quadrant and if you are not in that quadrant with them of high knowledge High empathy you're going to be
constantly frustrated with them you are going to be constantly frustrated by what you see from the leadership of the
church if you are not in the in the same quadrant as they
are uh you have here a quote from Scott peek M Scott peek about epistemic
closure I'm going to read that real quick and then I want you to expound on it to Jeff you you can answer first
right it says what happens when one has striven long and hard to develop a working view of the world a seemingly
useful workable map and then is this goes back to our narratives and then is confronted with new information
suggesting that that view is wrong and the map needs to be largely redrawn again this is an example for a parent
for example of well a son that comes out as gay for example um the painful effort
he continues required seems frightening almost overwhelming what we do more often than not and usually unconsciously
is to ignore the new information often this act of ignoring is much more than passive we may denounce the new
information as false dangerous heretical the work of the devil we may actually Crusade against it and even attempt to
manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view or our Narrative of
reality rather than try to change the map an individual may try to destroy the
new reality sadly such a person may expend more much more energy ultimately
in defending an outmoded view of the world than would have been required to
revise and correct it in the first place now this close quote there I this also
applies this is why things are so difficult I think for members of the church
because we talk about Orthodoxy but within that Orthodoxy there is not
Perfection also right are there is new data there is new information that says
wait a minute here you can't be stagnant uh you can't we're always in
the process of creation but we want order going through the chaos we don't want chaos going
through the chaos as we create that that as we create right right so there are
issues where I think we need to look at things differently
but epistemic closure is is this example something where these narratives are so
strong out there of for me anyway I I see these as kind of like the Mist Of
Darkness in in lehi's Vision right it's these are the Mist Of Darkness it's the
narratives it's the ideologies that that have a little bit of light in them that's why they're a
Mist yeah you know or a little empathy in them right yes and so that's what
kind of pulls us away Jeff yeah uh well I first want to
say this hurts uh this hurts a lot to have these
challenged this way it is not enjoyable and it's also easier to spot
someone else's epistemic closure than your own yeah so
uh and and so that's the problem uh how can we be humble enough to ex to be able
to do this experience you know I I was thinking when you were reading that Dan or uh Greg and then Dan when you were
commenting about Moses when he said which thing I had never supposed you know when he's having this Cosmic Vision
so here's Moses who has his his world view shattered and God's really good at
doing this right any kind of conversion experience uh could probably be put in this
category so when we're trying to help people uh first of all we better be darn
sure we're in the high knowledge High empathy quadrant and secondly uh I don't
think you can just say well you're wrong right I I don't think that goes over well and uh so how how how do you
address epistemic closure and what's hard about it is it's hard to do that uh
you how do you get in you have to come in sideways and these maps and territories are an interesting
distinction that uh I will sometimes use in therapy for example someone will say
well I'm gay or I'm bisexual or I see a lot of clients now who are anxious because they don't know what identity
label to adopt and so I will say okay well if gay or bisexual asexual or sapen
you know there's these new ones too now po romantic a romantic uh so I say is
that like uh and I think about back to when I was uh nine or 10 years old and I
went on my first plane ride and I remember we were flying to Los Angeles to go to Disneyland and when the pilot
got on the plane and said hey we're headed into Nevada I looked down and there's no line there right there's no
line marking Nevada and Utah and Nevada and California it's not there there's no
lines I'd seen those maps and they sure on the map so whereas what you can see
is rivers and lakes and mountains and uh deserts and forests you can see all of
those so I will sometimes say to people is this identity label you've
adopted is it a forest or a lake or is it a line on the map and all of them
have said it's a line on a map and I'm not saying that line isn't important right war war is being fought in Ukraine
and in Gaza right now over those lines so those lines are important but they exist in a way that's different than the
forest and the and the mountain and the lake does uh so
uh it's good to make those distinctions sometimes when people start thinking on those levels then you can say all right
well we we do with our internal Maps we do have some autonomy we do have some
agency right you do feel your feelings are your feelings and and those you can't just turn off with a switch
absolutely but uh how you conceptualize them those the higher up you get on that
pyramid that we have the more your agency can and should be employed and
the more control you have there Dan what did I leave out no I I I think what
you've said is great it's epistemic closure is a hard thing that that's when your mind is just shut off to new
information but when when when God tells us in scripture my ways are not your
ways he's not saying that nothing is concrete you can't hold on to anything
he's not saying that he's just saying you know what be prepared to update your
mental models of things from time to time uh all three of us on this program
have lived long enough to see a lot of evolution in how we do
things in the church but we do see a core that has been the
same since I was born right um I'm old enough to remember when you went to the
church building twice on a Sunday like that used to be a thing when I was very
small right but I I never remember a time when we didn't believe in the Book
of Mormon in the reality of Jesus Christ in the reality of temples and our Temple and family history work
um those things are just kind of core constants but um anyway we're that's
kind of a tangent but epistemic closure you know we we it's there is a
healthy kind of understanding that hey I don't always see the whole picture all
the time so I need to be open to revising my mental models of things
along the way without throwing baby out with bathwater right yeah
it's go on you also bring up Carl Young Who I like quite a bit and uh to he kind
of goes over the same idea of of of moving on to something else and it's not easy he puts some pretty he calls it
individuation but yeah he uses a metaphor that you put in here which is a little more uh uh describes the
difficulty this is like he calls it the crucifixion of the ego yeah
it's painful how do you how do you let go when you let go of think truths you
thought were truths yeah or you let go of a world view that that seemed so
important to you that you lived by you are in a sense sacrificing a part of
yourself yeah a part of your mind anyway right right and that's also again that's
a conversion process or it's a growth process which like uh the talk of the current
Bush for example it's you're you're you're going through a process that is
not it's not I'm sorry it's not all happiness right that's not the point of
it right and so is God empathetic with us right ah there you go right but so
I'll I'll just say 10 years ago the way that I lived the gospel the way that I
thought about gospel Concepts was very very different from how I do now very
different and I hope that 10 years from now I have grown and expanded my
understanding you know and again not thrown the baby out with the bath water a lot of people say oh I'm expanding my
understanding and that's why I don't believe in the gospel anymore no you haven't expanded your understanding at all you've just thrown it away um that's
not what it means to be open-minded or or openhearted um
but just having there there's there's a point where you're so rigid in your
thinking that you break with any new information and then the other extreme
is you're just this wet noodle and you just you can't hold fall apart with you
you NE you always give in you never hold firm on anything but there's this in
between where you're kind of flexible and resilient and patient and willing to work through things and get serious
about them and that's how you get to that knowledge the governing councils of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are designed to make that happen
at Church Headquarters right where you bring these personalities together in
councils and they have different views and if they are too flexible you know
the councils will implode well they don't because they're not too inflexible
and they're also not too flexible they come together they they have serious
serious discussions but you know amazing things happen and they don't throw away the
gospel because they have disagreements sometimes wait a minute Dan are you saying that they don't the 15 don't all
agree on everything all the time immediately I am not all just one body
immediately they do not there's so much value in the fact that they come with
diverse you know mental models of the gospel and and the best things to do in
in various situations in the church there's so much value in that and and this process I think Dan
sketched it out really well and I think of two examples a personal one and a theological one so let's take the
theological one so um baptisms for the dead when this Doctrine was restored and
revealed uh by Joseph Smith it did not change the core doctrine that
Jesus said you have to be baptized everybody must pass through this gate or they will be
damned the doctrine of uh the baptisms for the dead does not subvert that it
does not contradict that it does not say well Jesus wasn't serious or that was a
little too harsh no the the doctrine of baptism for the dead says no absolutely that's true but there's a more expansive
way that can be accomplished it doesn't doesn't undermine the truth it in fact affirms it but then expands it in these
ways so we don't have to have a theology that says uh if if you get hit by the car on the way to the church uh you're
damned to Hell forever right there's still there's still room for that so uh
doing this the truths the actual truths we don't have to be afraid right Jesus
was still resurrected Jesus still died for our sins and whatever truths uh
we're going to come to are not going to contradict that we don't have to fear that but it may add some deeper
understanding and deeper probably deeper appreciation for those things of the scope and scale of it uh another example
I think I was uh right after I graduated from high school I went to BYU before my mission
and I don't know if you guys know this but they probably have the best and certainly the best organized collection
of anti-mormon literature so somewhat foolishly and definitely naively I'm like well this case seems pretty good
for me for the gospel what do people say against it well it turns out a whole lot
right as you both know uh and our audience does but one of the first things I read was you know Joseph Smith
drinking in a Tavern drinking alcohol after the the Revelation on the word of wisdom right so all of a sudden I'm like
oh my gosh the prophet did not follow the word of wisdom what what do I do
here right uh here's a new fact now was it really a fact and that's hard in this
day of the internet I it seems like it was but now I have an even greater appreciation for historiography and
sources and methods and all that stuff but it appears he did and uh and
furthermore Brigham Young like to chew snuff so what do we do with that this
does kind of necessitate a more sophisticated idea about what it means
to be a leader of the church what it means to be God's maybe anointed prophets here in
Revelator uh I still believe uh Joseph Smith was uh and is a prophet of God you
know chosen to uh lead the restoration uh but I don't believe I can
say those same words that I would have said at 18 but they mean each of those words a chosen
Prophet lead mean more because you're a grown-up
now yeah yeah so couple things I want to get to
before we finish off here um going back here to I want to make sure that we get
this graph in here and and and look at this because we didn't finish all the way through what you're moving from data
great we need to gather the right data by the way real data yes uh then we can
move up into information which you are comparing to a narrative so this is where we start to form a world view s to
speak or or at least a an umbrella 30,000 foot level so to speak of of something specific right we're telling a
story we're telling a story of and then you're going to be willing to test it that's the next level deter valorate and
determine validity okay so from there we use the intelligence analysts right are you
going to be able to predict the Iraq war or India testing nuclear weapon or 911
right what what enables you to be a good Intel analyst as human
being yeah looking back at that were there really weapons of mass destruction right right yes so so they created
narratives Based on data and those narratives a lot of them turned out to not be correct their sources were saying
certain things and I think it's true those sources said certain things but those sources were given more weight
than other sources that were saying other things it was a this it comes down a lot of the time to that select step
all the way at the bottom right uh because there's so much raw Intel what
do you do but then but and you're nobody's going to get that right so that's where you take your narratives and then you're going to test them
you're G to look are they valid how would I know this was not valid so the knowledge then
becomes tested information is that right yep and and
you're continually willing to do that yeah and then and then the wisdom then you've got valued judgments and weighing
contrary and questions of ultimate what is that good ultimate good question of
the good this may be true but is it useful to mention right now right everybody knows that guy who's the well
actually I'm often that guy but I shouldn't be right is it always useful
to impart that knowledge in all ways and times right or how do you use it yes
exactly right and and and not quite and honestly I beyond that I I think that as
you say value judgments to have a value judgment you have to have at least two values yes so so if I've built this up
over here and I've gone through a up to a position of knowledge but there's something else
where I see hey this Al this map also lays over this other map right so so uh Doctrine Eternal
truths right and then I've got a knowledge about is we're talking a lot about lgbtq issues here where where do I
bring these together what where are the values up above one another here on these two sets of data that I have and
then the wisdom to me would be how do I bring these together or or place one above another here or there and and and
then impart it right I think the wisdom it has to do with to me the value
judgment is so important and I've focused on this a lot lately is evil
comes from bad value judgments yes it rarely ever does evil come in and just
say I am horrible except me right right it just doesn't happen like that it is
it's only one value yeah to an extreme it's like uh president Nelson's I call
it his his identity hierarchy right today you have so much with identitarianism and identity politics
that take these labels and identities that are true or at least some are true
I mean that's called of all and I take race and I put it above those three
identities that he goes over of child of God child of the Covenant and disciple of Christ and and it inflates the
importance of this and all of a sudden this value is raised up above those others that's destructive not to an
indiv just to an individual but to a society so wisdom to me is can I can I
match somehow value the values of God can I MA match
the values of truth because all that is truth all that is to me is this where do
you place your Val like empathy where where do you place your values you would never go wrong quoting Neil Maxwell so
here's Elder Maxwell oh he's the best uh riffing off of that Chesterton quote I read earlier he says there's an ecology
that pertains to spiritual things to human nature which when violated brings a series of consequences just as
automatic and inexorable as the ecology that is born of the cluster of laws
governing nature the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a collection of principles woven together
in the fabric of immutable law this is the romance and high adventure of
Orthodoxy let me just pause and say most people think Orthodoxy is boring but I'm with elder Maxwell here Orthodoxy true
correct Orthodoxy is actually and I wouldn't have said this 10 years ago speaking Dan I would not have said it's
romantic and adventurous to be Orthodox but it is the best thinking the most interesting and fertile fields of
inquiry are within Orthodoxy I I stand by that there's so much hidebound and
boring uh in in the world today that's just boring frankly these principles
bound together not only give us salvation back to Elder Maxwell but they also give us balance depth and happiness
in our lives the doctrines of Jesus Christ are so powerful that any one of
these doctrines having been broken away from the rest goes wild and mad as GK Chesterton observed the principle of
Love without the principles of justice and discipline Elder Maxwell's discipline goes wild any Doctrine unless
it is woven into the fabric of Orthodoxy goes wild the doctrines of the Kingdom
need each other just as the people of the Kingdom need each other that's
fabulous that's wisdom yes absolutely that is wisdom absolutely that's the
best one of the best descriptions of wisdom you'll ever hear right there yeah yeah well guys thank you so much for is
there anything else you wanted to get in here from the article before we we end the interview nope thanks for having us
on Greg we appreciate it yeah it's I really appreciate I appreciate you guys coming on you you you play off each off
of each other really really well and again I love the technical nature that you're going into on this
because you have to be able to dissect it you have to be able to make those value judgments and if you don't dissect
something you you can't you can't look between the values and and and bring everything together I think it's a very
important article you guys can find this at Public Square magazine. is it
org uh yeah public square.org the article is called empathy or Echo
Chambers written by Ellsworth and Jeff pyan thanks guys so much really appreciate it thank you take care
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