Hank Smith: 00:01 Welcome to FollowHIM, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I’m Hank Smith.

John Bytheway: 00:09 And I’m John Bytheway.

Hank Smith: 00:11 We love to learn.

John Bytheway: 00:11 We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you.

John Bytheway: 00:15 As together we follow Him.

Hank Smith: 00:19 Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith, and I’m your host. And I’m here with my lacking nothing co-host, John Bytheway.

John Bytheway: 00:31 John, I’m lacking intolerant.

Hank Smith: 00:34 There is a point in the scriptures where a young man asks Jesus, “What lack I yet?” And I thought, “If John asked Jesus that question, what lack I yet?” Jesus would say, “John Bytheway, nothing.” If I asked that of Jesus, he would say, “Do you want it in alphabetical order or chronological order? Because I have a couple of volumes for you of what you lack.”

John Bytheway: 00:54 That’s what would happen to me.

Hank Smith: 00:56 John, we’re going to be in the Four Gospels again today, and we needed an expert to join us. We have an expert here. Who is it?

John Bytheway: 01:04 Yes, we’re so excited today to be joined by Matt Townsend, and some of you may have already heard that name, many of you probably heard that name. For more than 25 years, Dr. Matt Townsend has been entertaining and educating audiences with his unique lessons on life, love, and leadership. He blends humor and storytelling to inspire and motivate healthier living. Matt attended the University of Utah, Brigham Young University and Fielding Institute, has completed his bachelor’s degree, I love this part, a few master’s degrees and a doctorate degree. Matt has his own coaching practice where he helps people with their marriages, parenting, and anxiety with online workshops and in-person sessions. So many of you may have seen him before on KSL television Studio 5 with Brooke Walker. He has a book called Starved Stuff: Feeding the 7 Basic Needs of Healthy Relationships.

Hank Smith: 02:01 And it’s fantastic, John.

John Bytheway: 02:02 It’s a really good book for those searching for better relationship skills, and that can be found on his website. Many years ago, Matt served in the Cordoba Argentina Mission, has enjoyed serving in various church callings through the years. His latest favorite callings have been Sunday school teacher and institute teacher. He’s been married for 32 years, the greatest love of his life is his wife Marty. They’re the parents of six children, and one of those took Book of Mormon from me, and through extensive therapy, he’s okay now. And one girl and five boys. Thanks for joining us today, Matt.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 02:38 Thank you. You guys, good to be here. It’s about time.

John Bytheway: 02:42 I know.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 02:43 To hang with you two.

Hank Smith: 02:44 Yep. Matt, I am so excited. We have our wonderful listeners out there, and if they don’t know you, I think they’re going to remember this forever just because you’re my favorite. Ever since the first time I heard you speak, I was a young seminary teacher, and I think we had an in-service, and you spoke, and I was just uplifted, I was educated-

Dr. Matt Townsend: 03:06 By the way, likewise to you both. I’ve learned so much from both of you. I’ve even learned what not to do, which is also helpful. So it’s good that it goes both ways, right?

John Bytheway: 03:16 Yep.

Hank Smith: 03:16 It’s good that it goes both ways.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 03:19 Absolutely. So good to be here.

Hank Smith: 03:21 Matt. We are going to be in the Four Gospels today. So, what we do, is we’re going to hand the reins over to you. Where do you want to start? We’ve listed here in the manual, Matthew 19-20, Mark 10, and Luke 18. Power packed chapters, power packed.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 03:37 I’ve been studying this stuff for the last month straight, and I didn’t know where to go. So then I did this weird thing, you guys, have you ever tried this? I prayed for insight, and what I actually prayed for was just simplification, I had it down to five, and that was really complicated. So then I’m like, “Is there one thing?” And I woke up just two days ago, and there was a word in my mind that I interpreted that was the answer, and the word is paradox. So, what I want to talk about that I think is this overarching theme of these four sections with some really rich stories. I love them too, because they’re rich, but they’re also very human. This is me, this is you, this is every one of us, we’ve seen this, we’ve felt this. This is why some of us struggle in the church, this is why some of us struggle in our marriages, and in life, but the word is paradox.

  04:37 The overarching term, and let me just define paradox, for anybody that doesn’t just love words as much as I do. But a paradox is simply this, it’s a concept or an idea where two ideas seemingly contradict, but they actually go together, it actually works together. The exact definition is, a situation, a person, or a thing that combines contradictory features or qualities, but can actually go well together. Paradox is everywhere. I for example, love my children with all of my heart, and they drive me crazy, I really get bugged by them. And I love my wife, and we are so different. I love church, and when they said we were going to two hours, I loved it even more if that was possible.

  05:33 It’s not that I didn’t love the three hours, but when I found out it’s just two hours, and then they were saying, “Well, it’s because we’re now going to have a family-centered church supported church. It’s about the family now.” Then I realized, “No, hold on. Who’s going to teach my kids in that third hour?” And they were like, “No. You guys are.” And I said, “You know I can’t teach my kids.” And they’re like, “I know, neither can we.”

  06:00 The paradox of everything that we have in our existence are these contradictory ideas, and the world is full of some. Here are some examples. The more afraid you are of death, the less you are able to enjoy life. The more something scares you, the more you should probably go do it. The more you fail, the more likely you are to succeed. The less you care about others, the less you actually care about yourself, weirdly. The harder you push for something, the harder it will feel to achieve it. Have you ever done this one? The more time you spend shopping, I don’t know if you know this, your buyer’s remorse actually goes up. So, these are contradictory to what we think should happen. Another one is in the church, we see it all the time. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

  06:47 The funny thing is we were told Abraham’s story of sacrificing his son is such a paradox. “What? The one that we prayed for to get, and now you’re just going to go off him.” Nephi, paradoxically, needed to get the plates, and there were probably a million ways that God could have gotten the plates, and he chose to have the innocent Nephi murder Laban, paradox. And it’s so hard, and what we’re going to be talking about here, are a bunch of different paradoxes that people are running into. And what I honestly believe just from my coaching world, there’s only one place where you can truly get peace through paradox.

  07:35 And it’s not going to come from the world, it’s got to come from the spirit. It’s got to come from our at onement with Christ. And in all of these examples, what the Savior’s asking us to do is to create at onement, and just come follow him. And a paradox is, “I am going to follow him, I’m already following him, I’m doing everything I need to do, here’s the list.” And then the Savior asked him to just do one more thing, and he couldn’t do it. The paradox, paradox is the theme, and why it’s important is this. So there’s five, I call this, it’s either the atonement cycle, or the alone cycle.

  08:19 We’re either going to be atoning, or we’re going to aloning. And in my world of working with relationships, I see so many people right now that don’t know how to attach. They don’t know how to be vulnerable enough to be in. In fact, there is a theory called Attachment Theory, which right now they believe about 60% of millennials can’t safely attach to their most intimate love partners. They can’t emotionally open up. So what it basically is, it’s the lack of knowing that they’re lovable, the not knowing that they’re capable, the not knowing that they belong, and the not knowing that they’re safe. And when those needs aren’t met, we generally retreat, and we pull away. And what we do is we make up either fight or flight stories.

  09:08 So, because we live in a world full of paradox, and it’s good, this is the opposition in all things, that paradox makes us humans. It makes us feel vulnerable. And when human beings feel vulnerable, or naked, as they learned in the garden, the minute they felt naked, humans’ natural man kicks on. And when our natural man kicks on, we either fight or we flight. In a lot of these stories, you’re going to see their vulnerability, make some fight or flight. And what the Lord’s telling us to do is, don’t do either. Just stay with me, and trust me, and have faith in me, and I will deliver you, stay with me.

  09:55 And as we’ll see one by one, they all go different directions instead of looking for the peace within. So, once our fight or flight kicks in, we have a bunch of little patterns we do, and we’re going to see a bunch of human patterns. And the only thing to really fix it, I believe lastingly, that will bring lasting happiness is to seek at onement with Christ, not just atonement, but also at onement. Meaning, don’t just obey the commandments, become alive in Christ, and literally connect in with Christ, and let him be not just the guide, but the comfort, and the peace, and the insight, and the direction.

  10:37 That’s what we’re going to slowly go through is four or so stories, however many we can get to, and hopefully show you more and more this theme of paradox, and the invitation to come unto Christ.

Hank Smith: 10:50 Awesome. This sounds fantastic.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 10:54 Just to get started, yeah.

Hank Smith: 10:56 Joseph Smith made a statement that sounds similar to what you’re talking about. I don’t know if it is. And he said, “By proving contraries, opposites, by figuring out opposites, truth is made manifest.”

Dr. Matt Townsend: 11:10 Yeah. I love that.

Hank Smith: 11:11 “By proving contraries.” That sounds a little bit like what you’re talking about.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 11:15 Well, it is, and you’ll see the proving contraries, it’s all through the scriptures. By the way, what I learned in one of my graduate degrees is this theory called Symbolic Interaction Theory and Appreciative Inquiry. So, if you’re going to inquire into an issue, a challenge, or a problem, there’s two sides you can approach. When I coach people, there’s two sides of every problem we can approach. We can approach the problem side where we’re broken, where we don’t like each other, where my wife drives me crazy, and we get all mad about it, and that’s called the depreciative side. It’s where we’re broken, or we can talk about the appreciative side of where we’re healthy, or what it would look like if we were healthy, and inherent in every issue is depreciative and appreciative.

  12:04 But as human beings, we are so much more drawn to, amazingly, the depreciative side. Which is why when most of us talk about the gospel historically, and every major religion talks about it historically, we talk a lot about the sin, the fall, the broken nature of man, the problem, the evil. What it does, is it makes us start overcompensating on the sin side, and not actually seeing the light of the Christ’s side. And even when we talk of Christ, we talk about his fixing, the depreciative, instead of attracting to the appreciative side.

  12:47 I’m not sure that we’re on this earth to just avoid sin. I think we’re on this earth to become like him. And every invitation through the scriptures is an invitation to become like him. But I think, because so many times it was written by men, we write it depreciatively, that’s human nature. It’s much more, we are always more inclined to go for the negative thought, we call it negative interpreting, in my world. If I was bit by a rattlesnake in my garden, when I go out to the garden, what am I looking for? Every time, I’m looking for snakes. But what if I see the garden hose? It’s still a hose, but I interpret it like it’s a snake.

  13:30 So, it doesn’t matter if it’s a snake or a hose. In my mind, it is what it is. To me, whatever story we end up using as the map for how we get back to God impacts us. There’s a bunch of stories we use, and I think every story is important. As we’re going through this, you can look at the plan of salvation through the war metaphor, where we’re all a bunch of warriors. Your job is to be a fighter and a warrior, the goal is to win against evil, Christ is our captain, and we see everyone else as either a friend, or a foe. We need to be vigilant, we need to armor up, and the residual feelings of the warring model that we may have learned growing up is contention and division. We are at war.

  14:17 There’s a legal model of the planet of salvation, which is, you’re either a criminal or you’re an offender. You’re a dirtbag, quite honestly. The justice model would say that Christ is our advocate, that we see other people with a judgment of good or bad, we either obey or we pay. And we have residual feelings from that model of feeling alone and hopeless.

  14:45 Daniel Judd in his book on mental health in the church talked about whenever we use the legal model, or the justice model in teaching the gospel. And it comes off too heavy in justice and legality, we tend to breed more aversion to the gospel. But again, it’s just a map to learn how to do it. We have a cleansing model like we’re going to go to the cleaners, and our part is we’re dirty and stained, and it’s unacceptable. The goal is cleanliness, perfection. The Christ role is the lamb, through his blood we’ll be cleaned. We see others as clean or dirty, we judge them binarily, and we try to stay away from a dirty world.

  15:28 And what we get a lot of times in the cleansing model is the residual feeling of unworthy and ashamed. And you can see some of these models working on these stories we’re going to get into. About the rich man who was doing everything he could to be legally justified, and then God asked him to do one more thing, and it kind of tips him. There’s the financial model of the plan of salvation, which is, “You’re a debtor, you’re bankrupt, you’re an unprofitable servant.” The goal is to be in the black. Christ’s role is, he’s our benefactor. He’ll ease the debt, pay the debt, and the daily focus is we play catch up with our collectors. We’re constantly playing to catch up. And the problem with the financial model is we’re always seemingly behind. We’re never enough, because we’re unprofitable.

  16:16 There’s the medical model where we’re sick, and we’re injured. We stay in the hospital with a bunch of other sick people, and hopefully we’re making it better for each other. But sometimes the sick people keep infecting sick people. The Christ is our healer, and we see others as either healthier or less healthy than us. So notice, with every one of these paradigms, they create a comparative mentality. We’re constantly comparing based on the model, and we look to God to be healed, and we, at the end, either feel hopeful because of healing, or we feel broken. Now, when we feel broken, we should turn to our healer for healing. That’s the model.

  16:53 Just two others. One is the school model, which means you’re on this earth to learn, you’re a student, you’re here to develop.

John Bytheway: 17:00 It’s a classroom.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 17:02 You’re here to be changed. That’s why the fall was so powerful, because when God saw that they had partaken, he testified, “Now, you have become one of us, and now you’re going to go through the process of becoming.” The Savior’s role is our teacher. We see others as more or less capable than we are in the classroom. We learn the answers that we need to learn, and we try to pass the test. You may have seen the rich servant as seeing this as a student model where he was trying to just pass the test. And then what we feel over time is either adequate because we’re progressing, or inadequate.

  17:39 But there’s one model that I think is restored. I think it’s the core to the restoration. It’s the model that when Joseph Smith met the Father and the Son, and was taught that the traditional creeds need to be corrected. And I think some of the traditional creeds had some of this modeling going on, and thoughts going on. But the model was, “You’re my son, we’re a family.” And in the second estate, there’s a first estate, where we were the most loving family you’ve ever seen. And each and every one of us knew love purely inside and out. When we’re in the family model, we don’t see each other as better or worse. We see each other as brothers and sisters. In the family model, Christ is the big brother, and he’s coming to get us, and the goal is to return home and to be like mom and dad.

  18:42 And what we’re looking for is family, and fellowship as a family. And the daily focus is at onement, and loving one another. So, I seek at onement with my heavenly parents, and I seek to love one another, and at onement Zion with everyone around me. And last but not least, the residual feelings of the family model is loved, hope, and at one, and you belong. And if you go back to our attachment needs, that takes care of the four needs of, “Are you lovable?” “Yeah, I’m in a family.” “Do you belong?” “Absolutely.” “Are you capable?” “No, but I’m learning, and I have people that’ll help me.” And, “Are you safe?”

  19:26 So, I think that’s the model that this world needs, and we need to make sure we are not always using mixed models. Maybe we need to stick more to the model of we have a heavenly parent. And there’s this awesome quote by Parley P. Pratt, in the Key to the Science of Theology, where he says, “After God’s spirit children were born.” So up in the premortal world before we were born, “they were matured in heavenly mansions, trained in the school of love, in the family circle, and amidst the most tender embraces of parental and eternal affection.” So for eons of time, we were raised to be loving, connected family members. And then we come to this earth, the veil is lowered, and now all of a sudden paradox starts to take us on.

  20:24 Now, when we lived pre-mortally, we felt loved, we felt peace, we felt capable. And one of the greatest things, it’s we weren’t perfect. We weren’t perfect beings. We lacked bodies and experience, but we still felt love, joy, hope, peace, and understanding, which tells me that in the spirit, and closeness to our father, we have the cure to the paradoxical problem. It’s always in being and connecting back to home. So, I really believe that’s what our heavenly Father and the Savior are doing, it’s just trying to get us to connect back to home. And when we do, we can stand in the chaos.

  21:10 And I’ve done this. We had a really close family member or a friend who lost their child in a plane crash, and I’m at the viewing of their son, and I’m hugging my friend. She whispers in my ear, because I had taught this idea that we’re in the world in paradox. In our minds going crazy, and we can then all actually get into our bodies, and be exhausted, and sick, and then back into our minds saying, “This isn’t fair.” Then we can go back to spirit and feel peace. And she said, “Matt, throughout the day, I get into my mind, and I’m overwhelmed by how unfair this is, how not right this is. And my body reacts when I smell his shirt, and then I imagine the Savior coming to me, and he instantly brings me peace, and I’m back to the peace in the midst of the paradox.”

  22:09 So, that, is what we’re going to try to show. Go through these stories, and each of the stories are different, but what you’re going to see is that people are fighting for some identity. They’re fighting with their riches, they’re fighting with their religion, the Pharisees trying to catch the Savior. We are arguing about our marriage and divorce, arguing about whether the children should be brought to Christ, so that he can touch them. We’re talking about some pretty weird stories, but every one of them are nothing more than this weird paradox of are we going to turn in the moment or not? And if we do, we have the promise of peace, and when we don’t, we have the promise of alonement.

Hank Smith: 22:50 Awesome.

John Bytheway: 22:51 I’m just so struck by how many times we have talked in the scriptures about the Lord promising to be with us. And the idea of atonement is with us, we’re at one, but we’re not one alone, we’re with. So I love those two words, atonement and alonement, it’s the opposite.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 23:12 And isn’t this world alone?

John Bytheway: 23:14 Yeah.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 23:14 Yeah. It’s lonely.

John Bytheway: 23:15 And the promise at the end of the sacrament prayer, that we hear every week, that always have his spirit to be with us. There’s no alone, there doesn’t have to be. So I love that. Thank you.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 23:27 There’s a great quote by Joseph Smith in The Joseph Smith Papers, that’s the power of this union and oneness. He says, “By union of feeling, we obtain power with God. Nothing is so much calculated to lead people to forsake sin, as to take them by the hand and watch over them with tenderness. When persons manifest the least kindness, and love to me, or whatever power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings, and depress the human mind. It is the doctrine of the devil to retard the human mind, and retard our progress by filling us with self-righteousness.” Which we’re going to hear in these stories. “The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls, to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our back. If you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on one another. By this, shall men know, you are my disciples if you have loved one to another.”

  24:35 To me, the entire Gospel is this. It’s at onement. And when we have at onement, we are turning over the paradox. We’re completing the paradox. We can rest now in the peace that passive understanding. Now, we can sit in it, and we can handle the disparity, and the lack of fairness, and we can handle the rejection. And the rejection won’t go away, we will just be yoked, and the God will pick up the yoke a little bit more on us. So, that’s what we’re going to try to get into today.

Hank Smith: 25:12 Fantastic.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 25:14 So, let’s start in Matthew 19, and talk about marriage and the little moment of temptation where the Pharisees are trying to tempt our Savior. I would’ve been a whole different guy with those Pharisees. That’s because I’m not there. But, this is chapter 19:3, “The Pharisees also came onto him tempting him, and saying unto him, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” By the way, notice immediately negative topic, we’re going to go to the dark side of the issue. And I get it. There’s real negative stuff. I do this every day in my profession. “And he answered and said unto them, have you not read that He, which made them at the beginning, made them male and female.” Okay, he’s clarifying, by the way, notice where he goes. He goes back to the beginning.

Hank Smith: 26:10 Yeah, Genesis.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 26:10 He has to go to the doctrine, and to the beginning of the doctrine. So, there’s a great quote that models what the Savior is doing here. Joseph Smith said, “If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time. But if we start wrong, it is a hard matter to get it right.” So, now the Pharisees are taunting him and taunting him. And where he goes is, he doesn’t just chase their story, he goes right to the beginning. Now, we could go back with our revealed Gospel to the premortal world, and we could go to our proclamation on the family, and find out that our identity and gender identity premortally was divine and of God. So, “Have you not read that He, which made them at the beginning, made them male and female and said, for this cause, shall man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. Therefore, they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God have joined together, let no man put asunder.”

  27:14 “They say unto to him. Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committed adultery and whoso marry with her, which is put away doth commit adultery.” So he’s teaching a doctrine, and he’s teaching a doctrine of eternal marriage, we’ve received clarity on this.

  27:55 So, is the idea that he’s saying you can’t divorce? Because if that’s what he’s saying, I’m scared, because my parents divorced when I was 9. So, I’ve grown up with this divorced parent thing, and divorce is again a paradox of this world. It’s an eternal covenant which God puts together, and when God seals it together, God intends it to be forever. And we know that that can’t always be. When God joined Adam and Eve as husband and wife, neither we nor any other mortal can alter this divine order of matrimony. It is not a human invention.

  28:41 What Christ is witnessing and testifying of is marriage is a Godly invention. It is the combination of and bringing together of two people. Now, Moses was allowed to write the divorcement, and would allow people to divorce, and the Savior will too. It’s the living of a lower law. And President Dallin Oaks taught that heavenly Father intends for the marriage relationship to be eternal. However, God also understands that divorce is sometimes necessary. President Oaks explained that the Lord permits divorced persons to marry again without the stain of immorality specified in the higher law. Unless a divorced member has committed serious transgressions, he or she can become eligible for a temple recommend under the same worthiness standards that apply to other members.

  29:31 So, of course, you can divorce. And the ideal is eternal, and an eternal marriage. And paradoxically, again, the eternal marriage, and the proclamation on the family says circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. The interesting thing about that, that is the plan of God, there’s always been individual adaptation. He didn’t have Abraham sacrifice Isaac, they had to adapt how they were going to get the plates back. He had to adapt the Kirtland temple, the Nauvoo Temple, the Independent Stop, and Salt Lake City. That’s a long bit of adaptation. So, adaptation and the Israelites and the wilderness, it’s the plan. The goal is the process of creating this loving relationship, not just the existence of the covenant.

Hank Smith: 30:25 These teachings about marriage in the New Testament are hard.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 30:29 Yeah, that’s brutal. It’s just not clear enough, is it?

John Bytheway: 30:33 I have a huge document of Dr. Richard Draper about the Shammai and… what was the other school of thought? Because one it was, “Yeah, you can put away your wife for every cause.” And the other was more of the, “Well, only in cases of adultery.” Which sounds like what Jesus is going to say in verse 9. But then, we’ve got the issue of, “So, if you’ve been divorced, and you get married again, is that adultery?” Which Elder Oaks says, we’re not currently enforcing that celestial standard, or something. In the Institute manual that everybody has it. This is what I love. Everybody can go to library, manuals, adults, and then institute, and find this in their religion 211 manual. It says this, “During the time of the Savior’s Mortal Ministry, divorce was a vexing issue debated without resolution among the rabbis. For many people, divorce was justified, even for trivial reasons. The Pharisees sought to involve Jesus in the controversy by asking his opinion about divorce. In response, the Savior emphasized the sanctity of marriage by referring to Adam and Eve, who provided the ideal of marital unity and permanence.”

  31:41 And this is exactly what you were saying, Matt, you have to start right, and so Jesus didn’t go right to this exception. He went to, “Let’s talk about what marriage is for.” And also Dr. Camille Fronk Olson that we’ve had on the program before, and will again. She said, “The Pharisees asked Jesus, is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. In other words, when am I justified to divorce my spouse? The Jewish law, as these leaders interpreted it, required that a man obtained only a letter of divorcement from a legal official. However, what did Jesus start talking about in his answer to them? This is fabulous.” I’m still quoting Camille.

  32:19 “This is fabulous. Does he talk about justifiable reasons for divorce? No. He focused on marriage, and the sanctity of marriage. Have you not read that He, which made them at the beginning, made them male and female and said, for this cause, shall man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh? What therefore, they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder. Jesus was reminding these leaders to focus on the principle, and then do the best you can in those circumstances. We can spend too much time talking about exceptions rather than the principle, which confuses the real question.”

Dr. Matt Townsend: 32:56 To me, it also goes back to that answer that, we’re going to look at the issue darkly or from the light? And the light is we know in Moses 3:18 that we were given a help meet to help us meet the Savior. Help is translated from the Hebrew word suggesting suitable and equal, and mate is suitable, and equal companion possessing the power to save. We need the partner. Now notice, the Pharisees want to talk about divorcement, and the decree, and the law. Because the law they’re believing will save, and they’re talking to the Savior as they’re talking about it. And in the Savior is the richness of life, in the Savior is the power to make these decisions. And what we need is the partner that is equal to save us. What we could be getting into instead of the outlier idea of divorce is, what does it take to make a relationship work? And why do we need each other? And what do we do with each other?

  34:00 Elder Bednar said, “After the earth was created, Adam was placed in the garden of Eden. Importantly, however, God said it was not good that man should be alone. One of God’s teachings is we shouldn’t be alone. We need the tension, and the excitement, and the goodness, and all of the benefits of our relationship to make it through this. And Eve became Adam’s wife and help mate, the unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional capacities of both males and females was needed to enact the plan of happiness. Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man and the Lord. The man and the woman are intended to learn from, strengthen, bless, and complete each other. So even if you divorce, we need to find healthy relationships, and learn this process of becoming one.”

  34:53 Remember, D&C 1:30 talks about that. The same sociality that we have here, the same relationships, eternal relationships, marriage relationships that we have here, we will have there. They will just be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy. So, this is still part of our process of developing. The interesting thing about President James Faust, he made a really interesting comment about divorce.

  35:18 He said, “Divorce in my opinion,” and he got into just cause for divorce, “Should be nothing less serious than a prolonged and apparently irredeemable relationship, which is destructive of a person’s dignity as a human being. At the same time, I have strong feelings about what is not provocation for breaking the sacred covenants of marriage. Surely it is not simply mental distress, nor personality differences, nor having grown apart nor fallen out of love. This is especially so where there are children. So it’s about learning to become one with a partner. And as we righteously learn to become one with a partner, we can learn to become one with our God, and learn to become one with a family. And create that family environment on earth that we created and experienced in heaven.”

  36:14 And the reality of our existence paradoxically, is a lot of marriages don’t work, for a variety of reasons, and because they don’t work, it leaves us in the middle of a paradox. Am I supposed to stay and be hurt emotionally or whatever? Or am I supposed to divorce and move on? And that is a decision that has to be between you and the Lord. I have seen people make the most incredible decisions to stay. And over time the Lord worked the relationship through the spirit, which is one member doing it, and it eventually saved a marriage. I’ve also seen the Lord, even in my own family life, prompt the marriage to end, and my mother made a hard decision to end. And when she ended it, it ended up being seriously blessed for me, and it created a space where I would be in the Gospel, and I would be able to become what I’ve become in my life.

  37:15 And remember Elder Ballard in conference recently talked about more than half of adults in the church today are widowed, divorced, or not yet married. Some wonder about their opportunities, and place in God’s plan, and in the church. We should understand that eternal life is not simply a question of current marital status, but of discipleship, and being valiant in the testimony of Jesus Christ. When Christ comes, he’s not checking our marital status, he’s checking what we’ve become as we’ve joined into this covenant relationship. What have we become through it? Ballard continues all those who accept the Savior’s gracious gift of repentance, and live His commandments will receive eternal life, even though they do not attain to all its characteristics and perfections in mortality. So, God will provide and take care of us.

John Bytheway: 38:09 I am so appreciative of that because I have family, and extended family in all of these circumstances. You’ve talked about one of the things, and this is just John Bytheway’s personal opinion. But I think Moroni’s greatest work was accomplished as a single adult. And when I drive down I-15, and I see Moroni alone on top of a temple, I’m reminded of how much of his life he spent alone, but how he thought of us. And I’m going to finish my father’s record, that they may be of benefit to the Lamanites, and to the whole world at some future day. He was a single adult, and he found a way to contribute and change the whole world. If we don’t have him continuing to write, we don’t have Moroni’s promise, we don’t have Mormon 8:9, we don’t have the book of Ether, and we don’t have Moroni 1-10. And that would be a loss.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 39:07 And again, think of it paradoxically. So now, you are in the true Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are on the earth, the one earth that will eventually be the celestial kingdom. You’re in the covenant, and you’re single. And in the family-oriented church and Sister Sharon Eubank said, “Being single myself, I get how this feels. You have no wing man sitting at church, and is awkward. Parties can be torture, relatives feel like they can comment, when no one should be saying a word. Fitting into the church focused on family can also be challenging. But the reality is that the majority of church members do not live in perfect family situations. I’m not sure anyone lives in that perfect, ideal family. So, why keep the emphasis? Because the family is our destiny, and we are on this earth to learn the skills of strong family relationships, no matter what our situation. So whether the dark side is just the brokenness of our own families, why do we talk about the light of eternal family? Because that’s our destiny.”

  40:14 And that’s the destiny Elder Christofferson says, “Everyone is promised with confidence. We testify that the atonement of Jesus Christ has anticipated, and in the end will compensate all deprivation and loss for those who turn to him. No one is predestined to receive less than all that the father has for his children.” And then meanwhile, we’re still feeling lonely, if you’re a divorced person, or if you’re a single person that wants it. Again, back to the paradox, think of all the singles that would love to be married and aren’t. Think about all the mothers and fathers that want kids but can’t. And paradoxically, there’s so many people that can have kids but don’t want them. This is the paradox, and this is where we are learning. This is where we grow one line at a time, one step at a time. We have another trial even from our family, and then we look to God, we receive peace, and we live another day, or another half a day, or a minute, or half hour.

Hank Smith: 41:22 Matt, John, just to add a little more clarity on these scriptures, there’s an article that you can look up. Just go, you can go to our show notes, followhim.co, we’ll link this. It’s called, What Therefore God Hath Joined Together, Let No Man Put Asunder by Dr. Richard Draper, an incredible Gospel scholar. I just want to give you a couple of thoughts from his article.

John Bytheway: 41:42 That’s the one I was mentioning.

Hank Smith: 41:44 Yeah, the schools of thought in the Jewish world.

John Bytheway: 41:48 The guy can read ancient Greek like English I can read on a blackboard. It’s amazing.

Hank Smith: 41:53 One thing that Dr. Draper does here is he says, “You have to take account who the Savior’s talking to.” He’s talking to a group of people who very likely see divorce not only condoned, but proper. When you’re done with a person, you just give them a writing of divorcement, and go find another. It says, “In Jesus’ rebuke to these people, he left no grounds whatsoever for divorce. They were there for adulterers, for there were no proper grounds for divorce. Even a writing divorcement did not in God’s eye annul their marriages. Further, they contributed to the corruption of the time by setting the precedent for others to divorce, and committed adultery as well.” And he goes through the schools of thought, Shammai or Hillel, that the Pharisees were involved in.

  42:36 But then Dr. Draper goes on to say all the scriptures combined to make one point. The Lord taught against divorce, his new covenant invited his disciples into the higher ideal demanded by the perfect will of God. In doing so, the Lord emphasized the importance, and eternal nature of marriage and the purpose for which God instituted it on the earth for the eternal life, even the deification of his children. So, how are we doing toward reaching that ideal standard today? He quotes Elder Oaks, “We live in a world in which the whole concept of marriage is in peril, and where divorce is commonplace. The concept the society has a strong interest in preserving marriages for the common good as well as the good of the couple, and the children. It has been replaced for many by the idea that marriage is only a private relationship between consenting adults, terminable at the will of either.”

  43:28 Elder Oaks adds, “In contrast to the world’s view, modern prophets have warned that looking upon marriage as a mere contract that may be entered into at pleasure, and severed at the first difficulty is an evil meriting severe condemnation, especially where children are made to suffer. Indeed, the kind of marriage required for exaltation, eternal in duration, and God-like in equality does not contemplate divorce. In the temples of the Lord, couples are married for all eternity, but some marriages do not progress toward that ideal because of the hardness of our hearts.” He quotes Jesus there, “The Lord does not currently enforce the consequences of the celestial standard. Thus, we must conclude that where abuse, and infidelity exist, divorce must also.” I really like this article, and encourage our readers to go there and dive into it.

John Bytheway: 44:22 Now, Hank, is that on the RSC website?

Hank Smith: 44:25 Yeah, we’ll link into our show notes, but yeah, it’s on the RSC website.

John Bytheway: 44:29 I think Matt has hit on a wonderful point here. This was clearly a situation where they had set up a gotcha and a trap. It just sounds like the Pharisees came unto him, tempting him. We know the motive. It wasn’t, “I really want to learn the truth about this.” It was, “Here comes a trap.” So then they asked the question, and then it’s almost like the reflex, he answered the question, “Okay, well then why did Moses say this?” You knew they were just waiting for Jesus to answer, so they could do that. So, sometimes we talk about teaching in the Savior’s way, and sometimes I thought, “Wow! So often when the Savior taught, there were some real adversaries in the same room.” Which we usually don’t have in gospel doctrine class. But boy, Jesus did all the time, and they sprung traps for him like this. So, it’s really interesting to see how he did exactly what Matt was talking about. Let’s talk about marriage as an ideal first, and how would you wrap this all up for us, Matt?

Dr. Matt Townsend: 45:32 Yeah. One of the things just as you were even going through it is, again, it goes back to the paradox of the relationship and what marriage is for. I think we still have a really deeply ingrained view of marriage is this utopia, it’s this, you found your soulmate, the completion of the other half of you. And Spencer Kimball blew up the concept of soulmate that we don’t necessarily find our soulmate, we forge it. We create this soul connectedness by working well together. Another powerful thing that I think is just as valuable to our development on this earth. It’s, if you marry somebody that is difficult, that isn’t optimal, that is struggling, that is creating tension and problems that might eventually lead to divorce. It is also for your development, you are also still growing. So, with Christ in the mix, in the promise and the covenant with you, nothing will be wasted.

  46:35 And instead of thinking as an outcome of the marriage working or not, what we probably ought to be thinking is the means of what are we becoming in our marriage. A lot of times with my clients, I have them face each other, and look at each other and I don’t let them talk for five to seven minutes. And then I ask them to just ask a rhetorical question in their head, what is it like to be them married to me? And for five or six minutes they don’t talk, and they just have to internalize, “What is it like for her to be dealing with me every day?” It is the most humbling thing, and I think that’s where we get back to the spirit. And as we allow the Lord into any of our tension and contention, as we learned in conference, anytime we let him in, he can let the light in.

  47:30 And again, this is coming from a boy raised in a divorced family. It’s through the cracks of our family that the light got in. It’s through the cracks of having to be shifted off between mom and dad, that I had to look for other light. And I got it from young men’s leaders, and I got it from brothers and family members, and brothers-in-law. I got it from other people that literally raised me up. My young men’s leader became my greatest spiritual advisor, and he jumped in right in that space, and then my father-in-law jumped in another space. So, this is why it takes a village to raise a family, and this is why God put you in the orbit. As Elder Maxwell says, “The very same orbit that lit the sky up for the wise men to get to Jesus, that star was put in orbit millions of years before. That same God put you in your orbit to go through what you’re going through in your family. So, don’t give up if it’s not ideal, nothing’s ideal really. In the end, Christ makes everything ideal when we turn to him.”

John Bytheway: 48:41 I was going to say, I have a book on my shelf called Living a Covenant Marriage. And I think it’s Kenneth Matheson’s chapter where he asks a series of questions, and my favorite one is the one you just mentioned. What is it like to be married to me? To seriously and honestly ponder that, that can lead to some decent, humble introspection could be super helpful. So it sounds like that’s what you use.

Dr. Matt Townsend: 49:12 Yeah, I love it. And the spirit is brought in instantly, then the spirit is doing the teaching, not me trying to break them down. Now they’re being changed from the inside out. So powerful.

Hank Smith: 49:23 John, Matt, I think in all of this, it needs to be said that we have listeners who are in so many different unique situations. We have some who are currently going through divorce, some who are divorced, some who are thinking about getting divorced. I wish we could give them all their answers. I just wish we could hug them, and say, “Here’s what you should do.” But we do know we have a loving Savior who everyone can go to and get their answers.

John Bytheway: 49:48 Thanks, Hank. I’m really glad you said that. I know there’s a lot of people out there hurting looking for answers, and generally you don’t find answers for specific things on a podcast. But your Heavenly Father has specific things for you, so it’s nice to know you do have a place to turn.

Hank Smith: 50:10 Please join us for part two of this podcast.