November 22, 2023; Surprising trends in youth church activity, Biden's handling of the Israel conflict, Does the Holy Ghost tell us what to do?, Romney's impeachment vote

Matt (00:02.145)
Hey, welcome listener to the Latter Day Lens. It's good to have you with us this week. This is gonna drop the day before Thanksgiving. So real quick, do you guys have anything you wanna be thankful for this Thanksgiving?

shawn (00:14.682)
I'm thankful for you too. This is so fun to do these things and I love you both. Ha ha ha.

Matt (00:18.429)
I like it. I like it, Sean. Sam has nothing to be grateful for.

Sam (00:24.496)
I echo Sean. I just want more of everything.

shawn (00:28.255)
Yeah.

Matt (00:29.977)
Well, because I'm often accused of being a socialist, I want to say how thankful I am for this wonderful country that we live in and for the freedoms that we enjoy and all of the wonderful the American dream. I'm grateful for that. Hey, so we've got some stuff in the mailbag this week. So I think this one is really not for me, but we'll see. We'll all take turns if we want. So one listener writes Ezra Klein. Do you guys know who Ezra Klein is?

Sam (00:37.354)
Oh, and the American dream.

Sam (00:42.93)
Ha ha ha.

shawn (00:46.592)
Yes, we do.

shawn (00:56.066)
I did now, but I didn't before. Yeah.

Matt (00:57.137)
Okay, you had to look him up. Yeah. Well, so the fact that this listener is quoting Ezra Klein tells us something about this listener. But okay, Ezra Klein says that wealth, as distinguished from income, is where the story of our past compounds into our present. Depending on how you estimate it, between 40 and 70% of all wealth in the United States is inherited. This is the question. Does unequal wealth lead to unequal opportunity? What are some opportunities available to wealthy but not to the poor?

Does unequal distribution of unearned wealth lead to lower economic growth since money tends to flow towards privilege and not towards productivity? You guys wanna answer any of those questions?

shawn (01:37.699)
Okay, okay, so I wanna take the word wealth out and replace it with like six or seven other words. Right, because, no, but listen, it's an interesting question because the idea that someone inherits something and now that someone who inherited something that they didn't earn is unfairly positioned to do better in life, okay? Well, what if we replace the word wealth with IQ? Matt, does unequal IQ lead to unequal opportunity?

Matt (01:43.501)
Well, now what?

Matt (02:04.96)
Yes.

shawn (02:05.85)
Oh, well, that's not fair. What about unequal, I don't know, athletic ability? Does that sometimes lead to unequal opportunity? Yes, it does if you want to play a sport. What about unequal eyesight or height? Like there's a million things that people inherit that makes them, that gives them more opportunity. So why, what? I'm trying to say that anyone who argues that

Matt (02:12.106)
Not really, no. Oh.

Matt (02:26.495)
Are you trying to say life isn't fair, Sean?

shawn (02:31.926)
We must use wealth, like find me scriptures that say wealth is the measure of, it's the blessing and the measure of our good works. Like that's the end goal. So we need to all be equal in wealth. Like show me any scriptures that talk about that.

Matt (02:45.365)
Well, well, and the Lord called his people Zion because they were of one heart and one mind, and they dwelt together in righteousness, and there were no poor among them.

shawn (02:56.478)
So you think that has to do with how much money everyone had. That's what it has to do with.

Matt (03:02.261)
Well, if there's no poor among them, that means that there are no poor people. Everyone's got enough money.

shawn (03:07.347)
But you don't think in Zion money perhaps won't exist? Perhaps it's a different society that allows us to live in an equal way? I don't think it has anything to do with money, Matt. It's not money.

Matt (03:18.005)
Okay, so then in 4th Nephi, chapter 1, after Jesus comes, and they have all things in common. So that means that everybody shares everything. Nobody has more than anybody else because everybody shares all their wealth with everybody else.

shawn (03:32.41)
Well, seems like a decent way to go if it's Zion and if Christ is there leading everything, right? I'm just trying to make the point that it's pointless to say let's pick one thing that makes us unequal and for some reason focus on that. Well, why not focus on IQ? Why shouldn't our scientists be so focused on getting everyone at the same IQ level? Have you seen the movie Gattaca?

Matt (03:52.429)
Uhhhhhh...

shawn (03:53.846)
It's what it's all about. Gattaca is this movie with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. That's how they hooked up.

Matt (03:57.593)
Oh, that's why I didn't want, that's for sure why I have not seen that show.

shawn (04:01.538)
But it's all about scientifically engineering, basically the genetics and the IQ of all your kids. And so you can control that. And it shows how like, well, if we put everyone, yeah, it's good, man. It's good. It's so good. It's very good.

Matt (04:11.381)
I've heard of this movie. I've heard of this. Well, I think, Sean, I think that members of the church say, hey, listen, if Zion is about having no poor among us, now there's more than that, right? There's one heart, one mind, dwell together in righteousness. And so I think members of the church often say things like, look, we're trying to create a society of righteous people, of good people, where there's no like hatred and there's full of love. And part of that is sharing the wealth, sharing economic prosperity so that there's no poor.

Sam (04:37.682)
Yeah, but listen, no poor among us doesn't mean everything is equal. Nothing is equal, especially in this life. Like if it were, how does the parable of the talents make any sense? How does the concept of gifts, like spiritual gifts, one person has this gift, one person has that gift. The intent isn't for everybody to be the same and to be equal. The intent is for everybody to take their strength and

shawn (04:53.378)
Yeah, exactly Sam.

Sam (05:06.702)
contribute to create a better world. It's a responsibility that the wealthy have to give back so that there are no poor among us. That's fair. So that everyone has everything in common. I know some very wealthy people. You might say, oh, it's an exception. But I know some very wealthy people that are incredibly selfless, that give back in ways that governments can't, that socialism or some structure with universal basic income and all this other BS can't.

Like the gospel has something to do with everyone has a weakness, everyone has a strength, and we overcome our weakness to be better people to give back.

shawn (05:47.087)
Bang.

Sam (05:49.997)
So.

shawn (05:50.058)
Exactly, Sam. Nice.

Matt (05:51.03)
But maybe money and currency exacerbates that. Maybe money and the people who are motivated to earn money, it exacerbates these. I'm not worshiping money. I'm saying the people.

Sam (05:54.474)
No.

shawn (05:59.034)
Stop worshiping money, Matt. Stop worshiping money. You are, you're making it the, you're making it the all important equalizer.

Sam (06:01.099)
Money, money, money.

Sam (06:05.462)
Money is a necessary evil.

Matt (06:05.493)
No, I'm saying if we live in a society where money does. Well, maybe it's what I'm saying is maybe it's not necessary. Maybe it's not. If if we.

Sam (06:09.583)
necessary.

Sam (06:13.878)
Maybe we don't need to grow. Maybe we don't need to work on our weaknesses. Maybe we don't need to share our strengths and our gifts. Maybe everything in the Bible about talents, we should just throw it back and say, this is absolute garbage. Let's pick in the Bible the things we like and the things that we don't like. It'll be good.

shawn (06:14.894)
Matt, where does that, so like a building on.

Matt (06:30.049)
Right? But your assumption, Sam, is that people will only like face adversity and face difficulty and challenges if they need to in order to survive because they need money. And what I'm saying is there's a possibility that people could live in a world where they don't need to earn money and they choose of their own free will to develop their talents and to become better people because of the intrinsic joy of growth.

Sam (06:52.834)
Have you ever seen that happen? That's just, that's a fantasy. Who does that? Like who says you've been on cruises. Who says I'm not going to go on a cruise. I'm going to stay in work. I'm going to work an 18 hour day and become better. Like you go to a gym. I went to a gym this afternoon. I didn't say, Hey, the, the thing I want to do today is spend an hour at the gym doing pushups.

shawn (07:17.251)
Liar.

Sam (07:21.162)
because it's going to be fun. The only reason I go to the gym is because I know there's going to be a payoff and I'm going to have incredible pecs. Can we say pecs on this show? That seems terrible to do, but like that's the payoff from that work. Yeah.

Matt (07:31.525)
But it's...

shawn (07:32.366)
We can, but we can, but I'm gonna call you out, but I'm gonna call out your fake gym adventure because you said you did pushups at the gym. No one does pushups at the gym, Sam, so I know you didn't go to the gym. Why would you do pushups at the gym? Okay, so here, Matt, what do you think about this statement? If, is this true or not? Did not Christ teach that what we do with whatever portion we have is more important than having the portion?

Sam (07:43.302)
I do pushups at the gym, orange theory, orange theory, bring it on.

Matt (07:44.872)
I do push-ups at the gym. Yeah.

Sam (08:03.746)
I don't remember him saying that, but that's a good idea. Ha ha ha.

Matt (08:03.777)
I'm confused.

shawn (08:05.998)
So everyone, it's the parable you said, Sam, right? One was given one talent, one was given five talents. And in the end, they weren't judged for how many talents they had. They were judged for, did they increase at all the talents they were given?

Sam (08:10.53)
Yeah.

Sam (08:17.826)
Net increase, talents equal money, talents equal money. Matt, you lost that, I apologize. Let's do very quickly.

Matt (08:20.989)
Okay, okay. Yeah, he said that. I do remember that. Hey, we'll move on to the next question because it kind of relates. Okay, and I think that this particular listener is not going to be very happy with the way that we answered his question because we just dodged his question and Sean changed his question to a different question, but that's okay. That's okay. All right, so this other listener says

shawn (08:26.896)
So does not, so does, oh, okay. Okay.

shawn (08:38.587)
Oh, this is a good one.

shawn (08:44.942)
I did. Yes, I did. Sorry.

Sam (08:46.39)
It was a better question.

Matt (08:51.089)
Matt, you won't leave inheritance to your, you won't leave an inheritance to your children because people who inherit money wasted on things that aren't useful because they didn't, nothing to earn the money. Yet you argue for a universal basic income where all people receive unearned money and by your logic they will waste this money, right? It's it being unearned and all is there like an inconsistency of my logic there? There's not. So I'll explain. Okay.

So Sam's cruise analogy is perfect. So if you go on a cruise, right, there's unlimited food, unlimited, all this stuff. And you can tell the people, and there's actually people out there who live on cruises, like, cause it's cheaper than rent. So they'll just live on cruise ships. And you meet these people if you cruise often enough. So what you notice is like when a person goes on a cruise for the first time, or maybe just for a limited amount of time, they overindulge, right? They eat more than they should.

They spend a lot of time just sitting around at the pool doing nothing. But the people who are on the cruise, like on a regular basis, that's not how they live on the cruise. They go to the gym on a regular basis. They eat smaller portions. They eat healthier food because what happens is scarcity. Yeah, they do pushups. Scarcity or a windfall like the natural, like the natural reaction to scarcity. And then you have a windfall is

Sam (10:02.402)
They do pushups.

Matt (10:17.109)
wow, I've got something and I need to like get as much of it as possible because I don't know how long it'll last. It's like when we were kids and they would have those like, well, I remember like you could go to Toys R Us and you could win this thing where you run around in Toys R Us and throw all of these things in the cart and you got to keep everything that you got from Toys R Us and they were getting all kinds of stuff they didn't want and they didn't care about cause it was a one time windfall thing. And when I talk about universal basic income, that's different. That's saying

shawn (10:31.586)
Yeah, I remember that

Matt (10:45.433)
Put a person in a situation where they never again have to worry about money. And that will be like the people who live on a cruise ship. They never again have to worry about, is there food, is there?

Sam (10:51.443)
Mm-hmm.

shawn (10:53.538)
What if, but Matt, what if, what about your, so why can't you apply that to your kids? What if you had $10 million and you said to your kids, I'm going to give you this inheritance because you'll never have to worry about money. Maybe at the first you'll waste it a little bit, but according to your logic, your kids would then treat it wisely like the cruise ship people.

Matt (11:14.069)
Well, so I'm not opposed to like if I had the kind of wealth that I could say to my kids, you never have to worry about money ever again. Here, just know that, just know that whenever you need anything, there's going to be money for you. Now go live a productive life. I'm not opposed to that. I think that would be fine.

shawn (11:29.558)
I think he changed his stance, Sam. Did he not? You just said you'll give an inheritance now. Ha ha ha.

Matt (11:31.349)
No, I didn't change my staff. Like I-

Sam (11:32.861)
Ha ha.

Matt (11:36.178)
I wouldn't give an inheritance. Like when you give somebody just a bunch of cash, then they feel it creates this like windfall mentality where you're like the kid at the grocery store and you gotta just spend it all and use it all and take it all. But like, we all see.

Sam (11:49.543)
So in this scenario, in this scenario, when the wealth passes to your kids, is it taxed to 80%, Matt?

Matt (11:54.734)
Go ahead.

Matt (11:58.865)
I don't care. Yeah. Give it, go ahead. Take 80, take 80%. That'd be fine. Take 95%. That's fine with me. Listen, we all know millionaires, not personally, right? But you see people who are, who have all of the money they could ever want and they have no need for any more money. And yet you still see them out in the world, living, productive lives, doing things to better society, better the community.

Sam (12:01.527)
Okay.

Alright, alright.

shawn (12:23.866)
So let your kids inherit their money, and that's how they will behave.

Matt (12:29.365)
Well, I mean, I, again, I'm opposed to it as a windfall. I'm not, if I, if I could set up some kind of an annuity or something that just says, listen,

shawn (12:37.438)
You either trust people with money or you don't. No? Yes. By the way, your kids and I had discussion after the last podcast, and this is where this is coming from.

Matt (12:41.965)
Those are my only two choices.

Matt (12:48.929)
Mm hmm. They were not they were not pleased. My kids do my kids do not want any of my money. I'm telling you that what they want is I've got a statue of Lenin. They want the statue of Lenin and I've got some Russian war medals that I didn't earn but I purchased and they want the Soviet war medals. That's all they want from me. You Are you serious? You think my kids want money?

shawn (12:52.278)
I'm advocating for them.

shawn (13:08.478)
Okay, okay, I don't believe you. Okay.

shawn (13:14.327)
Course they do.

Matt (13:15.157)
Sean, I've raised my kids better than that. They know that money is of no use to them.

Sam (13:20.466)
Unless it's a universal basic income and then they'll seek after it. Fair enough.

shawn (13:25.837)
That's the point, Sam.

Matt (13:25.918)
So the idea of the universal basic income is to say to people, you never have to worry ever again about where your next meal is coming from, where you're gonna like sleep tonight. It's all taken care of.

shawn (13:37.506)
But Matt, but Matt, according to your own admittance, they will waste that money on the latest and greatest iPhone instead. If your logic follows.

Matt (13:47.081)
At first, they'll be like those people on the cruise ships at first who go crazy and then they'll settle in and say Yeah

Sam (13:49.334)
So, so could I make a recommendation?

Sam (13:56.954)
I think we have killed universal basic income to its core. There's no way anybody's going to win that argument at this point. Next topic. Yes. Thank you.

shawn (14:06.074)
It's not even on the table in America either. Why are we even talking about it?

Matt (14:09.613)
Sam, that is a terrible recommendation. As long as people write these emails, we're gonna talk about it. Okay, Sam, you're up first with the thought provoker this week.

Sam (14:12.523)
Yeah.

That's fair. All right. So, uh, my thought provoker comes from my daughter, Carly. So Carly, thank you for suggesting this. She, uh, came back from a youth fireside. Yes. Thank you, Carly. She came back from a youth fireside last night with elder Quintenelle Cook. And she said to me, dad, I've listened to your show. Obviously my kids do. And, uh, we talk often about.

Matt (14:26.765)
Thank you, Carly.

Sam (14:43.226)
challenges sometimes that youth have within the church. She said, Quentin L. Cook said, youth and young adults are not less active or leaving the church in higher numbers than in the past, as has been widely circulated. The percentage of church participation for the rising generation shows a continuous upward trend. She said, what do you think about that? I was fascinated.

So the question today for my section is, how has the church reversed a declining trend among youth across all religions in the United States to go from declining to, as Elder Cook stated, a continuous upward trend?

Matt (15:32.361)
Yeah, so I don't want to get all geeky about interpreting numbers here, but I'm just looking at this quote a little bit. The percentage of church participation for the rising generation shows a continuous upward trend. So this means that young adults and kids in high school, there's a higher percentage of church participation among them than there was in the past.

shawn (15:39.042)
You do too.

Sam (15:40.364)
Okay.

Sam (15:58.21)
Yes.

Matt (16:01.145)
Hmm. I believe that.

shawn (16:02.294)
Mac, and also isn't there evidence of that in the number of missionaries that have been going out? Before the pandemic, there was what we peaked at 72,000.

Matt (16:10.142)
85,000 85,000.

shawn (16:13.074)
No, no, no. Pre-pandemic, it was like 67,000. And now at the end of this year, it's going to be something like 78,000 or something.

Matt (16:19.777)
When they lowered the mission age, it was like 85,000 though, right?

shawn (16:22.89)
Yeah, there was that huge like getting caught up from the kids. They're like, Oh, I get to go now. But then it balanced back down to like 67,000 and stayed even for a while. But there's isn't there.

Matt (16:32.281)
But that doesn't tell you percentages though, Sean, because we have like a whole bunch of people getting baptized every year, right? So you can have an increase in numbers without an increase in a percentage.

shawn (16:43.264)
Okay.

Matt (16:44.541)
So, but I'm not surprised by this at all, Sam. I think that young people today are actually more religious than our generation. I put another link in here in this story. There's a guy who studies, he's a pastor, but he looks at like data to look at church participation. And the least religious group in America right now is the 40 to 50 year olds. And the young people.

Sam (17:10.undefined)
us.

Matt (17:12.009)
Yeah, our generation is actually the least religious and um, millennials and then the ones younger than them, they're all very religious. Now they practice religion differently than they, they're not like a, let's go to church for hours kind of a thing. Uh, so like, this is outside of our church, right? But, but really, and I think we talked recently too about how they don't like as much like sex and things like that in their entertainment. So it doesn't surprise me. I don't,

I don't think that I think what I'm saying Sam is I don't think our church is different in this regard. I think young people are just generally more religious and so young people in the church it makes sense to me that they would be more religious than our generation.

Sam (17:51.31)
Okay, Sean, what's your take?

shawn (17:54.798)
I mean, based on the numbers or whatever I'm reading that it does. I mean, I know there are trends out there that show that religion general religions are decreasing by percentages yet ours has.

Matt (18:06.497)
Well, I don't, I don't want to make your friends mad again, Sean, but think about which religions are decreasing the one, right? The Catholic church, even evangelicals is on the decline.

shawn (18:12.266)
Yeah, right. That's what I mean. Right. Right, right, right. Right, right, right. But our rates of increase are steady. We're not decreasing. And so that goes a little bit against what you're saying, Matt. I think we are decreasing, increasing differently from those other orthodox.

Sam (18:12.556)
Oh no.

Sam (18:18.818)
So, so.

Matt (18:30.657)
But Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world.

shawn (18:34.282)
Yeah, there's good reasons for that though, right? I mean, it's.

Matt (18:37.173)
Well, so what I'm saying, it's all in how you're defining religion. That's what I'm saying. So sure, Catholicism and mainline Protestantism are on the decline, but I'm saying religion itself is not on the decline. People are just practicing it differently.

shawn (18:40.407)
Oh, OK.

shawn (18:48.47)
Oh, I see. I see. Well, Sam, but to answer your question directly, I think that in my opinion, it's a wheat and terror situation. I think when we were younger, there were lots of kids, we were all, and if we didn't believe in the church, it doesn't matter. We just stayed in it, you just were there for maybe not the greatest reasons, but they kind of, whereas today I think kids are going polar opposites. They're either leaving completely, at least this is what I'm seeing, this could be just anecdotal, Sam, but they're either leaving or they're

Sam (18:51.435)
So.

shawn (19:18.122)
super committing and the more kids that are super committing are meaning more activity. That's what I'm saying

Sam (19:24.082)
So I was fascinated by this quote from Elder Cook because there's no way I can't imagine an apostle would be able to put a quote like that in a fireside that is so publicly distributed without it being backed up. So Matt, you interestingly enough cut out the third article. You need to put that back into the notes. It's a Wall Street Journal article and it's fascinating. It's by somebody by the name of Claire Ansboury. It's behind a paywall and I'm too cheap to pay for a paywall. So I can see

Matt (19:45.844)
Okay.

Sam (19:52.93)
couple paragraphs, but here's what it says. Oh yeah. Do you, uh, are you able to see such things?

Matt (19:55.353)
Do you want me to pull it up?

Matt (20:01.021)
Yeah, I have the Wall Street Journal. Yeah, I'll pull it up real fast.

Sam (20:03.106)
Oh, fan. So, so the, the portion I can see it says about one third of 18 to 25 year olds say they believe more than doubt the existence of a higher power. That's up from one quarter. So a third now up from one quarter. So there's the rising trend in 2021. And the part of the article I can see says that the increase is attributed to the pandemic. Some of the isolation, and maybe an opportunity or time to think or be separated from.

people and other friends. So that 18 to 25 year old, I'm not sure if Elder Cook is referencing data he has available to him and not to us, or if it's this general survey and researcher polling that was done, it says back in December, but there is, according to this research, an increase, which is fascinating. And I would like it to be noted, I'm generally someone who's a little cynical, right? So I love being able to bring hope that

Matt (21:00.271)
hahahaha

Sam (21:01.262)
kids out there are turning towards and generally believing in something bigger and better than themselves. Call me hopeful Sam that, uh, you know, not only is the American dream alive, but belief among that age category is as well, Matt, what does the rest of the article say? Is it prove that point?

Matt (21:21.249)
The other part of the story is about church attendance. So they say that church attendance is up since the pandemic. And then the quotes that they have in here is that people in this young generation, they said, I think this demographic has a need to connect socially and spiritually. And so they think that this need for connection is bringing people back into the churches.

Sam (21:39.847)
Mmm.

shawn (21:45.387)
Hmm, that's interesting.

Sam (21:46.68)
So is that a hopeful sign for the growth of the Church?

Matt (21:46.977)
But I think Quentin Cook has gotta be talking. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I think that it is true that churches that demand more of individuals tend to have higher growth and higher participation overall. And so on the one side, it seems like a weakness of our church that we're so demanding of our members. On the other hand, it keeps people coming back because.

Sam (22:04.307)
Interesting.

shawn (22:12.918)
Is that, Matt, is that statistic or is that just what you're feeling is?

Matt (22:16.609)
No, no, that's the research of religions generally. The doctrinal foundation for that idea from Joseph Smith is, that's in the lectures on faith. He says, a religion that does not, what does it say? Does not require, something like, a religion has to demand enough from you to develop sufficient faith for salvation. And so like, so anyhow.

shawn (22:18.939)
Okay.

shawn (22:33.176)
Oh yeah.

Sam (22:42.902)
It's, it's, it's.

Matt (22:42.941)
It is true. And that's why Islam is on the rise because it demands so much from people.

shawn (22:46.335)
It's... Yeah.

Sam (22:47.51)
It's interesting how in religion, adversity yields something better, as well as in the free markets, adversity yields something better. It's fascinating how something that's a spiritual and religious concept, no, that does not.

Matt (22:55.769)
hahahaha

shawn (22:57.473)
And maybe, and Sam, maybe basic universal income.

Matt (23:01.833)
I was so ready to give you the points, Sam. I was so ready. I was like, oh wow, I haven't given Sam points in so long.

Sam (23:04.654)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

shawn (23:05.722)
Well hang on.

Okay, Matt, since he ripped it away from religion and made it secular, let me try and win your points by saying this. Sam, I really like how you asked the question. How has the, if we're gonna go on the assumption that it is what he says, you said how has the church reversed it? Well, I was just reading randomly in 3517. Remember when the Savior came to the people and was preaching and showing them and they all came up and got to hold his hand and just kneel before him?

Sam (23:09.582)
I don't know.

Sam (23:22.85)
Mm.

Sam (23:26.19)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

shawn (23:35.274)
And then he taught them a whole bunch of stuff and he says, I perceive that you guys don't understand. And so he gave the best advice. And maybe this is the way or the reason that there's growth or at least should be. He says in three, therefore go ye unto your homes and ponder upon the things which I have said. So ponder and study the words of Christ and then ask the Father in my name that you may understand and prepare your minds for the morrow when I come again unto you. So he basically gave the...

Go to your homes, study the scriptures, and pray, which is the ubiquitous quote and doctrine, right, through scripture and through prophets. So I wonder if we're doing more of that these days, Sam.

Matt (24:14.973)
No, no points for you, Sean. That doesn't do it, sorry. I wanted to give you the points, but that's not it. No, because every church says to ponder. It can't be that, go home and ponder.

Sam (24:18.07)
It's a stretch.

shawn (24:18.293)
What?

shawn (24:23.228)
Why? Okay.

No, no, but the scripture says go, not ponder, it says study the scriptures and it says pray for answers. Not every church says that. The Catholic churches don't say that. I think the evangelical churches do say read, but they don't say go ask.

Matt (24:31.09)
Yeah.

Sam (24:40.166)
I think this data is very cool because it could mean a brighter future than what maybe our generation cynically sees. And anecdotally, it's tough to see that as we look at youth in our own ward and in areas where we worship, but that's a pretty cool trend if it's true. And obviously Elder Cook has to have information available to him that we don't, that he's probably seeing and interpreting. But that's big news. In fact, that may be the biggest news of the week.

Matt (25:10.926)
Okay, I'll give you the points for that, Sam. You can have the points.

Sam (25:13.282)
Very good.

shawn (25:14.114)
Points to Sam for faith and optimism.

Sam (25:17.158)
uh, faith in the American dream.

Matt (25:17.553)
Also, I love anything that makes it seem like, like Gen X is ruining the world. I'm always a fan of this concept that our generation kind of messed things up. Yeah. It makes me feel better about voting for an octogenarian as president of the United States. It's like, they know better than us. They were the greatest generation or they were the boomers. And then at some point we should just step aside and let the younger generation just take our place at the table.

shawn (25:22.382)
Yeah. Are you?

Sam (25:22.68)
Yeah.

shawn (25:26.866)
That's good, yeah.

Sam (25:26.922)
It feels better to believe that, doesn't it? Yeah. Ha ha.

shawn (25:30.498)
We have control.

shawn (25:35.633)
Oh no.

shawn (25:45.43)
Matt, that's a good segue into your next year. You're up next, right?

Sam (25:45.762)
No doubt.

Matt (25:48.685)
So recent polls show that Americans strongly disapprove of how Biden is handling the conflict in Israel. And there's a huge generational divide. 70% of young people are upset about this and that's made them turn on Joe Biden generally. And that's a big reason why in the polls it looks like, you know, if you say who are you going to vote for, Trump or Biden, right now a huge part of that is young people being upset about what's happening in Israel. And so my question is...

Now it's going to surprise you that I'm going to say nothing is the answer to this question. But my question for you is what should Biden be doing differently in Israel?

shawn (26:24.25)
Did you preface that with your own answer? Hahaha.

Matt (26:26.121)
My answer is nothing. He should do nothing. Listen, the number of times in my life that I do the right thing and young people tell me I'm wrong, that's just validation to me that I'm doing the right thing. When a young person says, no, that's bad, then I know that I'm doing the right thing.

Sam (26:28.846)
So.

Sam (26:42.194)
Even though young people are more faithful and religious than you are? That's fair. Anyway, so let me, yeah, let me answer, let me answer your question. So it was fascinating that polling data came out over the weekend that shows head to head, Trump not only beats Biden, but crushes him. Which I go back to our prior episodes, head listeners, crushes, crushes. That's crushing.

shawn (26:42.474)
Interesting. What do you think Sam?

shawn (26:47.971)
Hahaha

Matt (26:48.09)
They're all, but they're just, they're just uninformed.

Matt (27:05.633)
He does not crush him. Sam, he does not crush him. It is three percentage points. No, three percentage points. Oh, okay. That's barely outside. The margin of error is 2.5%. So that's 0.5% outside the margin of error. Okay, all right.

Sam (27:11.214)
today's that's outside the margin of error. That's outside the margin of error. But anyway, he, yeah, that's a half a percent. Do you know, do you, do you know in a country with what are we 400 million? What that half a percent is? That's a lot of people. Well, around up down. Yeah. So, um, Biden should not be doing anything different. I actually agree with you, but, um, it's, it's not.

Matt (27:26.757)
320 million, 200 million voters. Okay.

Matt (27:38.473)
Yes!

Sam (27:40.266)
It's not Israel that's killing Biden right now. It's Trump. And the fact that people continue to give Trump airtime. No, because, because he's, he's well known. He's a public personality. He's divisive. Uh, and he knows how to speak better. You go, I'm fascinated. I watch him. All right. I won't change the subject.

Matt (27:46.157)
Well, cause he's got a great plan.

Matt (27:59.181)
Sam, you cannot change this subject, Sam. We're gonna stick with what should Biden do in Israel. Ha ha ha.

shawn (28:04.112)
Stop stomping for Trump, Sam.

Sam (28:06.654)
Well, no, but Biden, Biden should figure out a way to go head to head with Trump. He should do nothing different in Israel and he should figure out how to, how to do better against Trump. But yeah.

Matt (28:13.099)
I think.

Matt (28:17.837)
I think I learned what happened here, Sam. You said something good about Joe Biden and then that kind of like hurt, it like felt yucky inside. And so, and then you wanted to pivot to Trump so you could feel better about what, Sean, should Biden do something different?

shawn (28:28.314)
hahahaha

Sam (28:28.404)
Yes, yes.

shawn (28:32.278)
No, I agree with the both of you. He shouldn't. He's doing a good job with it.

Matt (28:35.497)
Wow. Okay. Well then why do young people, why are so many young people mad at him if he's doing the right thing?

Sam (28:41.486)
because they're religious and he's not a man of the cloth.

shawn (28:41.826)
Because because.

Matt (28:45.506)
Oh, Biden. Biden's not sufficiently religious for them.

Sam (28:50.013)
He's not Catholic enough.

shawn (28:53.779)
Matt, there's two reasons I think. One, your buddies in academia are... Do you want me, can I go there or no? Okay.

Matt (29:03.357)
Of course, sure, Sean, you need to speak your mind, Sean. You have permission to speak freely.

shawn (29:06.821)
Hahaha.

I think there's a popular trend in academia to do no matter what it takes, tell these kids to go for the underdog. Whether the underdog is good or bad, go for the underdog. And so what you get is a lot of kids in colleges going, right now Palestinians are the underdog. And so if Biden's, Biden's killing them all. So I think that's part of it. And then the other part is, I, when I thought, you don't think so Sam?

Sam (29:30.743)
Really?

Sam (29:34.582)
I don't know, that's interesting. I gotta think about that. Go ahead, sorry, that's interesting.

shawn (29:40.47)
The other part I think is we all mistakenly thought, or at least I did, that with the internet and all the technology that we would become a wiser, more informed people. The opposite happened, and now kids are in their boxes and won't go outside their boxes. They'll only stick to their favorite sources, and now they're just getting more of just one message and not seeing the outside message. And I think that overwhelmingly, younger kids, because of the universities and because of their TikTok channel, or whatever they're

getting their news from, they're seeing the popular trend of being pro-Palestine, anti-Israel. The anti-Semitism is outrageous.

Matt (30:18.289)
I love how you think that our students actually listen to the things that we say. They don't listen to what we say. They're not like taking marching orders from us. All we do is teach them like facts about like what happened in the past and what's happening in the present. And then they make up their own minds and then they do what, in fact, I learned from them a lot of times. They, they share their views with me and I say, Oh, that's interesting. I never thought about that. They don't listen to what we say. They're not listening. Okay. Well,

shawn (30:25.602)
Yes, they do.

shawn (30:39.234)
No way, dude. Yes, they do. What?

Matt (30:44.873)
I don't think that it's an underdog story, right? I think it's way simpler than an underdog. There were, let's say, 1200-ish Israelis that were killed in the October attack, and now we're well over 12,000 Palestinians that have died. So,

shawn (31:00.858)
But that's my point, but you're making my point. They don't know the Holocaust. They don't know World War II. They don't know that Dresden and all of its imbalance of citizens were bombed by us, by Britain. They don't care. They don't know these things because they're in their little boxes on TikTok and all they're seeing is the chance of pro-Palestine because they're the underdog. So it's not like there's not precedence for being engaged in a war and citizens being killed in a war.

Matt (31:03.233)
Well, it's...

Matt (31:16.29)
Well...

Matt (31:22.657)
You don't have to-

shawn (31:29.943)
in order to stop the war.

Matt (31:31.753)
Right, but when you see 10 times the number, then it's easy for people to say, okay, I understand that you've got to do something here, but 10 times the number seems like you're killing more people than you might have to kill, right?

shawn (31:45.811)
compare how many Americans died, civilians, in World War II, to how many Germans died. Am I pulling up the numbers?

Matt (31:50.877)
I know, but World War II was so long ago. We have such better technology with weaponry now. If you look at how.

shawn (31:56.354)
That's not why the kids today aren't going, well, because of the technology advances, there should be a better, closer balance to how many people are killed. That's not the reason.

Matt (32:04.318)
No, it's true though. The numbers that you're hearing out of Israel compared to the numbers you hear out of other places are so high that people are like, that's insane. How many people died on September 11th? How many people died in Afghanistan or Iraq?

Sam (32:13.95)
I'm not... I'm...

Sam (32:18.158)
I'm not sure Matt, that's on Biden. I mean, his administration over the weekend, I mean, I think the US is trying to do what it can to limit losses and encourage Israel to, you know, be a little more strategic and a little bit better at it. Like the big attack on the hospital, you know, the US is saying, hey, look, we get that they're running an operation out of there, but you've got to be more careful about how you do that. And that's probably smart, right?

Matt (32:45.249)
Right.

Sam (32:46.038)
I mean, that's the right side, but I agree with you that the, the sheer number of deaths is staggering and our sensibilities in the U S like we can't fathom that that's a, that's a, that's a horrible number on either side and, and Israel's got a challenge. They've got to do this faster because if this continues to go on with deaths mounting, can you imagine like, you know, thousands of people dying on Christmas day in Israel? I mean, that's not a good thing. Right.

Matt (32:58.508)
Right.

shawn (33:15.558)
But Sam, but one thing we as Americans can fathom is 600,000 German civilians dead. How can we fathom that but not

Sam (33:22.89)
Not, not really. Yeah. That was. Yeah.

Matt (33:23.545)
Because it was forever ago. It was forever ago, Sean.

shawn (33:25.826)
That's my point, Sam. That's my point, Matt, is that if kids today from the universities and outside of TikTok would know their history, would understand what was happening in World War II, why there were bombs dropped in Nagasaki, right? Why all those civilians died? No, they don't, they don't even know about it. If they understood the six, why aren't they preaching against the 600,000 civilians in Germany?

Matt (33:40.481)
They understand.

They... I don't know.

Sam (33:46.958)
Well, there. There.

Matt (33:47.833)
Because there's nothing they can do about the past. They can do something about right now.

Sam (33:51.37)
Yeah. And they know about they, that the current sensibility about dropping an atomic bomb on Japan is that maybe we shouldn't have done it. Right. So in the moment, it seemed like it made a lot of sense, but us is often criticized for its excess of power and use of that atomic ability today.

shawn (34:06.018)
But the other... yeah. But it's... Yeah.

Matt (34:08.345)
And Harry Truman was at the time, right? Harry Truman left office as a very unpopular president, in large part because of that. And then later on people are like, oh, I guess maybe it was okay.

shawn (34:15.662)
Yeah, but there's another.

But there's another side of the argument that says the Japanese at the time believed that they were, right? The kamikaze philosophy was all about we are the sun, we are the people of the sun. We were made to dominate this world and we will not stop until we dominate it. And the argument is that they wouldn't have stopped. They would have fought until they were all dead and that bomb stopped the death of all of them and so many more.

Matt (34:41.889)
that's but that's an unknowable counterfactual right nobody knows if that would have happened or not

Sam (34:43.401)
on the it.

shawn (34:48.066)
Hmm. True.

Matt (34:50.949)
So that's the thing, Sean.

Sam (34:51.496)
Yeah. The other lesson that the US has tried to teach Israel is what happened in the shadow of 9-11, right? They've said over and over again, hey, we rushed very quickly to war against Iraq and Afghanistan and they say, hey, maybe we didn't need to do that, right? So I think that's a challenge too for kids because they do remember that.

shawn (35:10.971)
Mm hmm.

Good point. Yeah.

Matt (35:15.825)
Yeah, so to me, it's not so much about history is it's about messaging and Biden, in my opinion, President Biden has a lot of strengths. His biggest weakness is messaging and actually staying on message and not like wandering off into strange new worlds and the things he says. But there could be a clear message in all of these foreign conflicts. If Biden had a better like media presence, better messaging, then I think it would be a different sort of

public opinion reaction to what's happening. But in a vacuum where the president's not out there saying stuff.

Sam (35:47.266)
Matt, have you seen Weekend at Bernie's? That explains Biden's challenge with messaging. He's not dead yet, but five hour energy or some other type of, I mean, he's, yeah.

Matt (35:54.329)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

shawn (35:58.178)
Hahaha

Matt (36:02.937)
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Matt (36:06.561)
That's one perspective, or he's just got a stuttering problem, Sam. He's stuttered a lot from childhood and it makes him uncomfortable when he speaks in public.

Sam (36:11.702)
He's not got a stuttering.

shawn (36:16.495)
So Sam, speaking of five hour energy, is that a good segue into my question or do we do?

Matt (36:21.109)
Yes, Sean, ask us. Yeah, do your question, Sean.

Sam (36:22.015)
Yes.

shawn (36:24.854)
Or do we need to decide who got points for that last one? Yeah, it was Matt. It's Matt, it's Matt. It is, it's Matt. Could you? It was a good... Ha ha ha. It was a good question, Matt, it was a good one. All right. All right, my question is this. Nephi taught us that we should need to feast upon the words of Christ because they will tell us...

Matt (36:27.277)
Well we know. Intrinsically everybody knows. Alright Sean, what's...

Sam (36:32.138)
Yes. Points to Matt, but we'll divide them equally. Yeah.

Matt (36:42.625)
Alright Sean, what's yours?

shawn (36:52.446)
all things that we should do in life. And then he goes further and says, and if you can't understand the words, it's because you ask and you don't knock. So if you will ask and knock, you will receive the Holy Ghost and it will show you all the things that you should do. So there's two pieces there. The words of Christ will tell us all things and then the living word of Christ will show us all things. So my question is, do you guys take that or interpret that literally, applying it to every aspect of life or does it only apply to spiritual things? Like can scripture inform us on all things spiritually?

physically, socially, temporally, politically. For example, who I should vote for, how do I get out of a scary, dangerous situation? Should five-hour energy drink be consumed, Sam? What career to go into? All those things. Should I leave an inheritance to my children? So that's my question. What do you think?

Sam (37:34.763)
Yes.

Matt (37:42.55)
You wanna go first, Sam?

Sam (37:44.042)
No, you go first, Matt. I'll, I'll come it behind you.

Matt (37:47.453)
Okay, so that's not the only scripture that says the Holy Ghost will show us everything we should do, right? In Alma 37, we're told to counsel with the Lord in all our doings. And Nephi also says somewhere else that we shouldn't do anything except in the first place we pray to the Lord. So I do think that it's important to be prayerful and seek the Lord's counsel in every decision we make in life. At the same time, there's a danger in that.

Because we're also told that we should act and that we should be anxiously engaged in a good cause. And so I think that people sometimes are paralyzed with inaction because they want to pray and receive an answer before they do anything. That's the one thing. But another thing that happens is that people seek answers for things that the Lord's not ready to tell them answers for. And so then there's this danger that you get deceived and get led astray.

Because it's kind of like the Jewish people in the Book of Mormon talks, how they looked beyond the mark and they sought for things they couldn't understand. And because they sought for those, the Lord gave it to them that they would stumble. So there's a danger, right? So.

shawn (39:00.046)
Can I ask you more precisely about the scripture part, right, when it says feast upon the word, because the praying part, I like what you say, you've always taught me that and I like that. But I think the scripture part is what I'm more interested in your opinion on is, it says, feast upon the words of Christ and it'll tell you all things what you should do in life. Does that apply to everything, temporally, spiritually? In what way, like how does it tell me how to vote? Or, I mean, I've got some examples of how I think it does apply, but I'm curious at your opinion. Like,

Matt (39:15.573)
Yeah.

Matt (39:26.177)
Well, I think it's different for everybody. I think this is why President Nelson in his first conference talk as president of the church said that in a coming day, if we don't know how to receive personal revelation, we might not be able to survive spiritually. Everybody has a different way of receiving answers from the Lord, but it's on us to figure that out and it's on us to have the faith that the Lord will tell us the answers for everything when it matters or when it's important, but not to just say,

shawn (39:39.479)
Yeah.

Matt (39:54.589)
Unless I get an answer, I'm not gonna do it because that's also not the right way to behave.

shawn (40:00.886)
Yeah. Sam, do you like, like you drink five hour energy because you, you promote it a lot. I think we're sponsored. Uh, I think it's sponsors, right?

Sam (40:07.498)
Uh... Yes, yes.

Matt (40:09.468)
You said Red Bull in the question, is it Red Bull or Five Hour Energy?

shawn (40:13.023)
Which one do you like better?

Sam (40:15.163)
Five hour. I'll go with the Red Bull tastes terrible.

shawn (40:18.908)
Okay, so do you consider scripture in trying to find an answer of should I or should I not consume five-hour energy? Or is that something like Matt's saying? Look, my scripture says choose. Just I have agency.

Matt (40:20.395)
Oh, okay.

Sam (40:34.838)
Don't you think the Holy Ghost is more of a stop sign than telling you everything to do? Like if you're headed down the wrong direction, don't you think it's more likely to say, hey, don't do that, stop doing that, right? And then give you additional insight into things that you're trying to understand and learn. Like I've learned that one of the greatest abilities in business is to make quick decisions, even if they're wrong, right? It's...

shawn (40:36.15)
I'm not judging it Sam, I'm not judging it.

shawn (40:49.686)
Yeah, definitely.

Matt (40:52.394)
Yeah.

Sam (41:03.45)
make a decision, walk down a path, and if it's the wrong path, then at some point, you've got to reverse course and go back. But the faster you're, the more decisive you can be quickly using what information you have at hand, the more successful you are. And I think the Holy Ghost, its role in that is as a stop sign, maybe as much as a go. But there is something.

shawn (41:27.098)
That's very nice. That's nice.

Sam (41:28.13)
There is something in life like where we want to be told everything that you're supposed to do. And isn't it interesting how in the church, uh, a lot of people that want to be told everything end up going into crazy little side things, right? Like, um, you know, we, we've talked a lot about them, right? They end up following strange paths and they end up being completely deceived.

Matt (41:44.873)
Yeah.

Matt (41:49.1)
Yeah.

shawn (41:50.778)
But Sam, do you find, and again, just more precisely, anything in scripture that helps you make decisions about everything? I'll give you an example, Sam. In fact, you play a big role in my career. When we were fresh off our mission and living in Provo and hanging out, I remember I was really confused about what I should do as a career, what direction I should go on, what classes should I take, what my major should be, all that stuff. And in my patriarchal blessing, it had always said something to the effect of like, look, man, use wisely any resource that I place at your disposal.

If I put stuff before you, don't be an idiot. Take advantage of it, go for it. And I always thought, you know, my dad is a leader in a big company. It doesn't take an education for me to do sales, for example, or these other things, but I just hated it, because I always read in the scriptures, like do something for the good of man, right? Bless men, right? Be, promote the gospel. And I was like, my dad works for a sign company, like advertising, that doesn't help anybody.

Well, one day we were driving and Sam, you were looking out the window. He said, Hey, doesn't your dad, you're looking at all these signs and billboards. That's your dad do something like that. And I was like, yeah, he does. He's like, man, you should go into that. That is the coolest business. You're helping people grow their businesses, making money for the, their families. And you preached almost as if it was scripture. And I was like, Holy cow. Like scripture teaches me that I. Yeah. And I kid you not, Sam, that sermon.

Sam (43:09.159)
That's awesome.

Matt (43:09.401)
Sam speaking authoritatively? Wow.

shawn (43:16.29)
That sermon led me back to scripture. I was like, he's right. There are many things that we can do to benefit society, to help people and to serve people, and this is one. So I went in that direction. So thank you, Sam.

Matt (43:27.637)
Well, so, but Sean, so this would be like maybe 20, 30, this is at least 30 years ago. Elder Oakes was giving a devotional at BYU, and he talks about this guy that he knew that would not purchase a can of soup unless he prayed about it and felt like that was the right thing to do. And President Oakes kind of went through all the things that this guy would pray about before he did it. And he was like, that's wrong. You should not be seeking revelation in every single choice that you make. So.

Sam (43:28.114)
love it. That's awesome. Thank you.

shawn (43:43.828)
Yeah.

shawn (43:55.866)
Okay, but again, but again, Matt, my question isn't so much about revelation in the Holy Ghost. It's more about the words of Christ in scripture will tell you all things to do. What I'm really asking you guys is when you look at scripture, does it not have the answers or at least the principles that would guide all of our answers? That's the real question I want.

Sam (44:13.038)
I think it has the principles to guide decisions.

Matt (44:13.909)
Um, yeah, okay, yeah. Okay, Sean, I thought that was maybe a trick question, but Sam made it seem really simple, so yes, I'm gonna go with yes on that. I don't want to lose my membership in the church, so of course, Sean, everything we need is in the scriptures.

Sam (44:21.742)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

shawn (44:25.763)
Okay.

shawn (44:30.058)
No, give me your... Matt, people love you for your honesty. What's your answer?

Matt (44:36.101)
I think that there are things that are not revealed. So the scriptures tell us, by the power of the Holy Ghost you may know the truth of all things. But there are some things that God doesn't reveal. And we're even told in the Book of Mormon that there's this whole sealed portion of the Book of Mormon and there's a whole lot more to learn once we've been faithful to what we have. So I always get sketchy when people are like, are the answers to everything in the scriptures? Well no, because clearly there's a sealed portion and there's things that we don't have, that we know that are important to know. So

shawn (45:03.002)
So you feel like when it says feast upon the words of Christ and it'll tell you all things, you feel like, well, but the word of Christ is still being revealed. Is that what you're getting at?

Sam (45:03.606)
Yeah.

Matt (45:11.369)
Yeah, I'm just saying there are questions that there are not answers to right now, no matter how much you ask.

shawn (45:18.446)
Okay, Sam, what were you saying?

Sam (45:21.27)
You know, it's so interesting. I agree with your logic, Matt, as you start to go down the road. But then as soon as you do, I start to think about like, again, the paths where people are deceived on things. And when you're waiting for some more, like I was, I was listening to a podcast about a book, about a book that some church member, he was a Bishop wrote and he shared it and it.

Matt (45:39.787)
Oh.

Sam (45:47.502)
create, what was it called, Visions of Glory or something. And it preached, well, it goes into these portals and, you know, dark spirits and light spirits. And, you know, what a challenge, right? Because what you're talking about ends up being a super personal, super private thing that you can't, and you probably don't, you can't preach, you can't teach. Like the things that are in published scripture are kind of complete for us. And as people receive stuff,

Matt (45:55.745)
Oh, oh, oh.

Sam (46:16.11)
personally, that's pretty personal probably through the Holy Ghost. Then there are members that make it public and end up taking people down paths that are pretty destructive. We've talked about that. I've seen that in my own life, people that have gone absolutely nuts with things that they felt like they knew and they wanted to share and it was harmful.

Matt (46:28.586)
Right.

Matt (46:42.125)
Yeah.

shawn (46:42.622)
Can I share one anecdote, one little story? So when I was in the city of Mikheyevka, and you know how remember how in Ukraine if you wanted to get places, they had Uber before Uber existed, right? You just go out in the street and wave your hand and any old pedestrian could pull over in their car and you negotiate with them, right? So we got in this van one time because we were late and we negotiated, gave them five bucks or whatever.

Matt (46:45.613)
Okay.

Sam (47:00.16)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (47:00.183)
Yeah.

shawn (47:05.462)
He started cruising and like you did as missionaries, you said, hey, I'm from America, because usually Ukrainians are like, what? Oh man, I love you. Anyway, so we use that as an in to start preaching the gospel to this driver. But as soon as this guy found out we were American, things got different with this guy. His face changed and in a minute he said, hey, guys, actually, I'm gonna take you where you need to go, but I gotta stop somewhere first. Well, okay, whatever. So he pulled over and he whistled and these dudes came over and he whispered something to him. And within like 30 seconds, these three giant,

just menacing, scary dudes get in the van, shut the door and the guy takes off. And I'd never experienced what I experienced before. So we're sitting in this van and they kind of surrounded us, these huge guys. And I look at my companion and never before have I felt the spirit with those like lovely like peace and joy and just comfort. And at the same time be receiving a message so loud and clear, you are in danger, you need to get out of this situation.

Matt (47:40.534)
Whoa.

shawn (48:04.418)
It was crazy because I look at my companion and he was, you could tell his face was saying the same thing. I'm feeling the spirit say, you're in trouble, get out. And so we were like super scared like in that moment. And like, it's funny, cause my first thought was like, okay, how do I get out of this? And I looked at the little window next to me and I'm like, okay, I'm bailing. And then I looked at my companion crying and I'm like, I can't do that to him. And the window's too small. So then my, yes he was.

Matt (48:28.657)
Are you serious? Your mission companion was crying? Come on, like that has to be there has to be a missionary handbook that says you don't cry. Even if the spirit's strong, you don't cry like missionaries don't cry.

shawn (48:33.85)
See you now.

shawn (48:37.294)
Don't cry.

shawn (48:41.983)
Say, Matt, there's no crying in baseball. So my second thought was, all right, I got it. We grew up in the 90s. We fought in the 90s, lots of fighting, right? So I was like, I just gotta close my eyes and just start flailing limbs, just swinging at these guys. Fight my way out of this. Now I was like 112 pounds at the time. So I immediately was like, I can't do that. Yeah, exactly.

Sam (48:42.57)
In baseball. Yeah, that's right.

Matt (48:44.065)
Hahaha

Matt (49:02.573)
And now you're like what, 115? Ha ha ha.

shawn (49:08.686)
So I knew, so I was like, okay, what do I do? What the heck do we do here? And the scripture reading that I had that morning was a really powerful scripture that I'd never really paid any attention to. And it's funny because as I started to pray in this van, really feeling these menacing guys who turned out to be Russian mafia, the verses that morning that I read in the Book of Mormon came so clear, like spirit-wise. And because I was feasting upon those words of Christ, it gave me the answer immediately of how to get out of this situation.

Matt (49:27.554)
Wow.

shawn (49:38.71)
And it was in Mosiah or someplace where basically they were talking about going on a mission to the Lamanites and said, you know, the preaching of the word had a greater effect on the people than anything, then sword, then spear, then wars, then battle. So we tried the virtue of the good word of God to change the evil Lamanites to become good people. And that came so strong that I just looked at one of the dudes and says, Hey man, do you have a family? Yeah, I got a family. Do you have kids? Oh yeah, I got kids. Can I see them?

and he pulled out his wallet and we started talking about his kids and the other guys were like, oh, we have kids. They started pulling out their wallets. We started looking at their kids and I just started preaching the gospel. And I don't know if we were in that car for 10 minutes or 17 hours because it was so spirit-filled as we just opened the scriptures and taught them the gospel that eventually we got out and these guys loved us and they were shaking our hand and took our phone numbers. And my companion and I got far enough away and we just like, what the crap just happened? It was amazing.

And it all boiled down to this word, knowing the word of Christ, and it immediately delivered answers to me in the time that I needed it. Sorry, that was a long story, but.

Matt (50:36.054)
Wow.

Matt (50:44.693)
It was beautiful. Actually, you can't see Sam's camera right now, but he's crying because he's no longer a missionary and he.

shawn (50:49.202)
I knew it. He was my companion at the time. I didn't want to use him by name.

Sam (50:51.365)
Sean gets the point.

Sean gets the points.

Matt (50:55.585)
Okay.

shawn (50:57.443)
Hehehehe

Matt (50:58.529)
Okay, I'll give Sean the points on that. That was really great. Okay. Let's go to the big question. Um, so if you recall from last time, McKay Coppins is doing the bio of Mitt Romney that's out and you can read it if you want, but we're just talking about some things he said in this interview. So, um, he talks about the time when Mitt Romney voted to convict Trump, um, in the first impeachment.

And Romney didn't know this at the time, but it was the first time in US history that a member of the Senate voted to convict a president of their own party in an impeachment. But Mitt Romney had prayed about it and he felt like it was the right thing to do. But that move basically ended his political career. And he talks about how Mitt Romney, even though he paid a tremendous political price for this, felt like it was the right thing to do.

And so he did what he thought was right, regardless of the consequences, the political consequences. This is an extraordinarily rare thing to find in the United States. A person who's willing to sacrifice their political career to do something that they feel is the morally right thing to do. It's much more common that a person will just sort of like give in or they'll play the politics game and then later on they'll just justify whatever they did using their faith as like a justification for it.

So my question is, this is like the big question, how do we identify the kinds of people who will put their convictions first in politics? And maybe a second question is, is that what we really want? I mean, that's what I really want. But if that is what we want, how do you find those kinds of people?

Sam (52:40.526)
So increasingly, isn't that tough to come by? Because what it takes to rise to that level of station and politics is money, power, and influence. And the only way to get money, power, and influence at that level is to have, I hate to say sold yourself out, but it takes a certain amount of, yeah, you have to. And so Mitt Romney is an exception because he was uber wealthy and.

Matt (53:00.153)
But you have to.

Sam (53:06.73)
His family from Michigan had been in Michigan politics. His dad was well known. So I think he had a path because of his family and his reputation. And then his money that allowed him to rise to the position he did. And then he was able to make one tough decision in that moment, but he's the exception, not the rule.

Matt (53:27.717)
If you have political connections, then it is easier to kind of take the path that Mitt Romney took. If you're an outsider, if you're someone like Vivek Ramaswamy and you're just like a rich person who's not involved in politics, it's really hard to get the support of donors and things like that without just telling them whatever they want to hear so that they'll support you. So it's true. Like in some ways you almost need to have people that are really well connected in the first place to even have a hope.

that they're gonna have that kind of moral conviction. Right, like the Bush family, whether or not you agree with their politics, I think most people would agree that the Bush family is a family that always sort of did what they thought was right in politics, regardless of the consequences. And those sorts of things are hard to find.

What do you think, Sean?

shawn (54:19.878)
So to Sam and Matt, if you both were in his shoes at that time, and if you somehow had a crystal ball and knew that it would remove you from politics and therefore your influence in politics would be gone, would you have done it? If he had known, would he have done it is the question.

Sam (54:37.73)
I would have done it in a heartbeat. Get me out of politics. Let me go back to business where things make sense. Politics makes no sense.

Matt (54:37.813)
Uh...

shawn (54:41.85)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe hehehe hehehe hehehe he he he

Matt (54:48.729)
So this is the difficult question, Sean, because, and this is, Mitch McConnell does this all the time, Harry Reid famously did this kind of thing all the time. You ask yourself this question, is it better for me to do what I think is the morally right thing right here in this situation, or is it better to just play along so that I can do something of greater good later on down the road? And Orrin Hatch did this a lot, and.

shawn (55:11.38)
Exactly. Yeah.

Matt (55:14.869)
at his funeral, you know, I'd listen to people talk about Orrin Hatch and the life he lived. Orrin Hatch did tremendous good for both the United States as a country and for the church, but it came at considerable cost and he did things that I would have said that's the morally wrong thing to do, but his calculation was, I'm going to do something now that just goes along with my party, but it's going to allow me to do something else later on. Because Romney could have easily said,

look, Trump's gonna owe me big time if I vote to not convict in this particular situation and I can cash that in for something much more important later on. And so I think that that's sort of what people do, right? They say, well, what's the greater good? And you can always talk yourself into some other greater good later on.

shawn (56:00.942)
That does seem like the more pragmatic approach. I mean, obviously, if he's saying he prayed and got revelation that this is to be, you know, the Lord wanted him to do this, maybe that was, hey, maybe that was God's message of you're done with politics, you know, and Russell Ballard just died, maybe they're, you know, maybe it's, you know, timing is right for Mitt Romney to, no, but to your logic, just kidding, but to your, no, no.

Matt (56:21.35)
That's...

Sam (56:25.97)
Oh, that's an interesting question. Is, is Mitt Romney out? Is he an apostle? Will he be an apostle? Interesting.

Matt (56:27.742)
Uh, wouldn't that be something?

shawn (56:31.13)
No, no, just kidding. But to your point, to your point, Matt, I would much rather him sacrifice his true feelings in that vote and still be relevant in politics today, because he's a good man.

Matt (56:32.749)
Hmm, no.

Matt (56:48.973)
So do you know what he wrote in his journal when he was praying about it? This song came into his head, do what is right, let the consequence follow, right? But that can mean a lot of different things. So that's not God saying to him, vote to impeach, right? That's him saying, do what is right.

shawn (56:56.707)
Wow.

Sam (57:02.166)
Here, here, here's the only problem. Here's the only problem, Matt, with Romney's approach is he did the right thing there in that moment. And it was sort of, I don't want to say it was self-righteous, but I remember his lunch with Trump. So he lost to Trump. He gets drug over to Trump's hotel. He has lunch trying to get the secretary of state job. That was very self-interested. Right. He's asked to kiss the hand. He does.

Matt (57:19.724)
Yeah.

Matt (57:28.545)
You don't think that was him? You don't think that was love of country that he's doing that?

Sam (57:34.858)
No, I think his book actually said it was more, he felt like, well, maybe that is love of country. He felt like he could do a, he could help by being part of the administration. Um, you know what, maybe it is, maybe it is, but that, but that was a, that was a tough thing to watch. Right. And that.

Matt (57:45.769)
Right, right. Yeah, I don't know.

Matt (57:53.933)
So I think this is actually one of the biggest challenges that representative democracy faces, is that you find somebody that you like, and you say they share my values, and I can trust them to do what I want them to do, but then they get put in these situations, these compromising situations, and then they have to decide, okay, am I gonna do what I think is right in this moment, or am I gonna buy myself some political capital here, and so that I can do more good later on?

And so then it just appears like everything's corrupt because it appears that nobody's doing the right thing in the moment, because everybody's trying to like fight for these bigger causes. And so then it makes it hard. I think that's one of the biggest reasons that Americans are like disillusioned with government is because they say, there's nobody good, there's nobody doing good things. And I say, actually, I think there's a lot of good people there. It's just hard to do the right thing in every single situation because it comes at a terrible cost.

shawn (58:38.274)
Yeah.

shawn (58:49.679)
without playing the game, right? I think so many good people aren't willing to play that game of my conscience says do this, but if I do this, I won't be able to do so many good things in the future. And so that game, many of us aren't willing to play that game of politics. And so, yeah, it removes good people like Mitt Romney out of office, I hate it.

Matt (59:11.69)
Yeah, it's hard.

shawn (59:13.326)
So how do you solve that, Matt? You're the political scientist. Science our way out of this, man. But then what are we paying you for, political scientist? Ha ha ha. Oh.

Matt (59:16.785)
Yeah, I don't have an answer to that question. I just have to ask the question, Sean, to point out the difficult challenges people face and to help people have a greater appreciation for our political people who, who seem so dirty, and yet they're probably good people.

shawn (59:28.09)
..

shawn (59:36.482)
Wow, I didn't know that. I thought the science was to solve all the problems. Okay, all right.

Matt (59:43.387)
Hey listener, thanks for joining us for this wonderful episode of the Latter Day Lens. We hope you'll join us again next week.