A Conversation with Lance Jackson

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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out, the only podcast on the earth that delivers a pragmatic and balanced view of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Faith.
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I'm your co-host, Ian Mooks, and as always, I'm joined by the polymathic Jim Bennett.
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Hello, Jim.
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Hello.
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How are you, sir?
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Really well, really well.
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I described you as polymathic.
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Yes, indeed.
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I think that that's probably more generous than you need to be.
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You know what it means?
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I do.
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It means I'm good at a whole bunch of different things.
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It's very good.
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It's very good.
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I've been trying to come up with long words to describe you and ones that might even confuse you, but I'm failing.
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I'm not doing a very good job.
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It seems like you have a command, a knowledge of every word in the English language.
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Well, that's typical of polymaths, isn't it?
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That's true,
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actually.
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It
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is characterized by knowledge of many subjects.
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I think you know every word and I can't you out.
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But anyway, welcome, Jim.
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It's always wanted to have you and I do this together.
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So Jim, as you know, and our listeners know, we've had some amazing guests on our podcast program over the last two years, and we're coming up on the two-year anniversary.
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And for our listeners, we'll be doing a special episode on the history and some of the key interesting conversations conversation we've had with, I guess, on Inside Out and some of the subjects that we've covered.
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And today, we have yet another amazing guest, all the way from England.
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And I have the honor and privilege of introducing one of the finest Yorkshire men on the planet.
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And all the way from England, a very warm welcome to Lance Jackson.
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Hello, Lance.
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Hello, Ian.
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Thank you very much for your warm introduction.
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That's okay.
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It's an honor I wanted to have you.
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It really is.
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And I love your accent.
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And my friends over there tell me that I've lost my accent a little bit.
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You appear to have done, Ian.
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I
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appear to have done.
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So if you could help me, because you and I are from the same area, if you could help me get my accent back, that would be wonderful.
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And are you in Birmingham
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right now, Lance?
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Yeah, close by.
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I've just been explaining to you.
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We're about seven miles away from Birmingham.
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We're in a place called Dudley.
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Okay,
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yes.
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Famous for Sir Lenny Henry.
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Yes, yes.
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Sam Allardyce, and very little else.
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Yes, I know these names.
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Jim and some of our listeners in the US might, and Canada elsewhere might not know these names, but Lenny Henry, for sure, he's an amazing comedian.
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Are you quite close to where the church has announced the temple location being built in Birmingham?
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Oh, I don't know.
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I didn't know they had it.
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Oh, yeah, they announced a new temple to be built in Birmingham.
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It seems like they're going...
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out all the way to get you back into the church.
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Right.
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So when's that scheduled to begin, Ian?
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Well, the church, for years now, including the last conference recently, was it last weekend or so, have been announcing a whole slew of new temples built all around the world.
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They announced a new temple for Birmingham, where you are, and they've announced a temple in Edinburgh.
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Right.
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So there are two new temples being built in the British Isles.
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I don't know the dates.
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I think they've got a place and a date now for the Birmingham temple.
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So you might want to Google that.
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It's interesting.
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That's got to be within a stone's throw, I think, from where you are.
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I think it's actually in, they call it Royal Sutton Caulfield.
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Oh, right.
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Yeah.
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Well, we know where that is.
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Yeah.
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And in fact, that's where my mission officers used to be.
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Right.
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Because I served in this area.
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You served in
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Birmingham.
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In Birmingham Mission, yeah.
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So that's where the officers used to be.
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And the first area that I served in, in Handsworth, that was the first Mormon chapel in the UK.
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Okay.
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So that was their claim to fame from there.
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Okay.
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I didn't know that.
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I didn't know that.
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I'm just going to give a little bit of a minute, just an intro as well, a bit of context to it.
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And then I want to get into our conversation and talk about some of the items that you and I talked about as we prepared for this conversation.
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And so for our listeners, I've known Lance, oh my goodness, I've known you since 1988.
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when I joined the church in Pontefract.
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And as you know, the Carlton family took me in.
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I was homeless.
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They took me in.
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And I actually had Heidi's bedroom We had Andreas and Martin, as you know.
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You know these people.
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Jim, Lance knows these people very well.
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And so I started attending the Wakefield Ward.
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And without trying to embarrass you, and I'll try to make this part of the intro really short, you were the person of everyone that I looked up to.
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And the reason why is that when I, at that time, you know, in the early, mid-80s, you were...
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an example of somebody who was preparing to serve a mission it was discussed a lot in the ward i think uh colin calton was the bishop he was i think david was was he the bishop when you left wakefield for your mission
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calling yeah yes he was
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yeah so he will he will so i so jim i stayed with colin calton i was lived with the caltons for a number of years You know, this family is near and dear to me, and he was the bishop at the time.
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And Lance was in the Wakefield Ward, Huddersfield Stake, preparing to go on a mission.
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And wonderful.
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You were a little bit older, I think, coming into the church, if I'm not mistaken.
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I
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was 23.
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You were 23, so slightly older than going on a mission than probably what other missionaries were going on.
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But you were served as an example, as someone to follow.
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I remember having lessons, and your example was...
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mentioned many times in the lessons as i was you know in the youth at that time and i remember you preparing to go to mission and then i remember going to the wakefield bus station there's a handful of people and i saw you off yeah and that was real that was really important to me and i remember waving you on that bus you're heading to birmingham and i remember that i i want to do what you what you did.
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I wanted to serve a mission.
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I decided to serve a mission anyhow, but I wanted to do it the way you did.
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Right.
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And I also remember that you were, and help me on this, you were preparing to, you were trying to get onto the Olympic team for hammer throwing.
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Right.
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Well, let me clarify all of this then.
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So, yeah, I was, the national coach, the national hammer coach, Max Jones, there were a group of about five of us who were sort of on the periphery of the national squad.
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And so he used to come through once a week and we used to train at Clackheaton because that was the nearest place with some good hammer throwing facilities.
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And so me and some other guys had been invited to do that.
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And one of the lads that was there, He was the youngest of us.
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He's called Dave Smith.
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And he went on to have a really, really good career as a hammer thrower.
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I was always a better power lifter than I was a hammer thrower.
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And in 1982, so this had been the first year I was in the church, I won the Yorkshire North East Divisional Powerlifting Championships.
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That was at Huddersfield, I think, yeah.
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So, yeah, that was– and it's accurate to say that, you know, I was training another national coach and I was part of that, I suppose, small elite little group there.
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Right.
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But just to clarify, I mean, the Hammer is kind of a Cinderella event, really, in athletics.
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And it's been dominated throughout by Eastern European athletes, particularly– russian or the the soviet union as it was then and east germany that all the best throws came out there although some good throws came out of west germany but for the reason i'm telling you this is because the qualifying distance for a country to send an athlete to at that time to the olympics the qualifying distance was 72 meters And I don't think there was anybody in Britain at that time who could throw 72 metres.
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So that's the perspective of it.
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Yes, I was training under the national coach.
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Yes, I did want to go to the Olympics.
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But that distance...
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And David, David Smith, who I've just mentioned, he won the Commonwealth title in...
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1982.
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I'd just got on my mission and I was in my first area.
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So he won that.
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He won that, didn't he?
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And I don't think David even qualified for the 84 Olympics.
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Because he wasn't throwing far enough.
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I don't think we sensed a thrower then.
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He competed in the 88 Olympics, but not then.
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So that's the background to that.
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So I think a lot of things have been sort of, had a little bit of journalistic licensing, shall we say, from people other than myself who've related this story.
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But that was the, yeah, and obviously I gave up because I won the divisionals in February 82 and it was on a Sunday and it was the first time I'd ever missed church.
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And I felt so guilty that I went back a week after and said, I want to put my mission papers in.
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So that's how that worked out for me.
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That's interesting.
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And just onto that last point, the person who is partly responsible for developing that story is none other than President Thomas S.
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Monson.
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I know.
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That
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wasn't a unique club.
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Neal A.
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Maxwell as well and quite a few other general authorities told that story.
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with varying degrees of accuracy.
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Right.
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But yeah, yeah, it did come.
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It used to be, to be honest, it was a kind of a source of embarrassment at some points, you know, because, I mean, people, when somebody makes a statement, so when Thomas Monson says this, you know, this guy was a cert to go to the Olympics and all this, that's just not true.
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But it sounds like I've said it to him.
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Do you know what I mean?
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It sounds like that's come from my mouth and it never did.
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Well, that's another interesting part of a conversation, Jim, for sure.
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Because in President Monson's talk, and I think it was in April 2012 General Conference, President Monson talked about this inspiring story.
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And I heard this talk and I immediately thought, Mike, that's Lance Jackson.
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And I told whoever was next to it, that's Lance.
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I know Lance.
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I'm now famous through Lance, right?
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In this talk, President Monson said, you know, talking about this inspiring story about a talented hammer thrower, an Olympian with aspirations to compete in the Olympics.
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And he made this significant decision to interrupt his athletic pursuit to serve a full-time mission for the church.
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And then he highlighted the sacrifice and the service of this amazing individual.
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I'm like, That's Lance Jackson.
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That's Lance.
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I'm like, everybody is Lance.
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So that's extraordinary.
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So I just wanted to kind of highlight that because you are– You know, for a lot of people, you know, back then, certainly, you know, Martin and many others and Eddie, all these guys and Keith and these people that you know, you were the first person to lead us all by example to serve a mission.
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So, and I want to thank you for that.
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You've always been an extraordinary individual and I've always looked up to you and still do.
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So as we get into this, what we'd like to do, and obviously we want to get Jim's comments and thoughts input as well.
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I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
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If you can give us a background as to your, you know, how you joined the church.
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You mentioned you joined in 82, same year as I did.
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What was that experience like?
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You know, I think the mission has taught you, you came into the church, you then participate in the church with this sort of mission.
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Share a bit of experience on that.
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Um, you, um, you then came home and just tell us a bit of a bit of a journey in terms of what happened and, and then what happened in regards to any discoveries that you made and any changes, you know, did you stay in the church?
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Did you leave the church?
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And then, you know, going forward from there, we'll talk about where you are now and, and your perspective on life.
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So what.
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What's your backstory in terms of the church?
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Right, well, I grew up in the Roman Catholic religion.
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I was brought up by my grandparents, and my granddad used to go to Mass basically every Sunday.
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So from being a little kid, I used to go out to Mass with him.
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And I used to tell my children, if they got bored at church, when I was their age, I had to sit through a Mass in Latin.
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So no sympathy from my end whatsoever.
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And I didn't realize at the time, Ian, but my granddad was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church because he'd married my grandmother, who was a divorcee, and she had five children.
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And they lived together.
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Divorces used to take ages to come through then.
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So...
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he met her in 1938 and they weren't able to get married from her divorce didn't come through until 1952 so but he'd been excommunicated I didn't realise that but I knew that he didn't take communion and he didn't attend confession and he died when I was 16 so he died in 1973 and On his deathbed, he was able to have his confession heard and he was given the Roman Catholic equivalent of sacrament.
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And I remember thinking when I heard that news, I thought, well, if it was right to deny him those things throughout his life, then why was it suddenly appropriate to give them to him just because he was dying?
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And so I became quite disillusioned then, I suppose, with that.
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And although I wouldn't have articulated it in this way at the time, I knew the Catholic Church couldn't be true.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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So...
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I would have always classed myself as a believer in God during that period, but I didn't have any religious leanings.
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If anybody asked me what religion I was, I'd say Catholic, but I didn't have any real religious leanings.
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I didn't go out to church or anything like that.
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So in 1981, now that we're talking, I'd been out one night, Thursday night, and I stayed at a friend's house.
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And then I was walking home.
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I was walking through town in Wakefield.
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Do you remember where C&A used to be?
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What's it called again?
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C&A.
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I
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remember.
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Yeah, just top of Westgate.
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Yeah, that's it, mate.
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Yeah.
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So there's these three guys.
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They were a threesome.
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Stood outside this...
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Outside CNA.
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And I'm approaching him.
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And I could see all these people veering away from him.
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Right.
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And I felt really sorry for them.
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As I got closer, I realized they were really quite young guys.
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I felt quite sorry for them.
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So I decided that I would...
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I thought, well, I'll stop and talk to them.
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And so this lad, Sean Hurst, they called him.
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And he said...
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do you mind if I ask you a question?
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So I says, no, I don't mind at all.
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So he said, what's the most important thing in your life?
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And so I said, winning.
00:17:08.637 --> 00:17:13.486
And then I explained that, you know, I was a, I was a strength athlete and winning was probably the one.
00:17:13.506 --> 00:17:14.026
And he said,
00:17:14.686 --> 00:17:15.788
I thought you said women.
00:17:18.933 --> 00:17:25.974
If I, if I'd been honest, Jim, I would have said women and, That might have been Jim's answer.
00:17:25.994 --> 00:17:26.295
Absolutely.
00:17:26.476 --> 00:17:27.978
But I said winning.
00:17:28.238 --> 00:17:32.643
Anyway, he said, if I can show you something more important than winning, would you be interested?
00:17:32.703 --> 00:17:35.446
So I said, well, if you can do that, yeah, I would.
00:17:35.507 --> 00:17:38.451
So I arranged for him to come to my house, really.
00:17:39.071 --> 00:17:41.994
These missionaries at Street contacted me.
00:17:42.015 --> 00:17:42.855
It wasn't them that came.
00:17:42.896 --> 00:17:49.664
It was the zone leaders who were actually just based just over the road from me, really, where I was living then.
00:17:50.594 --> 00:17:54.258
And so I started getting taught the discussions by them.
00:17:54.898 --> 00:18:05.111
And when they first taught me, the first discussion then was the first vision, like the introduction to the Book of Mormon.
00:18:06.112 --> 00:18:17.445
And I remember thinking at the end of that session, I don't really believe it, but if it's true, then it's important that I find out.
00:18:17.890 --> 00:18:19.752
And that was my take on that.
00:18:20.733 --> 00:18:25.701
I wasn't convinced, but if it was true, I knew that it was important.
00:18:26.281 --> 00:18:32.089
And so I went through the investigation process and gained a testimony.
00:18:32.730 --> 00:18:37.898
And I got baptized then in August the 5th, 1981.
00:18:45.269 --> 00:18:45.409
And...
00:18:47.009 --> 00:19:01.497
One of the, one of the first problems I encountered really with church was as an athlete, because we, a lot of competitions were held on a Sunday and I was told, you know, well, we don't really, you know, we don't work on a Sunday.
00:19:01.557 --> 00:19:08.450
We don't do like recreation and stuff and we don't watch TV and we don't, you know, buy things from shops.
00:19:09.057 --> 00:19:12.564
So keeping the Sabbath, I thought, well, you know, that's going to be a challenge.
00:19:12.865 --> 00:19:17.192
But it just turned out, I mean, that coincided with the end of the athletic season.
00:19:18.253 --> 00:19:24.925
The lifting season began again in October, but the athletic season then ended in August.
00:19:24.965 --> 00:19:33.780
So it just happened that I didn't have to make that decision because the season was already over in terms of that.
00:19:34.498 --> 00:19:37.021
And as I say, I went then.
00:19:37.403 --> 00:19:38.805
That would be the August 81.
00:19:39.326 --> 00:19:45.676
Then in February 82, I won the Yorkshire and North East Divisional Championships.
00:19:45.757 --> 00:19:48.260
I weighed 110 kilos.
00:19:48.280 --> 00:19:50.605
I was in the 110 kilo class, heavyweight class.
00:19:51.165 --> 00:19:52.769
And I won that.
00:19:53.931 --> 00:19:58.317
And that was the first Sunday that I'd ever missed church from joining.
00:19:58.999 --> 00:20:00.261
And I felt really guilty.
00:20:01.026 --> 00:20:04.990
And so the week after, I think Colin must have been on holiday or something.
00:20:05.291 --> 00:20:11.380
Colin, it was Vic Wainwright that were sort of the bishopric representative.
00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:14.884
And I went in and said, you know, I want to put my papers in for my mission.
00:20:15.444 --> 00:20:18.970
That was what I decided then.
00:20:18.990 --> 00:20:23.615
And he said, well, that's amazing because we've sort of highlighted three of you.
00:20:24.037 --> 00:20:26.660
You, his son, Simon.
00:20:26.680 --> 00:20:28.142
Oh, yeah, Simon,
00:20:28.182 --> 00:20:28.643
yeah.
00:20:28.663 --> 00:20:30.826
And Eddie, Eddie Tomlinson.
00:20:31.233 --> 00:20:31.513
Yeah.
00:20:32.154 --> 00:20:44.512
And the ironic thing is that a few years down the life, me and Eddie Tomlinson actually both did serve missions, but Simon Wainwright didn't, and his dad encouraged him to get his career sorted first.
00:20:44.553 --> 00:20:49.540
I think with Vic, he's always had a bit of these, one rule for me and my family and one rule for everybody else.
00:20:49.601 --> 00:20:58.554
Anyway, put my papers in, and I got my notification back that I'd been called to the England-Birmingham mission.
00:20:59.233 --> 00:21:04.801
So I thought, well, that's exciting.
00:21:05.342 --> 00:21:07.525
Lance, for our listeners, how far is that from where you live?
00:21:08.086 --> 00:21:11.691
It's probably about 90 miles, I think.
00:21:11.711 --> 00:21:11.750
90
00:21:12.211 --> 00:21:12.531
miles.
00:21:12.692 --> 00:21:13.133
Yeah.
00:21:13.153 --> 00:21:14.855
So Jim, what's that to you, Jim?
00:21:14.875 --> 00:21:15.836
What's 90 miles from you?
00:21:15.856 --> 00:21:17.538
90 or 19?
00:21:17.558 --> 00:21:18.299
90.
00:21:18.319 --> 00:21:19.521
90?
00:21:20.083 --> 00:21:20.763
Yeah.
00:21:23.928 --> 00:21:28.253
So I'm in the Salt Lake area, so that would be like being called to Logham.
00:21:28.738 --> 00:21:35.730
Well, yeah, I mean, it wasn't a glamorous calling.
00:21:36.270 --> 00:21:42.863
When I first got it, I'm looking for Alabama after Birmingham, but unfortunately it said West Midlands.
00:21:43.784 --> 00:21:49.273
And I went on my mission within 12 months.
00:21:49.674 --> 00:21:51.217
So I joined...
00:21:51.874 --> 00:21:55.000
I went through the temple, because you had to be in a year.
00:21:55.240 --> 00:21:58.646
So I went through the temple the beginning of August, with my one-year anniversary.
00:21:58.686 --> 00:22:00.570
And then I went on my...
00:22:00.932 --> 00:22:03.656
I actually started being on my mission on the 1st of September.
00:22:03.696 --> 00:22:06.702
So within 12 months, I was serving a full-time mission.
00:22:08.826 --> 00:22:12.775
And I was good at it, as it happens.
00:22:13.476 --> 00:22:13.635
And...
00:22:15.041 --> 00:22:21.250
In fact, I still make this claim, and I've never had anybody could refute me on this.
00:22:21.349 --> 00:22:24.292
I was an AP after eight months on my mission.
00:22:25.535 --> 00:22:28.337
So basically, I've been in the church 20 months.
00:22:29.138 --> 00:22:30.119
In the church 20 months.
00:22:30.160 --> 00:22:34.546
I've been on my mission eight months, and I was called to be the assistant to the president.
00:22:34.925 --> 00:22:36.528
So I still claim that as a world record.
00:22:36.587 --> 00:22:39.592
I've never had anybody who's told me any different than that.
00:22:39.992 --> 00:22:40.653
Anyway, I was a...
00:22:41.569 --> 00:22:44.894
I used to baptise in missionary, you know, did well.
00:22:45.054 --> 00:22:49.720
And one of the people, I'm going to introduce this person now, because I happen to be married to her.
00:22:50.140 --> 00:22:53.865
But one of the people that I met quite early on in my mission.
00:22:54.246 --> 00:23:01.734
So after I was a greenie for two months, then after a greenie, he made me, my president made me a district leader.
00:23:02.214 --> 00:23:03.717
So I was a DL after two months.
00:23:05.038 --> 00:23:10.125
And then after four months, I was a DL and I had a training responsibility.
00:23:10.164 --> 00:23:10.925
So I had a greenie.
00:23:11.233 --> 00:23:12.255
Right.
00:23:13.537 --> 00:23:17.422
And then shortly after that, I got caught.
00:23:17.501 --> 00:23:18.983
I got, that would be about what?
00:23:19.424 --> 00:23:19.905
January.
00:23:20.006 --> 00:23:23.450
I got, anyway, I got called to be an AP after a bit or his own leader for a month.
00:23:23.990 --> 00:23:25.933
And then I were an AP after eight months.
00:23:28.196 --> 00:23:28.376
Wow.
00:23:29.038 --> 00:23:31.000
That's fine.
00:23:31.320 --> 00:23:31.520
Yeah.
00:23:31.540 --> 00:23:34.003
Well, I guess it was.
00:23:34.064 --> 00:23:34.885
Yeah.
00:23:35.205 --> 00:23:36.007
I came home.
00:23:36.728 --> 00:23:45.152
When I came home, I mean, I think I've probably held, every senior calling at ward level.
00:23:45.311 --> 00:23:47.736
I've been a bishop, a branch president.
00:23:48.297 --> 00:23:49.438
I preached group leader.
00:23:49.458 --> 00:23:51.381
I've been an elders quorum president twice.
00:23:51.421 --> 00:23:53.044
I've been a ward mission leader three times.
00:23:53.564 --> 00:23:55.587
I was your counsellor as elders quorum president.
00:23:55.607 --> 00:23:56.368
You were.
00:23:56.709 --> 00:23:57.009
You were.
00:23:57.029 --> 00:23:58.672
And a very good one too, young man.
00:23:59.773 --> 00:23:59.953
Thank you.
00:23:59.973 --> 00:24:00.895
I'll send you the money after.
00:24:01.316 --> 00:24:04.059
Yeah, all right, mate.
00:24:04.520 --> 00:24:08.186
And then throughout that, I also taught seminary and institute.
00:24:09.208 --> 00:24:14.981
But when I came home from my mission, I went to university.
00:24:16.443 --> 00:24:30.903
And so throughout my undergraduate years, I held senior callings and I taught seminary and institute throughout that.
00:24:32.045 --> 00:24:35.189
And this is how dedicated we were, right?
00:24:35.990 --> 00:24:45.138
The week before my finals of my first degree, The weekend, my finals began on the Monday and went through till Friday.
00:24:45.179 --> 00:24:50.243
And Sunday, obviously, was the Sabbath.
00:24:50.604 --> 00:25:01.294
So I didn't even revise for my, the day before my finals, first final exam, because I'd have been breaking the Sabbath.
00:25:01.375 --> 00:25:03.416
That's how crazy that was.
00:25:03.457 --> 00:25:08.902
And I mean, I was greeted that Monday morning by a load of other, you know, micro...
00:25:09.346 --> 00:25:21.278
compadres on my undergrad course and they were all like propping their eyes up with matchsticks because they'd been up all night revising and I'd strolled in and I hadn't done any revision on the day before.
00:25:21.519 --> 00:25:24.663
So, yeah, we took it seriously.
00:25:25.003 --> 00:25:27.006
It's fair to say.
00:25:30.068 --> 00:25:37.678
While I was on my mission as well, I don't know if Jim's aware of this guy, but you know Jeff Capes, don't you, Ian?
00:25:38.241 --> 00:25:38.682
I do.
00:25:39.222 --> 00:25:40.384
Oh, he's a big name in the
00:25:40.825 --> 00:25:40.865
UK.
00:25:40.986 --> 00:25:43.249
Well, he's just died recently, bless him as Jeff.
00:25:43.288 --> 00:25:47.954
But Jeff, he was a phenomenal strength athlete.
00:25:47.974 --> 00:25:51.058
And at that time, he was the reigning world's strongest man.
00:25:52.201 --> 00:26:00.872
And he basically threw out this challenge to all West Midlands guys who think they are strong.
00:26:01.212 --> 00:26:02.354
You could register for this.
00:26:02.453 --> 00:26:08.021
It was the Ennsford Raceway, and he'd be in a five-ton lorry pulling contest with Jeff.
00:26:08.834 --> 00:26:16.404
So I went along in a T-shirt, a sweatshirt I'd made up that said on the front, Jeff Capes sleeps with a light on.
00:26:17.207 --> 00:26:20.751
So enormously disrespectful.
00:26:21.132 --> 00:26:25.880
And all credit to the man himself, took it very much in good humour.
00:26:26.661 --> 00:26:32.048
And we remained friendly throughout, you know, the rest of our dealings with each other.
00:26:32.710 --> 00:26:33.330
Lovely.
00:26:33.351 --> 00:26:35.894
As I say, he died last year, did Jeff.
00:26:36.454 --> 00:26:38.038
You became friends with Jeff Capes?
00:26:38.465 --> 00:26:39.467
Jeff Capes, yeah.
00:26:39.547 --> 00:26:39.768
Wow.
00:26:40.028 --> 00:26:43.031
Jim, our listeners won't know this, but Jeff Capes is a huge name.
00:26:43.112 --> 00:26:46.435
I mean, a very famous athlete in the UK.
00:26:47.217 --> 00:26:49.199
What does that mean, he sleeps with the light on?
00:26:49.859 --> 00:26:53.203
Well, because people who sleep with the light on are like little and scared, aren't they?
00:26:54.265 --> 00:26:54.424
Oh,
00:26:54.505 --> 00:26:54.826
okay.
00:26:54.986 --> 00:26:59.330
This guy was like a quarter inch under six foot six and weighed 25 stone, which is what?
00:27:00.051 --> 00:27:04.297
In American, that's 220 pounds.
00:27:05.439 --> 00:27:06.359
That's a large man.
00:27:06.460 --> 00:27:08.001
That is one big man, yeah.
00:27:08.481 --> 00:27:12.888
And when Lance talks about pulling a lorry, that's a truck, Jim.
00:27:13.288 --> 00:27:14.852
I've got that one.
00:27:15.732 --> 00:27:16.473
Yeah, you know this, Jim.
00:27:16.534 --> 00:27:21.781
I mean, you're familiar with the UK lingo, right?
00:27:22.163 --> 00:27:22.563
Okay, Lance.
00:27:24.286 --> 00:27:30.575
Yeah, so, well, as I said, I finished my Michigan home, did my undergraduate degree.
00:27:30.674 --> 00:27:32.278
I had senior call-ins.
00:27:32.609 --> 00:27:58.585
throughout that time and it really I mean when I look back now it's really detrimental to me in my first degree because um instead of spending time um you know revising and doing academic stuff I did all that but I was also um holding down these, which is, you know, very time-consuming callings.
00:27:58.644 --> 00:28:06.613
And as I say, when I say I taught seminary and institute, I mean I taught seminary and I taught institute at the same time.
00:28:06.712 --> 00:28:09.996
So there was a lot of reading going on.
00:28:11.096 --> 00:28:12.778
I was very busy in church.
00:28:12.878 --> 00:28:14.440
Church keeps you very busy.
00:28:15.161 --> 00:28:16.481
And that kept me very busy.
00:28:16.521 --> 00:28:24.349
And I think, you know, to be honest, it was very detrimental to me in my first degree.
00:28:25.377 --> 00:28:29.525
devoting all that time to church service.
00:28:31.347 --> 00:28:33.010
So, yeah, that element.
00:28:33.030 --> 00:28:39.181
I mean, I got a good degree, and I graduated honours in three years instead of four.
00:28:40.583 --> 00:28:44.750
But, as I say, I think I could have done even better had I...
00:28:45.490 --> 00:28:46.633
What was your degree in, Lance?
00:28:47.815 --> 00:28:48.876
Behavioural sciences.
00:28:49.778 --> 00:28:50.019
Right.
00:28:51.821 --> 00:28:51.902
Yeah.
00:28:52.289 --> 00:28:57.214
which is probably my favourite academic area ever, but has not been...
00:28:57.234 --> 00:29:05.904
I'm going to start taking it up again, because I went on to study other stuff as a postgrad.
00:29:06.685 --> 00:29:16.355
So because I was involved in music and stuff, because I needed to know my way around opera scores and things like this, and I had very little music education.
00:29:17.436 --> 00:29:20.300
And so for some reason, I went to...
00:29:20.320 --> 00:29:21.481
I thought, well, I'd better...
00:29:22.210 --> 00:29:25.453
Get myself at least some knowledge.
00:29:25.753 --> 00:29:28.116
I was singing with amateur groups at the time.
00:29:28.136 --> 00:29:28.938
We were very good.
00:29:30.640 --> 00:29:35.425
But in terms of the technical aspects of music, I wasn't.
00:29:36.166 --> 00:29:40.352
And so I decided to do some more studying into that.
00:29:41.633 --> 00:29:50.683
And I enrolled at Wakefield College, basically to do a GCSE.
00:29:50.703 --> 00:29:51.925
So this was after my degree.
00:29:52.801 --> 00:29:57.228
And I did a degree and then I did a teaching qualification.
00:29:57.828 --> 00:30:02.234
So I thought, well, if ever I wanted to teach music, I'm going to need to know my way around it.
00:30:02.255 --> 00:30:03.336
So I did this GCSE.
00:30:04.117 --> 00:30:10.366
But what happened with that was that this is when GCSEs were proper GCSEs.
00:30:11.087 --> 00:30:22.032
And as part of the package, you had half an hour with a coach on your own instrument.
00:30:22.073 --> 00:30:23.414
So my instrument was my voice.
00:30:24.757 --> 00:30:29.942
And then you had, sorry, an hour a week, private tuition with a tutor.
00:30:30.442 --> 00:30:35.930
And then you had a secondary instrument, which if you couldn't play it, it was the piano.
00:30:35.970 --> 00:30:37.372
So you got half an hour a week on that.
00:30:37.392 --> 00:30:45.560
But anyway, when I got this, I met my personal tutor, who was called Hilary Jackson, funnily enough.
00:30:46.241 --> 00:30:50.027
And she was a soft soprano up and off.
00:30:51.528 --> 00:30:55.373
So as you're doing these things, you take along an audition piece.
00:30:55.393 --> 00:31:01.259
So I took along Isis and Osiris from the Magic Flute.
00:31:02.461 --> 00:31:05.605
And I sang about four lines.
00:31:05.664 --> 00:31:06.767
She stopped playing.
00:31:07.788 --> 00:31:11.491
And she said, have you got any idea what you've got there?
00:31:13.535 --> 00:31:16.157
It's a decent noise and that, but, you know.
00:31:16.546 --> 00:31:20.231
She says, no, that is a really, really unique...
00:31:20.633 --> 00:31:24.558
I've rarely come across this kind of voice.
00:31:24.618 --> 00:31:28.105
And she said, would you mind coming and singing for my husband?
00:31:28.184 --> 00:31:29.988
Now, her husband, she's Hilary Jackson.
00:31:30.048 --> 00:31:31.048
He's Paul Wade.
00:31:31.931 --> 00:31:34.654
And he was a principal tenor at Opera North.
00:31:36.137 --> 00:31:39.061
And so I went through to see Paul.
00:31:39.102 --> 00:31:43.869
And he basically said, you know, can I...
00:31:44.066 --> 00:31:47.390
I'd love to be able to coach you and stuff.
00:31:47.471 --> 00:31:50.575
I think he was coming towards the end of his career and looking more towards coaching.
00:31:51.015 --> 00:31:55.942
Anyway, so that was my introduction to professional opera and Opera North.
00:31:56.583 --> 00:32:00.027
And so it was a very fortuitous sort of break that really.
00:32:00.047 --> 00:32:01.148
So how
00:32:01.249 --> 00:32:02.431
old were you when this happened?
00:32:03.491 --> 00:32:10.441
So I would be then, so I'd just finished, I'd probably be 30, 31.
00:32:10.961 --> 00:32:11.041
Okay.
00:32:11.323 --> 00:32:13.885
Yeah.
00:32:14.498 --> 00:32:21.428
But so, and it never occurred to me up to then that I could probably earn a living through singing opera.
00:32:22.169 --> 00:32:26.194
Well, I hadn't even really come across any opera until I joined the church.
00:32:27.436 --> 00:32:32.443
And did I ever tell you that story about Jack Hargrave's car?
00:32:33.665 --> 00:32:39.173
I know you and I, with others, prepared Jack's body.
00:32:39.934 --> 00:32:40.336
We did.
00:32:40.355 --> 00:32:40.415
And
00:32:40.836 --> 00:32:41.778
I was heartbroken.
00:32:42.049 --> 00:32:42.810
That was heartbroken.
00:32:42.830 --> 00:32:46.777
I lived with Sylvia, as you know, that lived with their bit for a year.
00:32:47.198 --> 00:32:48.439
So I knew Jack quite well.
00:32:48.599 --> 00:32:49.942
But yeah, I know this person, yeah.
00:32:50.722 --> 00:32:55.329
So Jack, he was a good bass with Jack.
00:32:55.630 --> 00:32:56.050
Very good.
00:32:56.391 --> 00:32:58.334
Coal miner from Street House, I think.
00:32:59.134 --> 00:33:00.116
Yeah, he was.
00:33:01.250 --> 00:33:08.462
He was great, but it was the first time I'd heard a proper bass, you know, live, if you like.
00:33:08.983 --> 00:33:13.310
And I remember I were in church, and I didn't really know a lot about music.
00:33:14.093 --> 00:33:23.588
And so, like every other person who goes through the door doesn't know about music, I'm trying to sing this melody line, which were inaccessible to me, because it's written for sops and tenors.
00:33:24.711 --> 00:33:26.013
So it was too high for me, so...
00:33:27.074 --> 00:33:31.980
But I heard this like cavernous sound coming from the other side of the chapel.
00:33:32.039 --> 00:33:36.183
So next week, the week after, I went and sat next to him.
00:33:37.665 --> 00:33:39.587
And he was singing.
00:33:39.728 --> 00:33:44.913
And I could join in with him, but he wasn't singing the same line as other people in the congregation.
00:33:45.474 --> 00:33:49.298
So I said to him after, he was singing the bass line, obviously, I realized later.
00:33:51.301 --> 00:33:55.086
So I said to him after, I said, I can sing it.
00:33:55.617 --> 00:34:02.909
When I'm leaning on you, how come I can't sing the melody line?
00:34:02.949 --> 00:34:04.330
And he said, this is Jack, right?
00:34:04.791 --> 00:34:06.433
This is Jack's words, not mine.
00:34:07.134 --> 00:34:09.559
Well, that's because of that bass, lad.
00:34:10.059 --> 00:34:10.621
There you
00:34:11.581 --> 00:34:11.621
go.
00:34:12.003 --> 00:34:16.068
And then he went on to say, and they're a bloody good bass and all.
00:34:16.248 --> 00:34:16.568
Right,
00:34:16.630 --> 00:34:16.909
right.
00:34:17.070 --> 00:34:17.811
Yeah, that was Jack.
00:34:18.753 --> 00:34:19.454
So I went...
00:34:20.130 --> 00:34:24.255
they invited me along to, to Charleston male voice and stuff like that.
00:34:24.295 --> 00:34:25.777
So I just, I didn't really start.
00:34:25.797 --> 00:34:37.190
I mean, I've got the church to thank in a lot of ways for, you know, introducing me to that, that wonderful world of, of, of classical and sacred music.
00:34:37.610 --> 00:34:37.831
Right.
00:34:38.512 --> 00:34:43.918
So you, you became a, I mean, you had this passion for opera singing and you, I heard you sing.
00:34:43.958 --> 00:34:46.882
I was listening to the choir, Huddersfield choir as well, I think at stake.
00:34:47.746 --> 00:34:50.750
and Wayfield Choir, and then you became a professional bass.
00:34:50.909 --> 00:34:53.434
And of course, you've got Jim here, who's a...
00:34:53.474 --> 00:34:57.960
Is it right to describe you as a professional singer in the Marmotamico Choir, Jim?
00:34:58.000 --> 00:34:58.780
I think that's right.
00:34:59.081 --> 00:34:59.922
It would not be
00:35:00.023 --> 00:35:00.543
right to...
00:35:00.724 --> 00:35:00.943
Nope.
00:35:02.465 --> 00:35:04.027
I'm a volunteer.
00:35:04.128 --> 00:35:04.989
I'm not paid.
00:35:05.010 --> 00:35:09.436
So don't you have to be paid to be a professional?
00:35:09.576 --> 00:35:10.797
Yeah, that's the criteria.
00:35:11.798 --> 00:35:13.802
I've been paid to sing on...
00:35:14.146 --> 00:35:44.376
some occasions but i certainly haven't made a living at it so uh no i don't think it would be appropriate to call me professional but uh i and i'm very impressed the the idea of becoming a professional opera singer i mean that's such a rarefied sort of career there are very few people that are able to do that and to sort of arrive at that in your 30s yeah uh i just think that's Unbelievably impressive.
00:35:44.596 --> 00:35:45.056
Thank you.
00:35:45.096 --> 00:35:51.182
And even more so considering I'm a working class lad from a council estate in the northeast of England.
00:35:52.083 --> 00:35:52.143
Yes.
00:35:52.364 --> 00:35:57.329
So that wasn't really a defined career path for many folk, really.
00:35:59.331 --> 00:36:00.673
So, yeah.
00:36:00.994 --> 00:36:11.425
And then before, going back a little bit, in 1984, when I'd come home from my mission, I married Nancy.
00:36:13.090 --> 00:36:13.811
who you know.
00:36:14.110 --> 00:36:14.311
Yeah?
00:36:14.711 --> 00:36:15.072
Yes.
00:36:15.413 --> 00:36:16.414
Yes, I know Nancy.
00:36:17.516 --> 00:36:24.483
And I'm going to say something that's probably awful now, but I never loved Nancy.
00:36:26.186 --> 00:36:28.570
No, I was never in love with Nancy.
00:36:29.331 --> 00:36:29.831
I loved her.
00:36:30.132 --> 00:36:32.253
And let me tell you the reasoning behind marrying her.
00:36:33.556 --> 00:36:39.063
Obviously, I'd come quite away in church in a very short time, so very naive in church.
00:36:39.804 --> 00:36:40.804
And Spencer W.
00:36:40.864 --> 00:36:41.286
Kimball...
00:36:42.306 --> 00:36:45.449
and was the prophet at the time, he came out and made this statement.
00:36:45.588 --> 00:36:52.635
And he said, basically, any two people who are living the gospel can have a happy marriage.
00:36:54.016 --> 00:37:00.023
So with that in the background, I then got Brian Ford and John Barnsley singing the praise of this woman who I'd never...
00:37:00.163 --> 00:37:00.744
Oh, Nancy.
00:37:00.943 --> 00:37:04.447
Nancy, you know, she's your ticket to Celestial Kingdom kid and all this.
00:37:05.768 --> 00:37:09.251
And I met Nancy the Sunday before I went on my mission.
00:37:10.532 --> 00:37:11.213
She was one of...
00:37:11.777 --> 00:37:17.586
several young ladies who wrote to me and her tenure was the longest.
00:37:17.626 --> 00:37:24.878
And basically I decided to marry her.
00:37:24.918 --> 00:37:41.699
And I really, I feel very sad for, I feel sad for me, but I feel very sad for her that the man she married never really loved her in the way that Her husband loves her wife.
00:37:42.501 --> 00:37:46.507
But I knew when I married her, I knew that she would always be faithful in church.
00:37:46.907 --> 00:37:48.951
I knew she'd bring my kids up in church.
00:37:49.833 --> 00:37:55.641
And so all those things which were important, those bases were ticked.
00:37:56.402 --> 00:38:07.018
But contrary to what President Kimball says, it wasn't a happy marriage because I wasn't comfortable throughout it.
00:38:07.079 --> 00:38:08.681
I wasn't happy with Nancy.
00:38:09.826 --> 00:38:12.230
because I just didn't have that love for her.
00:38:12.250 --> 00:38:13.231
And marriage is hard enough.
00:38:14.413 --> 00:38:20.983
But when you don't really fully love your wife, it becomes impossible.
00:38:21.543 --> 00:38:30.759
But having said that, we had three biological children together and we stayed together for 27 years.
00:38:32.882 --> 00:38:37.829
While on my mission, I taught a young person.
00:38:38.434 --> 00:38:39.797
called Anita Jones.
00:38:41.318 --> 00:38:43.864
And I was training in Litchfield at the time.
00:38:45.387 --> 00:38:48.713
And we met Anita's family.
00:38:48.733 --> 00:38:50.757
They'd all joined the church, but she hadn't.
00:38:52.440 --> 00:38:56.188
And so we'd gone round there, as you do as missionaries.
00:38:56.969 --> 00:39:01.398
And it was one of those things that when I met her, I would immediately...
00:39:02.914 --> 00:39:03.655
drawn to it.
00:39:03.675 --> 00:39:10.405
We had a connection from the word go and it wasn't an inappropriate connection because she was only 14 at the time.
00:39:11.507 --> 00:39:16.074
We were just people who just enjoyed each other's company.
00:39:16.393 --> 00:39:21.041
And in fact, Anita was a bridesmaid at my wedding.
00:39:22.864 --> 00:39:33.786
I came to realise as the years went on that what I felt for Anita was very different to what I felt for my wife.
00:39:33.847 --> 00:39:34.688
And I know that's awful.
00:39:35.088 --> 00:39:35.588
It really is.
00:39:35.668 --> 00:39:38.773
And I take no pride in that at all.
00:39:39.592 --> 00:39:43.336
But I never really loved Nancy.
00:39:44.798 --> 00:39:51.826
And so we had three children together, Naomi, Ben and Chris.
00:39:53.467 --> 00:40:08.748
And then when Christopher was old enough, because he was quite happy to be the youngest member of the family, young Christopher, And we did everything in consultation with the kids in regard to fostering.
00:40:09.570 --> 00:40:23.032
We decided we'd like to foster, to give some kids who hadn't had a great chance in life to experience something good and wholesome.
00:40:23.333 --> 00:40:28.621
And so we decided to do long-term fostering.
00:40:29.282 --> 00:40:32.367
because that way the kids weren't getting moved.
00:40:32.387 --> 00:40:34.208
So you've got short-term and long-term fostering.
00:40:34.228 --> 00:40:35.291
I don't know if you know this, Ian.
00:40:35.931 --> 00:40:40.398
But short-term, a kid's been removed from his immediate family.
00:40:40.438 --> 00:40:49.512
They're put into with a family for a short period until a long-term foster placement can be found for them.
00:40:49.972 --> 00:40:51.414
We were long-term fosters.
00:40:51.996 --> 00:40:58.666
First people we fostered were a brother and sister from Pontefract.
00:40:59.809 --> 00:41:03.454
And their background was not good.
00:41:03.534 --> 00:41:05.036
Their parents were heroin addicts.
00:41:05.958 --> 00:41:10.963
And this might sound contradictory, but they were nice people.
00:41:11.625 --> 00:41:14.327
They were nice people just in the grip of a horrible substance.
00:41:15.009 --> 00:41:17.012
And they couldn't look after these kids at all.
00:41:18.072 --> 00:41:19.956
So, Tyler and Jasmine came to us.
00:41:20.697 --> 00:41:27.885
And then we fostered kids who were basically very difficult to place.
00:41:28.898 --> 00:41:37.690
And so we, Tyler had learning difficulties and Jasmine came with him.
00:41:39.012 --> 00:41:46.862
And then we fostered another young kid called Chelsea and she had Curzon syndrome.
00:41:47.443 --> 00:41:51.969
It's where when they're born, the skull closes up too quickly.
00:41:52.010 --> 00:42:00.797
And so a typical feature of somebody with that would be like their eyes might look like they're bulging out and things.
00:42:01.617 --> 00:42:06.085
So we took Chelsea in because nobody else wanted her.
00:42:08.027 --> 00:42:18.501
And then we then, a bit later on, took in another brother and sister who had been...
00:42:22.018 --> 00:42:23.940
This is a bit of a complex one as well.
00:42:24.000 --> 00:42:35.391
Their father had been married to Angie Priest, who was a member in Wakefield, and they'd divorced, and he'd had these two kids with someone else, and they were living in Spain.
00:42:36.931 --> 00:42:41.076
So he died, and the mother abandoned him.
00:42:41.175 --> 00:42:42.878
So they were in a Spanish orphanage.
00:42:44.059 --> 00:42:53.168
And when Angie found out about this, even though the only relationship really that she had to him was she would perform a wife of their dad, But she brought him back to the UK.
00:42:54.590 --> 00:43:05.166
And then Jeff Warriner, who was the bishop, she couldn't look after him, but she just, you know, she looked after him for as long as she could, but she really needed somebody else to step in.
00:43:05.626 --> 00:43:09.512
And so Jeff Warriner got in touch with us and asked if we could take these two.
00:43:09.572 --> 00:43:10.614
And basically we said, yeah.
00:43:11.335 --> 00:43:16.262
So we got these, we got five foster children as well as the three birth children.
00:43:18.425 --> 00:43:18.525
Right.
00:43:19.329 --> 00:43:27.306
So that's, you know, as I listen to you and you start and there's a lot of you, I didn't know until this conversation.
00:43:27.367 --> 00:43:32.858
So you're in the church, you're married, your family, you know, you've shared about your feelings about your relationship.
00:43:33.442 --> 00:43:34.563
You devoted to the church.
00:43:34.583 --> 00:43:37.528
I think you was the Bishop of Pontefract at one point, if I'm not
00:43:37.608 --> 00:43:37.768
mistaken.
00:43:37.789 --> 00:43:39.231
I was the first Bishop of Pontefract, yeah.
00:43:39.251 --> 00:43:39.492
You were
00:43:39.512 --> 00:43:41.394
the first Bishop of Pontefract.
00:43:41.434 --> 00:43:44.018
That's the branch that I joined before I went to Wakefield.
00:43:44.820 --> 00:43:47.545
You had this attitude of winning from the early stages.
00:43:47.605 --> 00:43:51.271
You grew up on Lipset Council Estate, I think, if I'm not mistaken.
00:43:52.052 --> 00:43:52.632
I did, indeed.
00:43:52.913 --> 00:43:59.563
And you had aspirations to do something wonderful with your life, which you did, clearly.
00:43:59.583 --> 00:44:00.324
You served a mission.
00:44:00.929 --> 00:44:02.193
Became a bass singer.
00:44:02.233 --> 00:44:08.586
You made a home for foster children, creating a positive experience.
00:44:09.228 --> 00:44:13.657
What happened after that period, Lance, in terms of the church?
00:44:13.777 --> 00:44:14.820
So you were serving the church.
00:44:15.320 --> 00:44:17.264
At some point, you...
00:44:17.985 --> 00:44:21.492
I think, disenfranchised with the church.
00:44:21.711 --> 00:44:22.813
Absolutely, I did, yeah.
00:44:23.414 --> 00:44:23.856
Well, it was...
00:44:24.817 --> 00:44:27.641
So these five children were with us.
00:44:27.681 --> 00:44:29.505
They'd been with us for several years at this point.
00:44:29.545 --> 00:44:36.155
We were going through the process of adopting the two youngest, the two kids that come from Spain.
00:44:37.438 --> 00:44:42.585
And I became ill, basically.
00:44:42.666 --> 00:44:44.429
This was 2008.
00:44:45.538 --> 00:44:52.288
I was doing some postgraduate work at Hull University, and I became ill.
00:44:52.427 --> 00:45:00.740
And first I was ill physically, and then I became ill mentally as well.
00:45:02.163 --> 00:45:07.170
And it was just a steady downward spiral, Ian.
00:45:08.052 --> 00:45:19.079
What happened was, I don't know, again, how aware you are about this, but in 2007, they brought in the Religious Discrimination Act as an Act of Parliament.
00:45:20.099 --> 00:45:31.934
And basically, anybody who was discriminated against on grounds of religious belief, that it was illegal.
00:45:32.635 --> 00:45:50.768
And we became very much pariahs in this foster care setup because a new woman had taken over who obviously had nothing down for organized religions in general and Mormonism in particular.
00:45:50.809 --> 00:45:59.320
And she was very, very, well, openly hostile to us.
00:46:00.481 --> 00:46:06.128
And over a period of time, in 2008, as I say, I became ill.
00:46:06.148 --> 00:46:13.918
And then between 2008 and 2010, basically, she had all the kids killed.
00:46:14.114 --> 00:46:14.835
removed from us.
00:46:16.295 --> 00:46:22.422
And it was as blatant a case of religious discrimination as you could have encountered.
00:46:22.942 --> 00:46:24.443
I went to see my state president.
00:46:25.103 --> 00:46:28.447
Well, not when it ended, it was going on.
00:46:28.547 --> 00:46:33.271
And I said, look, you know, we've been, there's no doubt here that we are being discriminated against because we're Mormons.
00:46:34.672 --> 00:46:38.317
And, you know, so is there anything you can do?
00:46:38.336 --> 00:46:40.199
And he said, well, you know, I explained everything to him.
00:46:40.219 --> 00:46:43.061
He says, oh, Lance, it seems like you've got a real case there.
00:46:43.081 --> 00:46:48.719
He says, I'll I'll take this higher up the food chain and I'll get back to you.
00:46:49.739 --> 00:46:55.344
And so he did that.
00:46:55.846 --> 00:46:58.608
By this time, we'd had all the kids removed.
00:46:59.989 --> 00:47:02.413
And I was, as I say, I was ill, Pauline.
00:47:02.932 --> 00:47:03.733
I was developing.
00:47:03.753 --> 00:47:07.878
I mean, I think it would be fair to say I had a nervous breakdown.
00:47:09.300 --> 00:47:10.340
And so...
00:47:13.057 --> 00:47:14.719
I went to see my state president again.
00:47:14.760 --> 00:47:16.822
I said, well, you know, what are we doing about this?
00:47:17.543 --> 00:47:21.789
And he says, well, I've been in touch with the area president or whoever it was.
00:47:22.469 --> 00:47:25.233
And he said, the church doesn't want any involvement.
00:47:26.514 --> 00:47:27.376
I said, what?
00:47:28.496 --> 00:47:32.581
He said, the church won't be involved in that to bring this case.
00:47:33.443 --> 00:47:35.306
And I remember thinking, why would you not?
00:47:36.367 --> 00:48:07.817
I mean, I came to realize that the reason that they wouldn't is if they came into an open court, they would have to embellish on some of the you know the less than mainstream doctrines of the church if you like so but anyway we lost all these kids my son Ben had served in Japan and he'd come home and Chris and then Chris was serving in at one of the London missions during this time.
00:48:08.016 --> 00:48:14.463
I mean, we were having to phone them up and tell them, you know, this is, you know, you remember your sister Jasmine, she ain't going to be here when you get back.
00:48:15.724 --> 00:48:21.050
And then it, so it just, yeah, it destroyed me.
00:48:21.472 --> 00:48:25.135
I think it's fair to say it was, it was like a bereavement really.
00:48:25.456 --> 00:48:30.101
You know, I'd lost five children and I was powerless over it and we couldn't have any contact with them.
00:48:31.663 --> 00:48:35.630
And so at that time, I remember...
00:48:36.411 --> 00:48:39.014
Well, I started self-medicating.
00:48:40.175 --> 00:48:44.940
Can I ask you, did they give specific reasons for removing the children?
00:48:45.161 --> 00:48:47.864
Were they specific, like doctrine or policies
00:48:48.005 --> 00:48:49.106
or something?
00:48:49.186 --> 00:48:49.746
Well, yeah.
00:48:49.786 --> 00:48:50.266
Well, they did.
00:48:50.286 --> 00:49:01.219
Tyler, who was the eldest of the kids that we adopted, we'd gone on holiday, and it was during school term time.
00:49:01.298 --> 00:49:03.422
Now, Tyler...
00:49:03.969 --> 00:49:07.934
at the intellectual capacity of a four-year-old, really.
00:49:09.175 --> 00:49:19.528
And we'd gone on holidays before with them, like to France and places like this, but this particular time they said, no, you can't take Tyler out of school.
00:49:21.010 --> 00:49:23.153
And so he said, okay.
00:49:24.275 --> 00:49:30.123
And they said, well, he can be temporarily fostered by a respite carer.
00:49:30.443 --> 00:49:32.726
So you come back off your holidays, fair enough.
00:49:33.666 --> 00:49:40.577
So Tyler had gone to this place, and basically I think the woman had offered him a cup of tea.
00:49:40.637 --> 00:49:47.168
Oh, no, he'd said, you know, I'd love a cup of tea, but I can't.
00:49:48.309 --> 00:49:51.335
And so this woman said, well, I can't have a cup of tea.
00:49:51.916 --> 00:49:52.938
Oh, well, they won't let me.
00:49:53.057 --> 00:49:55.322
They won't let me.
00:49:55.722 --> 00:50:02.413
And they started to paint a picture of us, you know, sort of implanting our– They knew we were Mormons, we were foster carers.
00:50:02.472 --> 00:50:08.721
In fact, it was almost, you know, a box ticker in some respects.
00:50:08.782 --> 00:50:10.583
But anyway, this became under this woman.
00:50:11.065 --> 00:50:15.471
We were denying him stuff on the basis of our religious beliefs.
00:50:16.431 --> 00:50:19.036
And we went through all this panel.
00:50:19.195 --> 00:50:22.681
And I don't do myself any favours because I can't keep my mouth shut, really.
00:50:23.922 --> 00:50:26.286
And on this panel, there was a woman and she was a Muslim.
00:50:27.202 --> 00:50:31.909
And they were basically questioning me about, you know, inflicting my religious beliefs on people.
00:50:31.929 --> 00:50:33.652
So I said to her, I said, let me just ask you this.
00:50:34.393 --> 00:50:38.639
I said, if you fostered a kid and that kid came to your house and didn't want to report by, what's your stance?
00:50:40.242 --> 00:50:42.184
And, oh, it's got nothing to do with it.
00:50:42.465 --> 00:50:50.056
But so you see, I don't, I don't do myself favours sometimes, but I won't, I won't shut up if I think so much wrong.
00:50:50.155 --> 00:50:51.538
Anyway, that was the process.
00:50:52.039 --> 00:51:09.016
And they just painted this picture of us being, religious fanatics who were imposing our weird religious beliefs on these children that came to us and that we shouldn't be allowed to do that.
00:51:09.056 --> 00:51:10.619
We shouldn't be foster carers anymore.
00:51:10.719 --> 00:51:17.927
And basically they took us off the foster carers register and we lost all the kids, which absolutely broke me.
00:51:18.068 --> 00:51:21.572
I mean, that's what led to the mental illness, to the breakdown.
00:51:23.554 --> 00:51:25.335
Do you want anything else on that, Ian?
00:51:25.436 --> 00:51:25.836
No,
00:51:26.056 --> 00:51:29.041
I'm just so sorry that you had to go through that.
00:51:29.061 --> 00:51:34.969
And obviously I'm disappointed that the church, when you needed them the most, they weren't there.
00:51:35.469 --> 00:51:44.722
So when the church made that decision then, how did that impact your confidence and faith in the church when they basically about
00:51:45.103 --> 00:51:45.202
you?
00:51:45.242 --> 00:51:47.166
It shattered it.
00:51:47.297 --> 00:51:51.643
Because I'm thinking, well, you know, this is supposedly the true church on earth.
00:51:52.105 --> 00:51:54.789
We should be challenging these things.
00:51:55.449 --> 00:52:03.420
But as I say, I came to realize, you know, that the reason that they hadn't, it was because they would have to explain the belief system in an open court.
00:52:04.141 --> 00:52:10.952
And let's face it, an open court in England, it would have just ridiculed a lot of things that we taught.
00:52:12.153 --> 00:52:12.253
Right.
00:52:12.673 --> 00:52:17.539
And so during that period, I just couldn't take it.
00:52:18.079 --> 00:52:20.782
Physically, I was unable to get out to church a lot.
00:52:21.983 --> 00:52:25.728
But mentally, I was just sinking into despair.
00:52:25.748 --> 00:52:28.371
And I started self-medicating.
00:52:28.391 --> 00:52:36.358
I started first, through being an athlete, through being in the military, I'd carried injuries around all the time.
00:52:36.398 --> 00:52:42.525
And I've still got a dodgy back.
00:52:43.041 --> 00:52:49.951
And I'd been prescribed very strong painkillers for a long time.
00:52:49.971 --> 00:52:57.021
I didn't always use them every week, but I used to store them in case I ever ran out or whatever.
00:52:57.882 --> 00:53:03.670
And so I had access to all these really strong painkillers, codeine-based painkillers.
00:53:04.831 --> 00:53:12.061
And so I started taking them to make me feel better, taking them in excess quantities.
00:53:12.601 --> 00:53:12.702
Right.
00:53:12.898 --> 00:53:20.550
And then, and I don't know if you know anything about like opioid addiction, Ian, but what happens is, I mean, you build up a tolerance for it.
00:53:20.610 --> 00:53:36.797
So whereas the 10 tablets would initially give, you know, give you a high or, you know, help you remove yourself mentally from the situation, it increased to, you know, 15, 20, 30.
00:53:37.217 --> 00:53:40.342
just ridiculous amounts.
00:53:40.382 --> 00:53:44.128
And obviously then I was running out of this spare stock that I had.
00:53:44.148 --> 00:53:48.574
I still had them on prescription, but it wasn't enough.
00:53:48.594 --> 00:53:51.739
So then I started supplementing them with alcohol as well.
00:53:52.961 --> 00:53:57.708
And I was just, I mean, that didn't help the illness any.
00:53:58.429 --> 00:54:00.974
So it was just that downward spiral.
00:54:01.014 --> 00:54:37.936
And that was sort of between 2007, I want to say, and 2010 and I went from we had because a lot of my work as an opera singer had been freelance because I was a principal you know I was freelance and so I'd not really got like any pension schemes or anything like that but I'd invested in property and I got these two railway cottages that I bought and I knocked them in so I had like a six bedroom house and some land out the back.
00:54:37.976 --> 00:54:40.619
And that was my retirement fund, basically.
00:54:40.639 --> 00:54:55.277
I planned to retire at 55 and either sell up and move to the south of France, where property was really cheap, or basically rent them out as flats.
00:54:55.356 --> 00:55:00.784
Because where we lived, it had great access to M62, M1.
00:55:01.123 --> 00:55:02.945
So it was a lovely area.
00:55:02.965 --> 00:55:03.746
It was all tufts.
00:55:04.708 --> 00:55:05.630
And so...
00:55:06.050 --> 00:55:08.894
We were going to maybe use it as student accommodation.
00:55:08.954 --> 00:55:10.496
That was my retirement plan.
00:55:11.478 --> 00:55:13.382
And we lost everything, basically.
00:55:13.521 --> 00:55:14.925
There was a financial crash in 2008.
00:55:14.985 --> 00:55:16.327
That didn't help.
00:55:16.347 --> 00:55:22.476
I had two credit cards at that time, and they had 25 grand on each.
00:55:23.498 --> 00:55:32.414
And basically, Nancy kept spending like I was still on, you know, 50 grand a year or whatever it was.
00:55:32.610 --> 00:55:36.574
And obviously there wasn't the money coming in, so she was using these cards.
00:55:36.974 --> 00:55:53.114
And basically, long story short, within about 18 months, no, two years, I'd say probably, we'd lost the houses and we were living in private rented accommodation.
00:55:53.635 --> 00:55:56.818
So that's how quick you can go on a downward slope, really.
00:55:56.858 --> 00:55:59.842
And so...
00:56:00.577 --> 00:56:03.065
That was all that wiped out.
00:56:03.246 --> 00:56:06.695
Were you serving as the bishop at the time, or was this after the bishop calling?
00:56:07.016 --> 00:56:08.280
No, mate, this was after.
00:56:08.300 --> 00:56:11.108
When I preached group leader, I think when all this started to kick off.
00:56:11.148 --> 00:56:11.891
Right, okay.
00:56:13.074 --> 00:56:13.375
But...
00:56:15.873 --> 00:56:17.536
But as I said, I didn't go out to church.
00:56:17.715 --> 00:56:20.278
I couldn't physically manage to go out to church.
00:56:20.398 --> 00:56:26.025
I had this postural hypertension, which in fact, I mean, I've still got it.
00:56:26.445 --> 00:56:40.101
But when you move posture, so say you go from prone to sitting or from sitting to standing, it's like your blood pressure plummets to dangerous levels and basically you fall over.
00:56:40.994 --> 00:56:46.260
And so I couldn't physically get out to church.
00:56:47.422 --> 00:56:51.646
But as I said then, it became where I didn't really want to.
00:56:51.666 --> 00:56:59.356
And at about that point then, I think ironically, Nancy got in touch with Anita.
00:57:01.297 --> 00:57:03.721
I forget how it would be, but it was on Facebook.
00:57:04.601 --> 00:57:07.605
And one of them had sent a friend request or something like this.
00:57:07.664 --> 00:57:08.005
Anyway.
00:57:08.577 --> 00:57:13.164
So I started talking to Anita and she was like my voice of sanity.
00:57:14.186 --> 00:57:19.655
And Anita hadn't, after I'd baptised her, she hadn't remained active really for long.
00:57:19.695 --> 00:57:22.179
She said since, you know, I joined the church because of you, basically.
00:57:24.222 --> 00:57:28.289
But we'd remained sort of intermittently in contact over the years.
00:57:28.509 --> 00:57:32.094
But she was still, you know, my favourite person.
00:57:32.394 --> 00:57:35.579
And talking to her was just like a breath of fresh air.
00:57:35.621 --> 00:57:36.302
I didn't have to...
00:57:36.865 --> 00:57:39.188
You know, I feel guilty about religion.
00:57:39.208 --> 00:57:43.213
I didn't have to validate anything, really.
00:57:43.233 --> 00:57:44.135
She just let me talk.
00:57:45.275 --> 00:57:48.139
And, you know, I mean, you know what's going to come next.
00:57:48.239 --> 00:57:50.922
I thought to myself, you know, I've always been attracted to her.
00:57:51.804 --> 00:57:53.266
I'm not in love with Nancy.
00:57:54.206 --> 00:58:03.878
And so, basically, I left home and moved in with Anita.
00:58:04.119 --> 00:58:05.782
And that straightaway then...
00:58:06.242 --> 00:58:15.152
In 20 moments, I realized it invalidates me now from everything because I'm just doing this because I'm an excommunicant and I wanted to leave the church to sin.
00:58:16.333 --> 00:58:18.956
That wasn't exactly, that wouldn't be accurate.
00:58:19.356 --> 00:58:20.498
Anyway, I moved in with Anita.
00:58:20.518 --> 00:58:21.760
I got excommunicated.
00:58:21.800 --> 00:58:24.342
Obviously, that was going to happen.
00:58:26.545 --> 00:58:33.134
But then, so I'd moved here in 2011 and Anita was still on the church records.
00:58:34.530 --> 00:58:42.081
So there was an older missionary couple in the ward that served this area.
00:58:42.121 --> 00:58:47.210
And they'd just come round, you know, they've got an inactives list, basically, and Anita was there.
00:58:47.331 --> 00:58:51.036
And, you know, she let them in because she's a kind and lovely person.
00:58:51.117 --> 00:58:52.119
And they were lovely people.
00:58:52.719 --> 00:59:01.074
And they used to come round and, you know, socialise with us and have meals and we'd go to theirs.
00:59:01.634 --> 00:59:05.619
Well, you know, it's the church reactivation program.
00:59:06.159 --> 00:59:10.385
And I wasn't quite ready to go back.
00:59:10.887 --> 00:59:12.528
But we started going out to church again.
00:59:15.193 --> 00:59:23.063
So when we went back out to church, there were quite a lot.
00:59:23.344 --> 00:59:29.452
I mean, obviously, I didn't participate much, if at all, because of my membership status.
00:59:29.512 --> 00:59:30.634
I was excommunicated.
00:59:31.393 --> 00:59:33.938
And, you know, Anita did.
00:59:33.978 --> 00:59:35.621
And then we invited the...
00:59:36.322 --> 00:59:38.164
We went out a few times.
00:59:38.945 --> 00:59:45.175
And then we invited, you know, the young missionaries that were also serving in the ward, the elders.
00:59:45.677 --> 00:59:47.018
We invited them over for a meal.
00:59:48.302 --> 00:59:51.005
Because I've always had this philosophy that, you know...
00:59:51.458 --> 00:59:57.083
I'd hoped when my lads were on missions that people would invite them around for meals and feed them.
00:59:57.164 --> 01:00:01.469
And so we'd always, I'd done it with Nancy.
01:00:01.528 --> 01:00:04.311
And so we had the, anyway, with these young lads coming around.
01:00:04.331 --> 01:00:08.016
And they were scheduled to come around this Friday evening.
01:00:08.056 --> 01:00:12.981
And they were due at 6.30.
01:00:13.541 --> 01:00:20.389
And I remember thinking to myself, you know, I'm getting re-involved with the church here.
01:00:21.153 --> 01:00:30.405
And if I'm going to have any, you know, I'm involving Anita, if I'm going to have any, and there are things that I need to clear up.
01:00:31.246 --> 01:00:35.210
Now, we've always got things, Ian, and I'm sure this is true of us all.
01:00:35.550 --> 01:00:38.815
Some people call it their shelf.
01:00:39.356 --> 01:00:41.057
I used to call it like my Mormon box.
01:00:41.657 --> 01:00:47.985
And things will come up doctrinally or church history-wise, and you...
01:00:48.610 --> 01:00:52.634
you'll think, well, you know, that sounds a bit, you know, it doesn't sound quite right.
01:00:52.673 --> 01:00:55.737
But then you put them, well, you know, I know the church is true.
01:00:55.797 --> 01:00:56.978
I know the Book of Mormon is true.
01:00:56.998 --> 01:01:00.081
I know, you know, and you go through this self-hypnosis process.
01:01:01.563 --> 01:01:07.969
And I, but I said, I'm going to investigate the church.
01:01:07.989 --> 01:01:11.492
There were two major issues at the time for me.
01:01:11.552 --> 01:01:28.626
There were a load, excuse me, there were a load, but I mean, obviously, you know, the things that are put in the past, polygamy, black people and the priesthood, 116 missing pages, that sort of thing.
01:01:28.965 --> 01:01:32.692
But this was two quite specific things that told me recently.
01:01:33.193 --> 01:01:36.958
One was the Mike Wallace interview with Gordon B.
01:01:36.998 --> 01:01:37.398
Hinckley.
01:01:37.498 --> 01:01:38.840
Is that the 60-minute interview?
01:01:39.963 --> 01:01:40.222
Yes.
01:01:40.463 --> 01:01:40.684
Right.
01:01:40.764 --> 01:01:41.704
I remember watching that.
01:01:42.065 --> 01:01:43.086
Jim, you've seen that, haven't you?
01:01:44.309 --> 01:01:45.070
I have, yes.
01:01:46.092 --> 01:01:47.534
And the other was DNA.
01:01:48.481 --> 01:01:53.586
So, and this Michael Wallace interview, I'll just remind you.
01:01:55.128 --> 01:02:05.159
One of the things that Godme Inkley was asked was this little quote thing that we'd had in church.
01:02:05.239 --> 01:02:14.047
This is when I was active in church, where it says, as man is, God once was, as God is, man can become, yeah?
01:02:15.550 --> 01:02:19.425
And President Hinckley just sort of went really dismissive about this.
01:02:19.485 --> 01:02:21.987
And he said, you know, do we really teach that?
01:02:22.007 --> 01:02:23.670
It's just, you know, just a little ditty.
01:02:23.730 --> 01:02:25.873
I remember thinking, I hope we teach it.
01:02:25.893 --> 01:02:28.496
Because A, it's a basic tenet of Mormonism.
01:02:28.695 --> 01:02:30.597
And B, I just taught it last Sunday.
01:02:31.278 --> 01:02:34.061
So, you know, that flummoxed me.
01:02:35.342 --> 01:02:35.463
He
01:02:35.623 --> 01:02:40.449
actually said, sorry, he said, I don't know if we still teach that or teach that.
01:02:40.568 --> 01:02:41.369
That's exactly right.
01:02:41.389 --> 01:02:41.949
Is that right, Jim?
01:02:41.989 --> 01:02:42.670
That's exactly right.
01:02:43.251 --> 01:02:43.431
Yeah.
01:02:44.193 --> 01:02:44.353
Yeah.
01:02:44.373 --> 01:02:44.632
Yeah.
01:02:45.826 --> 01:02:53.173
So, I mean, to me, that's a fundamental tenet of Mormonism is that, you know, we can become like unto God.
01:02:53.655 --> 01:02:56.998
So there was that one that I thought, I'm going to look at this.
01:02:57.358 --> 01:03:23.271
And then there was the whole DNA thing with Native American, I mean, Indians who were designated as being the principal ancestors of, The Lame Knights were the principal ancestors of the people on the American continent and this Gordon B.
01:03:23.550 --> 01:03:23.811
Hinckley.
01:03:23.831 --> 01:03:28.519
And I thought, I'm just going to research that and say, I'm not going to look at it through faith.
01:03:28.559 --> 01:03:32.668
I'm not going to think, you know, well, I'm going to put my faith head on and be fobbed off.
01:03:32.728 --> 01:03:35.934
I thought, I'm going to look at this like an academic.
01:03:36.865 --> 01:03:39.969
Like the academic I am, I'm looking at this in that way.
01:03:39.989 --> 01:03:45.815
And it took me, I swear on anything that I hold sacred, seven minutes.
01:03:47.577 --> 01:03:52.242
Seven minutes of, and I use all church sources.
01:03:53.143 --> 01:03:56.849
And I turn that to Anita and I says, I've just lived a lie for 30 years.
01:03:58.650 --> 01:04:01.393
And then obviously I went on and looked further and further into it.
01:04:01.414 --> 01:04:04.958
And there were just some things that I hadn't allowed myself to think about.
01:04:05.538 --> 01:04:07.219
There were just so many things.
01:04:08.059 --> 01:04:14.286
And it was all from the church's own history, really.
01:04:15.407 --> 01:04:18.891
And I thought there's an absolutely...
01:04:18.931 --> 01:04:22.514
I've been deluding myself for 30 years.
01:04:23.114 --> 01:04:31.702
And I went through a period of, I mean, absolute just anger.
01:04:32.324 --> 01:04:34.565
I was so annoyed that I'd given up...
01:04:34.978 --> 01:04:36.440
Such a large part of my life.
01:04:36.500 --> 01:04:40.465
As a young man, I'd given up on my athletic dreams.
01:04:41.047 --> 01:04:52.182
As an older man, I'd sacrificed my first degree, really, which I could have got a lot better classification for.
01:04:53.565 --> 01:04:59.032
I'd have been revising and not serving in all these key positions and teaching seminary and institute.
01:04:59.413 --> 01:05:02.438
All those things that came to me that I'd sacrificed.
01:05:02.914 --> 01:05:05.117
And I thought, you know, you've conned me.
01:05:05.737 --> 01:05:15.172
Because if the church had actually presented it to me in the way that reality pans out and in the way that they acknowledge it these days, I wouldn't have joined.
01:05:15.193 --> 01:05:17.115
I wouldn't have joined the church.
01:05:17.715 --> 01:05:22.447
Somebody would have said to me, if they're missionaries, they'd have said the first time they taught me, about First Vision.
01:05:22.487 --> 01:05:25.773
Now, actually, Lance, you know, this is a First Vision.
01:05:26.715 --> 01:05:27.536
There were five of them.
01:05:28.418 --> 01:05:30.621
And he gave different accounts in each.
01:05:31.422 --> 01:05:32.784
But this is the one we've landed on.
01:05:34.487 --> 01:05:35.590
I just thought, what?
01:05:37.512 --> 01:05:43.402
And also, I've become quite interested in what I call church art.
01:05:44.244 --> 01:05:58.869
And, you know, as a mission, we used to teach you the flip chart and all that and these pictures, these iconic Mormon pictures, if you like, like the one of the first vision, you know, the two separate and distinct individuals, Joseph on his knees in the sacred grove.
01:06:00.431 --> 01:06:10.344
And also like the translations, you know, Joseph sat in, you'll know these pictures, Joseph sat in front of a, you know, goat plates and he's writing stuff down.
01:06:10.364 --> 01:06:11.405
We know these pictures, yeah.
01:06:12.867 --> 01:06:16.735
And it just, all by the church's own admission.
01:06:16.896 --> 01:06:18.237
It just didn't happen like that.
01:06:18.478 --> 01:06:26.586
And if it had been put to me, as I said, when the missionaries first came round, I thought, I don't believe it, but I owe it to myself to find out if it's true.
01:06:27.007 --> 01:06:31.170
And if they'd have presented it to me in the honest way, I wouldn't have joined.
01:06:31.911 --> 01:06:34.175
I'd have thought, well, you know, it's a nonsense.
01:06:35.335 --> 01:06:36.657
So that was the...
01:06:39.119 --> 01:06:39.579
Yeah, that was...
01:06:39.599 --> 01:06:41.081
I was just fuming.
01:06:41.378 --> 01:06:42.619
And I don't know if you remember it.
01:06:42.699 --> 01:06:44.661
I remember you getting in touch with me and rebuking me.
01:06:48.047 --> 01:06:51.110
So what happened is that I was talking back and forth with Nancy.
01:06:51.251 --> 01:06:52.452
I don't know how the conversation started.
01:06:52.932 --> 01:06:55.936
Nancy had mentioned that you'd left the church.
01:06:55.976 --> 01:06:56.958
I don't remember the details.
01:06:56.978 --> 01:06:57.679
Going back a few years.
01:06:58.581 --> 01:07:02.085
And Jim, back then, Jim, I was very active.
01:07:02.105 --> 01:07:05.088
I think it was on the state presidency here in Canada.
01:07:05.208 --> 01:07:11.780
And felt worried about my friend, Lance, concerned for him, you know, his welfare, spiritual welfare.
01:07:12.882 --> 01:07:15.306
Nancy and I were backing forward.
01:07:15.326 --> 01:07:20.215
I said, look, I'll reach out to him and chat with him and try to figure out, you know, what's happening.
01:07:20.235 --> 01:07:26.025
Because Lance, you were always this, and still are, of course, you were just this amazing rock in the church.
01:07:26.166 --> 01:07:27.266
And now you weren't in the church.
01:07:27.327 --> 01:07:28.449
And I couldn't understand why.
01:07:28.469 --> 01:07:32.876
And that was completely, you know, like you were completely immersed.
01:07:32.896 --> 01:07:33.338
Sure, yeah, yeah.
01:07:33.518 --> 01:07:42.014
And so, Jim, I attempted to try to engage Lance on some stuff, and I apologize for rebuking you.
01:07:42.074 --> 01:07:42.735
Did I rebuke you?
01:07:42.775 --> 01:07:43.677
I'm so sorry about that.
01:07:44.297 --> 01:07:47.623
Well, no, you didn't do anything.
01:07:47.664 --> 01:07:52.713
You didn't say anything to me that I wouldn't have said to somebody in my position before I left the church.
01:07:52.954 --> 01:07:53.054
Right.
01:07:53.186 --> 01:07:55.309
So I fully knew where you were coming from.
01:07:55.349 --> 01:08:01.317
And, you know, however much you think you felt about me, I felt the same about you.
01:08:01.436 --> 01:08:02.177
We reciprocated.
01:08:02.197 --> 01:08:05.643
I always thought you were a fine young man who grew into a fine man.
01:08:05.663 --> 01:08:08.387
And I knew how dedicated you are.
01:08:08.427 --> 01:08:13.853
You served in Scotland and you obviously had a great love for the people that you taught and things like that.
01:08:13.893 --> 01:08:16.238
So, you know, you're a very admirable man.
01:08:16.717 --> 01:08:19.421
And so I didn't take it.
01:08:19.649 --> 01:08:20.751
I didn't do it badly.
01:08:21.171 --> 01:08:27.659
It wasn't anything I didn't really expect, if I'm honest, Ian, from you.
01:08:28.740 --> 01:08:33.807
But, you know, I remember when I...
01:08:34.988 --> 01:08:37.511
I'd been here about six months.
01:08:39.835 --> 01:08:48.166
And Anita said to me, do you realise, Lance, that in six months...
01:08:49.217 --> 01:08:57.646
These people who you thought were your friend over 30 years, only one of them has bothered to be in touch with you.
01:08:57.926 --> 01:08:59.069
And that was John Barnsley.
01:09:00.310 --> 01:09:01.490
And I thought about that.
01:09:01.551 --> 01:09:05.775
And I thought, well, I think my initial reaction was, I wasn't surprised.
01:09:05.815 --> 01:09:08.559
I thought, well, yeah, you know, that's a church thing, really.
01:09:08.639 --> 01:09:09.479
You know what I mean?
01:09:10.121 --> 01:09:13.144
Somebody goes off and, you know, you don't want polluting by their...
01:09:15.329 --> 01:09:17.632
apostate teachings and stuff.
01:09:17.653 --> 01:09:19.854
So I wasn't sure I wasn't even hurt.
01:09:21.115 --> 01:09:23.019
But she, you know, she pointed that out.
01:09:23.139 --> 01:09:29.326
And I remember thinking, because I was starting to think, you know, outside of the Mormon bubble at that point, I'm thinking, well, yeah, that ain't normal.
01:09:29.765 --> 01:09:32.729
That isn't a normal thing that you do to your mate.
01:09:32.789 --> 01:09:36.012
You know, you get in touch, you know, and say, you know, so I'm here for you.
01:09:36.613 --> 01:09:38.136
If nothing else, I'm here for you, you know.
01:09:38.195 --> 01:09:40.318
But nobody asked.
01:09:40.641 --> 01:09:47.148
And I'm back in touch with a lot now of people, a lot of people who have left the church, by the way.
01:09:48.770 --> 01:09:55.657
But, yeah, it's a similar reality for everybody, I think, who goes down the route that I do.
01:09:56.277 --> 01:09:56.858
Jim,
01:09:56.898 --> 01:10:03.845
when you hear this story, you know, you and I have had many, many conversations with wonderful guests on our podcast.
01:10:04.324 --> 01:10:08.288
When you hear Lance's experience, what are your thoughts and feelings in terms of...
01:10:09.377 --> 01:10:13.384
you know, the whole thing, how it rolled out and not Lance's experience.
01:10:14.926 --> 01:10:20.373
Well, the first thing that just comes to mind is Lance, you said it only took seven minutes.
01:10:21.615 --> 01:10:25.641
I'm very curious as to what it was that you were reading in those seven minutes.
01:10:25.823 --> 01:10:25.903
Okay.
01:10:26.162 --> 01:10:26.382
Right.
01:10:27.345 --> 01:10:29.423
Well, what, what, Was it the first vision?
01:10:29.463 --> 01:10:31.328
Well, I typed in.
01:10:31.507 --> 01:10:32.590
Not then.
01:10:32.689 --> 01:10:33.832
It subsequently became one.
01:10:34.132 --> 01:10:44.733
But as I said, the two things that I looked at were probably of the more recent things in my life that had caused me to sort of think, hang on, that doesn't seem right.
01:10:45.134 --> 01:10:47.118
And that was the Mike Wallace interview.
01:10:47.426 --> 01:10:48.527
with Gordon B.
01:10:48.546 --> 01:10:48.948
Hinckley.
01:10:49.228 --> 01:10:50.750
And I thought, and I refreshed my memory.
01:10:51.411 --> 01:10:52.431
We did teach that.
01:10:52.792 --> 01:10:58.238
And as far as I'm aware, right up to the moment that I stopped going out to church, I taught that.
01:10:58.259 --> 01:11:01.382
That was a basic fundamental tenet of Mormonism.
01:11:01.662 --> 01:11:06.929
So I looked that up and sort of reaffirmed to myself that I hadn't sort of dreamt it.
01:11:07.609 --> 01:11:25.596
And then the whole North American Indians DNA thing stuff where the wording to the Book of Mormon, which was initially are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.
01:11:26.016 --> 01:11:30.583
And that had been changed to were among the principal ancestors.
01:11:30.604 --> 01:11:33.507
And I thought it just doesn't bear any scrutiny.
01:11:33.648 --> 01:11:40.377
And as a sort of sidebar, another thing that had come up on it was this bit about apostles.
01:11:41.658 --> 01:11:43.322
And apostles...
01:11:43.905 --> 01:11:52.756
Now, when I was in the church, there were special witnesses of Jesus Christ.
01:11:53.157 --> 01:11:55.259
Yeah, that's what an apostle was.
01:11:55.519 --> 01:12:06.271
Now, whether or not, they didn't ever make it explicit, but you and I and everybody else knows, we were implicitly taught that that special witness was they'd seen him.
01:12:07.012 --> 01:12:08.253
They'd seen the Saviour.
01:12:08.293 --> 01:12:09.716
That's what a special witness was.
01:12:10.256 --> 01:12:11.597
They'd seen the Saviour.
01:12:12.289 --> 01:12:21.519
And now they were not special witnesses of Christ, of Jesus Christ, but they were now special witnesses of the name of Christ.
01:12:22.078 --> 01:12:23.260
Well, weren't we all?
01:12:23.279 --> 01:12:25.703
We were all witnesses of the name of Christ.
01:12:25.722 --> 01:12:32.529
Anybody who professes to be a Christian is a special witness of the name of Christ.
01:12:32.548 --> 01:12:34.970
That didn't make them too important.
01:12:35.511 --> 01:12:38.293
It's this idea that we were sold, and we were sold.
01:12:38.314 --> 01:12:44.332
It didn't matter how anybody says, we were sold this idea, those apostles, They knew because they'd seen him.
01:12:44.393 --> 01:12:52.882
I mean, I don't know if you agree with that, Jim, but it was never stated, but it was definitely implied.
01:12:53.684 --> 01:12:57.287
And that's what we grew up with.
01:12:57.408 --> 01:12:58.449
Was that your experience, Ian?
01:12:58.470 --> 01:12:59.230
Is that what you thought?
01:12:59.912 --> 01:13:00.171
Yes.
01:13:00.712 --> 01:13:01.472
That they'd seen him?
01:13:01.493 --> 01:13:02.395
Yes.
01:13:02.414 --> 01:13:03.034
It is mine.
01:13:03.515 --> 01:13:03.615
What
01:13:03.655 --> 01:13:04.176
about yours, Jim?
01:13:04.216 --> 01:13:05.097
What's your thought on that?
01:13:06.800 --> 01:13:08.622
No, that was my experience as well.
01:13:08.862 --> 01:13:20.128
I remember sitting in a general priesthood session My father was a United States senator at the time, so he got tickets, and he would bring family members to come with him.
01:13:20.149 --> 01:13:21.371
He would get extra tickets.
01:13:21.612 --> 01:13:27.359
And we were sitting, and it was my father and my nephew and me.
01:13:27.399 --> 01:13:34.971
And my nephew said, I wonder how many times they've each seen Jesus Christ.
01:13:35.131 --> 01:13:35.412
Right.
01:13:36.333 --> 01:13:40.760
And my father said, once in a lifetime if they're lucky.
01:13:41.601 --> 01:13:41.822
Right.
01:13:42.274 --> 01:13:46.801
And I remember looking at my father and just thinking, really?
01:13:46.822 --> 01:13:46.902
Yeah.
01:13:49.126 --> 01:13:49.686
Talking to him.
01:13:50.268 --> 01:13:51.890
And my nephew just couldn't accept it.
01:13:51.911 --> 01:13:52.971
He said, oh, no, no, no, no.
01:13:53.092 --> 01:13:54.073
It's much more than that.
01:13:54.996 --> 01:13:55.095
Right.
01:13:55.115 --> 01:14:01.967
And so I've had long conversations with people about this particular issue.
01:14:02.007 --> 01:14:05.394
And I think you're absolutely right.
01:14:05.434 --> 01:14:21.484
The implication is very strong that Yet when you talk to them one-on-one, when you actually start talking to general authorities and leaders, they will admit that they encounter God in the same way that we do.
01:14:21.685 --> 01:14:21.944
Yes,
01:14:22.065 --> 01:14:22.826
Jim, you're right,
01:14:23.707 --> 01:14:24.849
yeah.
01:14:24.889 --> 01:14:26.010
They're very open about that.
01:14:26.029 --> 01:14:28.131
I mean, I've had that conversation with...
01:14:28.672 --> 01:14:36.362
Well, Jim, they're open now because they've had the feet held to the fire, but they weren't open then.
01:14:37.057 --> 01:14:43.024
No, what I'm saying is they are open when you talk to them one-on-one as people.
01:14:43.524 --> 01:14:47.168
They are not open when they speak in conference.
01:14:47.229 --> 01:14:58.282
The implication is still, the one that I just, that keeps coming up, when I wrote my reply to the CES letter, it was right after Quentin L.
01:14:58.362 --> 01:15:04.708
Cook, an apostle, had gotten up and said, I know his voice, I know his face.
01:15:05.369 --> 01:15:05.470
Right.
01:15:06.177 --> 01:15:12.828
And the implication was absolutely, well, you know his voice and you know his face because you've heard him and you've seen him.
01:15:12.929 --> 01:15:13.149
Yes.
01:15:15.113 --> 01:15:20.520
But he won't say that because it probably isn't true.
01:15:20.541 --> 01:15:30.717
I mean, there are apostles that have talked about having those kinds of unique experiences, but they are rare experiences.
01:15:31.202 --> 01:15:40.194
And they are, I mean, I haven't heard sort of an explicit, I saw the Savior statement.
01:15:40.734 --> 01:15:41.155
No, no.
01:15:42.297 --> 01:15:43.279
In my entire life.
01:15:43.880 --> 01:15:45.542
I've heard plenty of implications.
01:15:46.764 --> 01:15:52.692
But I have never heard an apostle stand up and say, I saw Jesus Christ.
01:15:52.851 --> 01:15:53.092
No.
01:15:54.073 --> 01:15:56.136
The closest I can remember is David B.
01:15:56.157 --> 01:15:56.797
Haight.
01:15:57.442 --> 01:16:07.051
gave a talk near the end of his life where he admitted in his talk that he had never seen Jesus and that he had this sort of vision where he saw Jesus.
01:16:08.333 --> 01:16:14.720
And I remember thinking when I heard that, going, oh, well, I had assumed that you had seen Jesus prior to that.
01:16:15.421 --> 01:16:23.630
So I absolutely, I don't think that your reaction is in any way surprising.
01:16:23.649 --> 01:16:28.439
And it's also, I think all all too common.
01:16:28.899 --> 01:16:36.827
I think there are a lot of members who have this sort of deified version of what they think the apostles are and what they experience.
01:16:37.807 --> 01:16:46.595
And their faith comes crashing down when they realize that these apostles are men and that they encounter God the same way we do.
01:16:48.177 --> 01:16:51.560
I've sort of reconciled that in my own personal faith.
01:16:51.661 --> 01:17:12.809
So when you say these kind of things to me, I don't go, oh gosh, I mean, it comes down, I think, to some degree to expectation, to the idea of, I don't expect the prophet or the apostles to be demigods.
01:17:14.371 --> 01:17:18.895
And I don't expect them to have encountered God in a way different from me.
01:17:18.954 --> 01:17:24.020
So it doesn't really shake my faith when I recognize that.
01:17:24.199 --> 01:17:25.801
But I absolutely...
01:17:26.753 --> 01:17:34.162
can see how it shakes the faith of many who, you are absolutely right, have that implication given to them.
01:17:35.064 --> 01:17:40.310
And even if the apostles themselves aren't explicit, I've taught seminary.
01:17:40.329 --> 01:17:41.832
I taught seminary for three years.
01:17:44.034 --> 01:17:57.846
Lower down in the church, if you're in a seminary class, I can promise you all of my children in seminary class have had seminary teachers And church leaders tell them, yes, of course, the apostles see Jesus.
01:17:58.127 --> 01:17:59.268
Yes, of course.
01:18:00.149 --> 01:18:15.646
After every general conference, I remember hearing a seminary teacher talk about how every general conference, the president of the church heads off to the Holy of Holies because he has an interview with the Savior where he reports on how successful conference was.
01:18:17.649 --> 01:18:20.171
And I just don't believe that anymore.
01:18:20.572 --> 01:18:21.873
And I don't think...
01:18:22.850 --> 01:18:32.024
You have to believe that, but I absolutely see where that teaching and that implication is still very prevalent
01:18:32.604 --> 01:18:33.286
in the church today.
01:18:33.345 --> 01:18:48.310
Would you agree, Jim, that I think that one of the problems, I think, for the church is that most members, the vast majority of members, don't know what the revelationary process is.
01:18:49.377 --> 01:18:49.859
Because,
01:18:50.298 --> 01:19:06.063
again, when you've had these, you know, you come across these things throughout church history where the president of the church, the prophet, he's changed direction or he's introduced something else or something's come up.
01:19:06.682 --> 01:19:15.296
Now, my idea, and I don't know how you two guys were, I thought that when you were the prophet, you received revelation thus.
01:19:16.077 --> 01:19:20.135
The Lord would tell you directly, what he wants.
01:19:20.855 --> 01:19:23.140
Now that's how I saw the revelation he proposed.
01:19:24.261 --> 01:19:26.484
I mean, he would show up and he would speak to you.
01:19:26.746 --> 01:19:26.926
Yeah.
01:19:27.226 --> 01:19:27.386
Yeah.
01:19:27.447 --> 01:19:27.747
That's it.
01:19:28.287 --> 01:19:31.833
So, and, and, and the reality is that that's not how it works.
01:19:32.815 --> 01:19:37.743
Um, that, you know, it's basically, it's almost like a committee it's discussed.
01:19:37.764 --> 01:19:44.975
And then, you know, we, we, the, the decide how to go for, because I could never understand, for example, let's take blacks and the priesthood.
01:19:46.237 --> 01:19:53.907
Um, I could never understand how that worked, where suddenly black people are now able to receive the priesthood.
01:19:55.047 --> 01:20:04.078
And I remember thinking to myself at the time, why hadn't God told a prophet before?
01:20:04.118 --> 01:20:10.527
How come this has just come for this guy?
01:20:11.929 --> 01:20:25.500
But there are lots of sort of instances like that where polygamy, I mean, polygamy is another obvious biggie, where, you know, either polygamy was right or it was wrong.
01:20:26.641 --> 01:20:33.048
And so the fact that, you know, man didn't recognize it shouldn't have made any difference.
01:20:34.310 --> 01:20:49.725
And so I think that when you start to get into these areas, you assume, or at least I assumed as a member, that God was appearing to these guys and telling them, this is what I want.
01:20:49.744 --> 01:20:50.765
Thus saith me.
01:20:50.805 --> 01:20:53.970
This is what I want to happen now.
01:20:54.210 --> 01:20:57.514
And obviously that isn't the way that is.
01:20:58.055 --> 01:21:01.800
I read a bit more in depth on that particular revelation.
01:21:01.819 --> 01:21:06.505
And the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were quite split.
01:21:07.166 --> 01:21:11.912
Some of them thought that it should remain as it were.
01:21:11.952 --> 01:21:51.483
Some of them, principally President Kimball, thought that it should change and they had to wait while all the apostles came back they reconvened and some of them you know sort of spoke out against it and president kimball had the final word and said no this is what's happening and i think that because and when you understand now once you've got that information you can think well i can all right i can see that that that where that might be a justification because if god was actually speaking to these guys then I'm going to have to believe that, you know, he keeps changing his mind.
01:21:51.523 --> 01:21:54.948
And he doesn't, you know, he doesn't actually...
01:21:54.967 --> 01:22:02.878
A recent one is the Mormon thing.
01:22:02.939 --> 01:22:04.039
The whole, you know, we don't...
01:22:05.282 --> 01:22:06.944
I'm a Mormon.
01:22:06.984 --> 01:22:10.488
So you've got a prophet in Thomas S.
01:22:10.509 --> 01:22:10.989
Monson.
01:22:11.690 --> 01:22:13.011
And from 2010 to 2018...
01:22:14.721 --> 01:22:18.646
I mean, he ran, it was a program, you know, I'm a Mormon.
01:22:19.548 --> 01:22:25.697
And don't know how many millions were spent on advertising, promoting and things like this, putting media out and things.
01:22:26.679 --> 01:22:29.603
And then the next guy comes in and he says, actually, we're going to scrap that.
01:22:30.984 --> 01:22:33.507
And now you don't refer to yourself as Mormons.
01:22:34.029 --> 01:22:37.372
You refer to yourself as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
01:22:37.854 --> 01:22:50.471
And I suppose if I would go back to my original, you know, personal revelation from God, I'm just amazed that God didn't sort of tap one of them on the shoulder and say, you know, actually, this is it.
01:22:51.012 --> 01:22:55.760
Not change direction totally halfway through or however many years through.
01:22:56.581 --> 01:23:07.677
So I think once you get an insight into how the church says it does receive revelation, then that...
01:23:08.225 --> 01:23:11.771
I suppose then opens up an avenue for an apologist.
01:23:12.573 --> 01:23:25.456
Because if God was talking to these people as a man speaketh to another man, then he's choosing to leave a lot of stuff out when he's talking to some prophets.
01:23:27.940 --> 01:23:30.845
Lance, we're coming to the end of our podcast today.
01:23:31.394 --> 01:23:35.358
Again, I just can't thank you enough for taking the time to meet with us.
01:23:35.938 --> 01:23:41.583
I've got a couple of questions and probably Jim may have a final question as well or a final thought.
01:23:45.567 --> 01:23:47.269
This might be, it's an interesting question, I think.
01:23:47.909 --> 01:24:11.466
With your dedication, devotion that you describe in your life, you know, from joining the church, serving a mission, just almost immediately after being in the church for a year and leadership, commitment and devotion, and you're bearing of your testimony, and you made reference at the beginning about the Holy Ghost, what do you attribute that spiritual experience to be?
01:24:11.506 --> 01:24:24.585
The church is, you've lived a lie, you've been deceived, yet you bore testimony of the church from spiritual experience that you had.
01:24:24.965 --> 01:24:32.778
So how do you attribute that experience, or what do you attribute it to, And the other question I have is, where are you now with your faith?
01:24:33.377 --> 01:24:35.479
So there's two questions there.
01:24:38.023 --> 01:24:38.243
Right.
01:24:38.262 --> 01:24:46.010
Well, I undoubtedly bore my testimony thousands and thousands of times because at that time I sincerely believed that it was true.
01:24:46.130 --> 01:24:57.020
At the end of that first session with the missionaries, they left me a copy of the Book of Mormon and they identified Moroni's promise.
01:24:59.073 --> 01:25:02.939
And I did exactly what they'd asked me to do.
01:25:03.180 --> 01:25:11.432
I went up to my room, I opened that up, I knelt down, prayed, and I felt like I'd received a revelation.
01:25:12.373 --> 01:25:19.945
I felt like, you know, this warm feeling that you get is...
01:25:20.466 --> 01:25:22.670
And I thought that was a revelation, that it was true.
01:25:22.729 --> 01:25:25.054
Now, so I didn't...
01:25:25.729 --> 01:25:34.545
I feel a bit of a fraud now sometimes when I talk to people who will ask that very question, you know, why, you know, what changed.
01:25:35.025 --> 01:25:41.296
I think what changed was I came to realise that there are lots of things that can give me that feeling, Ian.
01:25:41.997 --> 01:25:46.286
You know, I've had that feeling on stage when I've sang a wonderful aria and people stand up and clap.
01:25:46.913 --> 01:26:19.132
I had that feeling I suspect every Muslim you'll talk to will say the same thing a lot of Christians will say the same thing I felt that it was true but it's feelings I suppose well they were enough for me for a long time but the evidence just definitely outstrips all that Because there's so much evidence now.
01:26:21.456 --> 01:26:25.662
When you and I were younger in the church, Ian, there was a lot of...
01:26:28.326 --> 01:26:36.757
It seemed like some Christian denominations, Pentecostals particularly, they didn't have any other doctrine other than sort of anti-Mormon stuff.
01:26:37.578 --> 01:26:40.484
And some of it was patently ridiculous and made up.
01:26:40.984 --> 01:26:42.886
And so they had no real credibility.
01:26:42.987 --> 01:26:55.953
But I think it's only when you go back as a church member and look at church history.
01:26:57.774 --> 01:27:01.479
Their own history condemns them in a lot of ways.
01:27:02.921 --> 01:27:04.184
Do you remember Paul H.
01:27:04.224 --> 01:27:04.484
Dunne?
01:27:06.346 --> 01:27:07.028
Do you remember Paul H.
01:27:07.087 --> 01:27:07.268
Dunne?
01:27:07.368 --> 01:27:07.548
Of
01:27:08.229 --> 01:27:09.091
course, sure.
01:27:10.512 --> 01:27:11.634
I love Paul H.
01:27:11.673 --> 01:27:12.895
Dunne.
01:27:12.916 --> 01:27:14.078
First year I was in church.
01:27:14.721 --> 01:27:15.302
Paul H.
01:27:15.323 --> 01:27:18.527
Dunne, I had every one of his recordings and everything.
01:27:19.568 --> 01:27:24.234
And I love the things that he was saying.
01:27:24.573 --> 01:27:27.958
I do remember thinking, does this guy want a general authority?
01:27:27.998 --> 01:27:33.045
You know, I think that might be a bit far-fetched, actually, some of this stuff.
01:27:34.346 --> 01:27:35.087
But he is.
01:27:35.167 --> 01:27:41.439
I mean, I think the one thing that he said, I remember once when he said he'd gone to, on the beach.
01:27:41.979 --> 01:27:50.789
And he says, you know, you had to carry a weapon above the head, above your head, because if that weapon got wet, it'd backfire on you and kill you.
01:27:50.810 --> 01:27:52.110
And I thought, I've been a soldier.
01:27:52.131 --> 01:27:53.192
And I thought, no, it wouldn't.
01:27:54.573 --> 01:27:55.255
No, it wouldn't.
01:27:56.015 --> 01:28:03.024
Just as if that muzzle got wet, that wouldn't be enough to make it, you know, misfire and stuff.
01:28:03.083 --> 01:28:03.824
It wouldn't be enough.
01:28:04.805 --> 01:28:07.069
But He was saying it, so I took it in.
01:28:07.288 --> 01:28:09.813
But I did think a lot about Paul H.
01:28:09.832 --> 01:28:09.972
Dunne.
01:28:10.172 --> 01:28:10.713
And I met him.
01:28:10.913 --> 01:28:14.739
He came to our mission when I was serving.
01:28:14.760 --> 01:28:17.645
And I'll tell you my first reaction to Paul H.
01:28:17.664 --> 01:28:18.225
Dunne when I saw him.
01:28:18.286 --> 01:28:20.748
Whoa, didn't think you looked like that, mate.
01:28:21.270 --> 01:28:23.372
Because I like the church publicity photographs.
01:28:23.393 --> 01:28:26.057
He's like, I suppose he'd be in his 40s or something.
01:28:26.637 --> 01:28:29.662
And he was an old man.
01:28:30.024 --> 01:28:30.984
You know, he was a...
01:28:31.938 --> 01:28:33.338
you know, kind of bent over.
01:28:33.439 --> 01:28:37.063
And he looked to me anyway like an old man.
01:28:37.162 --> 01:28:39.045
I suppose I look like that now to young people.
01:28:39.104 --> 01:28:42.349
But he looked like an old man.
01:28:43.510 --> 01:28:47.474
But then all this came about, and none of it were true.
01:28:47.514 --> 01:28:50.077
None of his war stories were true.
01:28:50.697 --> 01:28:52.838
None of his baseball stories were true.
01:28:52.859 --> 01:28:53.399
Not one.
01:28:53.921 --> 01:28:55.842
And ironically, it was Boyd K.
01:28:55.863 --> 01:29:02.582
Packer, his nephew, who had done all this research.
01:29:04.845 --> 01:29:05.265
But K.
01:29:05.284 --> 01:29:06.546
Packer's another interesting one.
01:29:06.606 --> 01:29:07.568
I never liked that one.
01:29:08.189 --> 01:29:09.289
But Paul H.
01:29:09.369 --> 01:29:10.030
Dunne, I loved him.
01:29:10.091 --> 01:29:17.039
And when he fell from grace, it was kind of devastating in a lot of ways.
01:29:17.320 --> 01:29:27.453
And he once said, I can remember him bearing a testimony, and he said, you know, if ever you doubt young people, know this, there are some of us that know grace.
01:29:28.289 --> 01:29:29.511
And he left it at that.
01:29:29.591 --> 01:29:32.855
And again, immediately you think, wow, he's seen him.
01:29:33.296 --> 01:29:35.961
Polish, don't see him.
01:29:37.682 --> 01:29:39.204
What was the second part of your question?
01:29:39.244 --> 01:29:41.828
Where are you now with your faith?
01:29:42.248 --> 01:29:42.989
Where am I now?
01:29:44.613 --> 01:29:45.333
I'm an atheist.
01:29:47.275 --> 01:29:54.646
I remember after this experience where I decided the church wasn't true anymore.
01:29:55.368 --> 01:29:56.949
And I remember the...
01:29:57.474 --> 01:30:08.210
The church did have a good point in that, you know, really, I think there are only two Christian churches that can have even a remote claim on being the true church.
01:30:08.810 --> 01:30:15.039
One's the Roman Catholic Church who claim an apostolic succession from Peter to the present day.
01:30:15.980 --> 01:30:24.354
And the other is the Mormon Church who say there was a need for a restoration because the church had fell into apostasy.
01:30:24.854 --> 01:30:27.018
And so the church had to be restored.
01:30:27.457 --> 01:30:31.782
and everything that went along with it, the priesthood and stuff, it had to be restored.
01:30:32.603 --> 01:30:41.252
And so to me, there were only, and I remember thinking, well, if I don't believe Mormonism still, and I fell out with Catholicism a long time ago, where does that leave me?
01:30:41.712 --> 01:30:43.413
You know, because I still believed in God.
01:30:43.453 --> 01:30:49.159
But the more I sort of looked at it and things like that, and I can remember thinking one night, I don't know why it just came to me.
01:30:49.881 --> 01:30:55.025
And I remember thinking, you know, if there is a God, he's an insecure narcissist.
01:30:55.489 --> 01:30:59.434
in constant need of reassurance and approbation.
01:30:59.953 --> 01:31:02.136
I thought, you know, I'm better than that.
01:31:03.356 --> 01:31:11.945
And all this thing geared around, you know, revering God, praising God in all things, acknowledging God's hand in all things and all that.
01:31:13.087 --> 01:31:14.868
You know, I think, well, I'm a human being.
01:31:14.988 --> 01:31:15.668
I don't need that.
01:31:17.211 --> 01:31:22.655
So I just came to the conclusion that there wasn't a God.
01:31:22.895 --> 01:31:23.716
There isn't a God.
01:31:25.506 --> 01:31:41.766
And I'm happy for my mother, who I don't really know very well, but she's a Christian that I think I could like to be.
01:31:41.787 --> 01:31:50.217
In as much as she believes in God, she believes she's going to see her parents again, she believes she's going to see her brothers and that who've died.
01:31:50.721 --> 01:31:52.685
She's going to see her husband again.
01:31:52.725 --> 01:31:54.247
They're going to be reunited.
01:31:54.287 --> 01:31:57.993
And I'm sure my mother says her prayers on her night.
01:31:58.073 --> 01:31:58.533
I know she does.
01:31:58.554 --> 01:31:59.536
She says her prayers on her night.
01:31:59.555 --> 01:32:00.938
I'm sure she feels good about that.
01:32:01.359 --> 01:32:02.541
And she thinks that that's it.
01:32:03.060 --> 01:32:05.805
She's not affiliated to any church.
01:32:06.265 --> 01:32:15.100
She goes out, you know, typical weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and feels no need to affiliate herself religiously with any particular denomination.
01:32:15.661 --> 01:32:16.021
But...
01:32:16.481 --> 01:32:19.706
She believes in God and she thinks that, you know, there's an afterlife.
01:32:19.945 --> 01:32:23.010
And I think that's a cool way to believe in God in some respects.
01:32:23.610 --> 01:32:25.814
Mormonism is a very high demand religion.
01:32:26.375 --> 01:32:33.122
Some religions are more demanding than others, but Mormonism is way up there in the demands that it makes of its members.
01:32:34.043 --> 01:32:41.694
And I think that, you know, my mother has in many ways the best of all possible worlds because she believes in an afterlife.
01:32:42.114 --> 01:32:44.237
At least she's going to be reunited with her loved ones.
01:32:44.801 --> 01:32:47.445
and it doesn't cost you anything.
01:32:47.466 --> 01:32:47.565
Right.
01:32:49.309 --> 01:32:54.396
Jim, as we close here, Lance, Jim, any final thoughts or comments from you?
01:32:54.436 --> 01:33:23.123
Well, I'm trying to figure out how to frame this because, Lance, your story, you are clearly a man of integrity and of intellectual integrity and Your story breaks my heart to some degree because it's a story that I've heard many times from many people who...
01:33:24.166 --> 01:33:28.332
And I'm just trying to figure out...
01:33:28.811 --> 01:33:41.250
Because from my point of view, we've said many times on this podcast, or at least I've said many times on this podcast, and I've written a book that I don't know how to get published on this subject, but I believe...
01:33:42.305 --> 01:33:51.534
that the false doctrine of prophetic infallibility is at the root of so much disaffection.
01:33:52.416 --> 01:34:06.168
And it's, I think, the greatest problem in the church today and ever, really, because all of the things that you were taught are things that I was taught, things that Ian was taught.
01:34:07.270 --> 01:34:16.237
This whole idea that we expect our prophets to be essentially perfect, but not even perfect.
01:34:16.296 --> 01:34:26.493
It's not even about like they're, because whenever we start talking about it in that way, we start talking about prophetic weakness and people start saying, well, no, prophets aren't perfect.
01:34:26.552 --> 01:34:28.076
They can forget your birthday.
01:34:28.216 --> 01:34:32.021
They can do things that are wrong.
01:34:32.962 --> 01:34:41.855
But I'm talking about not necessarily even infallibility, but inerrancy, the idea that a prophet can never forget preach something that is wrong.
01:34:41.975 --> 01:34:43.136
The prophet can never...
01:34:43.176 --> 01:34:51.707
It flies in the face of our core doctrines, our core doctrines of agency.
01:34:52.528 --> 01:35:04.761
When you start to recognize there are parts of our theology that I think allow for prophetic error in a way that other Christian theologies do not.
01:35:05.042 --> 01:35:13.596
When we recognize that we came to this earth for the sole purpose of making mistakes and learning from them.
01:35:14.498 --> 01:35:22.090
And we recognize that on an individual level, but we somehow expect the institution to be different.
01:35:22.770 --> 01:35:32.645
That the institution is gonna be perfect and they're not gonna make mistakes and they're not gonna do anything wrong, but the individuals in that institution are all imperfect and they're gonna make mistakes.
01:35:33.067 --> 01:35:34.268
That just doesn't work.
01:35:35.090 --> 01:36:00.158
I just think the church would be so much healthier And we wouldn't lose the Lance Jacksons so easily in seven minutes, particularly, if we were to not just acknowledge the reality that the church is capable of error, but embrace that reality and say, this is what the church is supposed to be.
01:36:00.217 --> 01:36:06.886
We are supposed to learn together from our collective mistakes, as well as our individual mistakes.
01:36:07.297 --> 01:36:21.234
I just think that would allow for so much more so that when you encounter very real problems in church history and doctrine, you would be able to do so in a framework where, well, that's to be expected.
01:36:22.194 --> 01:36:26.239
Because at no point does Gordon B.
01:36:26.279 --> 01:36:34.930
Hinckley, when he's sitting in front of Mike Wallace, at no point is his agency extracted from him, and he can still say something that's wrong.
01:36:35.489 --> 01:36:36.470
I mean, I think Gordon B.
01:36:36.511 --> 01:36:44.082
Hinckley was probably very uncomfortable with the idea of deification and just so was kind of just trying to play it down.
01:36:45.264 --> 01:36:49.951
But that doesn't mean that that's not something we believe or something we teach.
01:36:50.051 --> 01:36:51.353
It just means that Gordon B.
01:36:51.412 --> 01:36:59.264
Hinckley, when he was sitting in front of Mike Wallace, had a human moment where he was trying very hard not to be embarrassed.
01:37:00.345 --> 01:37:00.445
Right.
01:37:00.738 --> 01:37:09.631
I'm not trying to argue or trying to correct you or trying to say that any of your experiences here are illegitimate.
01:37:09.791 --> 01:37:11.092
In fact, quite the opposite.
01:37:11.233 --> 01:37:19.364
I think your experience here is something that many, many people have had and continue to have.
01:37:20.065 --> 01:37:25.173
And I think that the number of them is actually accelerating.
01:37:25.953 --> 01:37:37.528
As time goes on, because as the internet makes information more and more available, it becomes easier and easier for people to see the mistakes the church has made over time.
01:37:38.128 --> 01:37:42.253
And more and more difficult for the church to sweep those under the rug.
01:37:43.095 --> 01:37:55.390
And it just breaks my heart that we can't, as an institution, correct ourselves in a way that we would be able to hold on to the Lance Jacksons of the world.
01:37:55.970 --> 01:38:01.395
Because I think the church is immeasurably poorer for not having you as a member.
01:38:02.136 --> 01:38:04.618
I think you are an outstanding human being.
01:38:04.637 --> 01:38:07.400
I think your insights are extraordinarily valuable.
01:38:07.520 --> 01:38:16.009
And it just makes me very, very sad that the church doesn't have a place for you.
01:38:16.048 --> 01:38:25.097
Because I would love, I'm grateful for this opportunity to have gotten to know you at least to a small degree here.
01:38:25.921 --> 01:38:46.050
And I just think if the church going forward, we need to find a way not just to acknowledge the errors that we've made and the missteps that we've made, but embrace them, take responsibility for them, because that's what we teach people to do on an individual level.
01:38:46.109 --> 01:38:47.212
That's what repentance is.
01:38:47.431 --> 01:38:53.320
And I think that institutionally, we need to mimic what we teach to people individually.
01:38:53.881 --> 01:38:54.301
Absolutely.
01:38:54.689 --> 01:39:03.979
I don't know if that's long or too preachy, but I, I mean, and so I just want to say, I'm very, very grateful for you sharing all of these experiences with us.
01:39:05.081 --> 01:39:10.927
Uh, I am, I'm tremendously impressed, uh, with your life story, both professionally and personally.
01:39:11.609 --> 01:39:15.292
And I'm grateful that you have spent this time with us to be able to share that with us today.
01:39:16.073 --> 01:39:17.234
Well, thank you, Jim.
01:39:17.515 --> 01:39:20.798
And that's, that's very, very gracious of you to say those things.
01:39:21.760 --> 01:39:26.997
Um, I, um, I, Well, yeah, it is.
01:39:27.237 --> 01:39:31.743
It's very graceful of you, and I appreciate your words.
01:39:31.842 --> 01:39:38.872
I think there are two things, and I hope you take this in the spirit in which I'm giving it.
01:39:40.975 --> 01:39:46.384
The idea that a prophet doesn't always speak as a prophet, and I get that.
01:39:47.364 --> 01:39:48.726
Sometimes they speak as a man.
01:39:49.287 --> 01:39:53.333
I think it's cowardly at best to put the onus...
01:39:53.761 --> 01:39:56.805
on an individual member to decide which is which.
01:39:57.865 --> 01:39:59.407
I think that's my first point.
01:40:00.368 --> 01:40:03.730
And I think this idea from Boyk K.
01:40:03.751 --> 01:40:07.614
Packer, where history is not always useful.
01:40:08.695 --> 01:40:20.787
I just find that the most incredulous statement I've ever heard in my life of a member, senior member of an institution that proclaims to speak for God here on earth.
01:40:21.747 --> 01:40:23.449
History is not always useful.
01:40:24.065 --> 01:40:26.529
It's sinister as far as I'm concerned.
01:40:26.868 --> 01:40:29.492
Well, what he said was it wasn't just history.
01:40:29.511 --> 01:40:32.675
He said some things that are true are not very useful.
01:40:32.795 --> 01:40:34.997
Well, yeah, and that's even worse.
01:40:36.219 --> 01:40:37.380
And that's even worse, Jim.
01:40:37.800 --> 01:40:40.002
Some things that are true are not always useful.
01:40:40.483 --> 01:40:43.686
The truth ought to be able to stand on its own merit.
01:40:45.507 --> 01:40:50.734
And if the truth is uncomfortable, so what?
01:40:51.938 --> 01:41:03.175
The truth is never anything but useful because it gives us the whole scenario of possibilities, really.
01:41:03.234 --> 01:41:06.640
But it says, you know, this is the truth.
01:41:06.739 --> 01:41:07.921
This is the absolute truth.
01:41:08.002 --> 01:41:09.864
My wife is sat eating her evening meal.
01:41:09.904 --> 01:41:10.505
That's the truth.
01:41:11.506 --> 01:41:18.476
And no matter which way I want to spin that or put something, that might not be useful particularly or whatever, but it's true.
01:41:19.097 --> 01:41:23.931
And to say that, if I was sat here saying, My wife's here smoking a spliff.
01:41:24.733 --> 01:41:25.854
That would be untrue.
01:41:27.577 --> 01:41:29.538
The truth is always useful.
01:41:31.100 --> 01:41:34.083
Sorry, I won't say the truth is useful.
01:41:34.104 --> 01:41:34.984
It's necessary.
01:41:35.024 --> 01:41:46.637
If we can't face the truth, if an institution cannot stand up to the scrutiny of truth, then wherein lies data intervention?
01:41:48.119 --> 01:41:49.721
Lance, I...
01:41:50.082 --> 01:41:53.326
I want to thank you so much for taking time to be with us today.
01:41:53.365 --> 01:41:55.328
I've learned so much from you.
01:41:55.349 --> 01:41:58.252
I've known you for a long time.
01:41:58.292 --> 01:42:08.225
You're a man of great integrity and a man who is devoted to truth, to facts, and to be authentic.
01:42:08.725 --> 01:42:10.988
And I want to thank you for being that person.
01:42:11.028 --> 01:42:15.394
You continue to be just a wonderful friend and just a remarkable example.
01:42:16.097 --> 01:42:20.385
I want to thank our listeners for joining us on this episode.
01:42:20.404 --> 01:42:21.827
I hope you enjoyed that.
01:42:22.287 --> 01:42:24.591
Many things that Lance talked about, we can learn a lot from.
01:42:24.631 --> 01:42:29.739
So, Lance, thank you, and also appreciate this time with you.
01:42:29.899 --> 01:42:34.266
And, of course, a very special thank you to our very own Jim Bennett.
01:42:35.309 --> 01:42:38.493
And Jim and I will be joining you again soon.
01:42:38.721 --> 01:42:44.657
our listeners again on next week's podcast, which is another exciting episode that we've got.
01:42:45.137 --> 01:42:46.502
So on behalf of
01:42:46.521 --> 01:42:47.985
all of our listeners...
01:42:48.105 --> 01:42:50.832
Can I just say thank you very much.
01:42:51.394 --> 01:43:01.796
for your kind words and for your invitation and Jim it's been a privilege to exchange thoughts and feelings with you so I thank you for that
01:43:02.677 --> 01:43:03.961
likewise sir thank you
01:43:04.020 --> 01:43:04.161
so
01:43:04.220 --> 01:43:04.421
much
01:43:04.742 --> 01:43:07.467
Lance thank you and Jim thank you thank you Ian
01:43:07.507 --> 01:43:08.088
thank you