Tyler: 0:03

I'm really excited to be doing this podcast with you. I text, Sam, I don't know what was this Tuesday and I was like, hey, let's do a podcast. So today we're recording this. It's Saturday of the week and so from Tuesday to Saturday we threw together a bunch of stuff and here we are recording a podcast.

Tyler: 0:27

Hello everyone, and welcome to our first episode of the From Grace to Grace podcast, the podcast where two distinct paths converge on the road of faith. My name is Tyler Gordon, Once a seeker outside the fold, now returned with fresh eyes and an open heart. Alongside me is Sam Binns, a steadfast member of the church whose passion for doctrine and church history brings depth to our dialogue. Here we explore the vast landscape of teachings from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and discuss core doctrines and practical steps to applying these doctrines. Whether you're firm in your convictions or searching for answers, join us as we discuss, debate and discover the divine harmony within the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's embrace the journey of faith together, learning and growing from grace to grace.

Tyler: 1:17

I'm super excited about this. This is going to be a lot of fun. This episode is just an introductory episode, just to introduce myself and Sam. We're going to go ahead and get into these introductions real quick, so we'll start with introducing Sam. I'll let Sam speak for himself, but if I can just interject a little thing here, Sam is super smart. He is one of the smartest people I know in terms of scriptural knowledge and knowing exactly where scriptures are. We talked about this in the last introduction season episode. I'll just turn it over to Sam to let him introduce himself.

Sam: 1:51

Yeah, so I think I made a joke last time about how I'm just the average YSA. I'm by no means a scholar or anything like that, so I'm still looking towards college and so forth, but I appreciate that, thank you. As for me, I was raised in the church in Utah and just about a couple of years into my teenage years I had a wonderful Sunday school teacher who just did something right and was able to bring a little spark to my testimony, where it got from the point of I'm just attending church because that's what I've always done to. I actually want to learn this for myself. From that time until the mission, of course I was taking in information. I was just reading the scriptures, doing the things that I was supposed to continue learning for myself, and before the mission I was pretty solid. Of course I had a good understanding of basic doctrines and things like that.

Sam: 2:51

And then I went on my mission to the Canada-Toronto mission and for two years I was proselyting there and we get the wonderful opportunity on the mission to have personal study and that became just a holy grail to me. I loved that. I found the time to be wonderfully spent on all kinds of topics it can be scriptures. I was able to read through basically the entirety of the standard works on the mission, which I was really grateful for as well, as I was given access to a lot of scholarly topics.

Sam: 3:30

I enjoyed learning all of that and gaining much deeper understanding, partly for my own growth in my testimony, but then as well, I was helping others to learn the same things that I was learning, and so it became really helpful for me to not only understand it in terms that I understood, but then I was able to start sharing it in ways that others outside the faith would understand. So I became a little bit better at explaining things how a Christian might understand it or how someone from a different faith tradition might understand the terms that we use. It became kind of a hobby for me at that point. It's just one of the things that brings me joy to just get up and one of the first things I do in the morning and sit down and study and read. So it's blossomed from just learning for myself to I want to be educated enough to be able to explain this to others as well.

Tyler: 4:30

Sam, you're a better person than me because you've admitted that you've read all of the standard works and I still have yet to do that. I'm working on it. We're probably not supposed to pick favorite scriptures, but which one of the standard works is your favorite?

Sam: 4:43

That's a tough question, I know. I know I'd say for me I really enjoyed the Old Testament a lot. I think the Old Testament gives you the context for all of the doctrine that you receive later on, and so it's really helpful for understanding what exactly is happening with the Abrahamic covenant or you get into the law of Moses. So I just really enjoyed that because it gave me the foundation for where all of this doctrine is coming from. You're reading in the Book of Mormon, you read about the law of Moses and you have an understanding from a young age in the church about what that is. But until you read the Old Testament you don't really get the full understanding of what's going on there. But of course you might need to get some scholarly help on the Old Testament because there's some interesting passages.

Tyler: 5:39

For sure there is. I'm really excited to be doing this podcast with you. I text Sam I don't know what was this Tuesday and I was like, hey, let's do a podcast. So today we're recording this. It's Saturday of the week and so from Tuesday to Saturday we threw together a bunch of stuff and here we are recording a podcast and, to be honest, I've been thinking that I want to do a podcast for a long time.

Tyler: 6:04

But what would I talk about? And I can't do a podcast by myself, like I could, but nobody wants to listen to me talk for that long. I don't even want to listen to me talk for that long. I like to listen to my own voice, not on recording, just out of my mouth, but what I'm saying is. I thought of Sam immediately when I was like, oh, let's do this podcast, because Sam and I were in the same ward and we've had quite a few discussions about, like, different gospel topics and different aspects of the church, and our discussions, I don't know, I'd call them lively, I don't know if that's how you describe them.

Sam: 6:40

The discussions have been about just different aspects of the theology of our church and I think what we've found is that we disagree on some things. Of course, the basics we agree on, but there's some portions where it's getting into the gray area, where we don't have clear revelation from prophets on, and so we're pulling from just implications of things and we draw two different conclusions and then we're just discussing back and forth. How do you think that means? I think it means this, I think it means that.

Tyler: 7:13

So I think that's the important thing with going into this podcast to recognize is that Sam and I are both deeply rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Right, we love this gospel a lot. And on the higher level of things, yeah, we disagree on some of those things that we don't have all the information about, which isn't going to be anything. That's foundationally a problem, and I think as we go into this podcast, we'll end up disagreeing about things. And I think the important thing to recognize is that and this is true for whenever you're having a discussion about gospel things with anyone is most everyone has an opinion on something and they also have a reason why they formulated that opinion, and sometimes those things are valid and sometimes those things are not, and that's okay. And I think the important thing when having these discussions is to just recognize that the other person's a human being, and we're going to talk about that more in future episodes. Let me introduce myself, which I don't even know if I'll keep this last three minutes in or not. I'll cut it, but we'll see you.

Tyler: 8:17

My name is Tyler Gordon. I grew up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints up in Boise, Idaho. It was a good time. I did all the good church things, graduated seminary, got my Eagle Scout, the duty to God thing I don't think that's a thing anymore but like I got it, I have a little coin that says that I did my duty to God. I did all the church things which I loved the church growing up. At the age of 18, I went on a mission to the Maryland Baltimore mission and and served there for about five months and then came home and while I was home, ended up wandering a little bit and came across some anti-mormon literature, caused a lot of faith crisis and a lot of questions, and I didn't have the tools necessary to be able to deal with those difficult questions. And as I dove deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole, I ended up stepping away from the church for a little bit. So this was spring of 2017 and then, finally, in July of 2018, I removed my records from the church and that was that was a really dark time in my life.

Tyler: 9:26

So I wandered for about four-ish years, from 2018 to about 2022, and then 2022 was that was a year, let me tell you. I was driving through my apartment complex parking lot and the missionaries were walking and I rolled down my window and I told them that if they carried up my groceries they could, they could teach me a lesson, and that's what happened. And then the rest is history. So I'll get more into that story, I'm sure, in future episodes. But long story short, they taught me lessons. I felt the spirit, I knew I needed to be rebaptized, and so that's what I did. I was rebaptized on November 5th of 2022, and then I had my blessings restored in November of 2023.

Tyler: 10:12

As I've been returning to the church, I, like I said earlier, I wanted to do a podcast, or at least write a book or something that kind of talked about my experience a little bit more, and so that's how we got to here today. My whole goal for this podcast is to, first off, learn how to podcast, learn how to appropriately manage a podcast, but I'm also excited for all of the topics that we're talking about and to dive into these doctrinal discussions. Sam, what are your goals? Why did you end up saying yes to, when I was like, hey, you want to do a podcast?

Sam: 10:46

For me, I really enjoy figuring out how to explain things to those outside of the faith. Sometimes in church I'll sit there and somebody's talking about, oh, we have agency, and they continue on with their discussion. But I'm sitting there and thinking if I was outside of the church I would not know what they're talking about. That's part of it is. I want to just showcase doctrine from different lights and then as well, of course, I want my own understanding to grow. I want to be a better disciple scholar, as I think it's Neil A Maxwell put it as well.

Sam: 11:26

The last, of course, is to build others faith. We, of course, don't speak for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in this podcast, but I do hope to increase others faith in the church and, more importantly, in Jesus Christ as we go through this podcast, Because I think it's Elder Packer has this quote where it talks about the study of doctrine will improve behavior quicker than the study of behavior will improve behavior, and so that is, I think, something that'll be a benefit of this podcast is to help others understand the doctrine so that they can be more faithful, more able to help others in navigating their own faith. Just overall, building that faith in Jesus Christ, as well as belief in the church.

Tyler: 12:20

As Sam said, we don't speak for the church, but the beautiful thing about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is we're a church of volunteers. Right, we put forth our best efforts and try to reach those who might want to know about the church or who might be struggling with their faith. The podcasts are a great way to do that. Even though we don't speak directly for the church, our efforts can go towards helping strengthen the faith of those who might need it, and so, ultimately, I think that's what a disciple of Jesus Christ would do. I brought my statue of Jesus Christ over from my mantle and put it on the table because, as we get into deep discussions or just intense discussions, I want to remind us and I wish that you could see the visual, I want to remind us that, ultimately, the reason why we do anything is for him right. I want to be able to make something creative and worthwhile that would help further the work of the Lord in some ways. Just forward-looking.

Tyler: 13:25

Now we have some episodes laid out. In fact, we have the whole season laid out. We're still working on episode titles. Stay posted for that. We'll post those on our socials. Actually, by the time this goes up. They'll probably already be posted, so go check out our socials. Anyway, we're just going to talk about the episodes that we're most excited about, and then we'll wrap up this episode. Sam, what are you most excited about?

Sam: 13:47

The first doctrinal episode that comes in the lineup is the premortal life. That one is going to be really fun. I've been thinking about that one. I'm really excited. That one's a topic that if you understand the setup of the plan of salvation from premortal life, everything else becomes so much clearer and easier to understand as you look through the rest of the plan of salvation. And understanding the rest of it from that light will change everything.

Tyler: 14:19

Just to tease the premortal life discussion that we are going to end up recording today. What's your favorite little nugget of information about the premortal life?

Sam: 14:27

I think one of my favorites is the eternal nature of our spirits. That one makes a big difference. I'm excited for that.

Tyler: 14:35

Like the aspect of intelligences.

Sam: 14:37

Yeah, things like that.

Tyler: 14:38

Okay, okay, and then go and give us the second one. What's your second most anticipated? Maybe this isn't in order, but what's another episode that you're super excited about?

Sam: 14:50

So then, as well, afterlife. I think the afterlife is one that changes a lot of things for people who understand it correctly as well. It helps you live this life better, as well as gives you a lot more hope for the life after this.

Tyler: 15:08

Yeah, that's awesome. I was watching a preacher give a sermon on YouTube the other day and he would do this thing where he would attempt to preach to people who like might not even be there.

Tyler: 15:21

Right, Like he'd preach to. He'd be like and this is the Bible passage that we're reading, and if you're atheist, this might be how you view it, or if you're of the Jewish faith, this might be how you view it. So I think it's super important for us to recognize that. Yeah, this podcast is for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but I hope that we can add perspectives to be able to allow people who might not believe the same traditions that we do to be able to understand where we're coming from, if that makes sense.

Sam: 15:50

And that's actually highlighting something that I'm really hoping to be able to accomplish is I want to explain things, and this is part of how I study in the mornings and just throughout the day. Whenever I'm reading things, I'm always looking for ways to see how would someone of this faith understand this, or how would somebody of this faith understand this, and so there's all kinds of those perspectives that I'm really excited to see if I can accomplish sharing those in a way that they'll understand.

Tyler: 16:22

So we have some tall orders for this podcast. We want to stay like high level to be able to go over like what other faiths and other people might use different scriptures as, and then also we want to dive deep into those interesting little aspects. I think there'll be a wide range of things to talk about. Two episodes that I'm particularly excited about we're going to be doing an episode on faith crisis, which, like as I said before, I'm rather familiar with, and so I'm excited to talk about that and talk about, like, the different aspects of going through a faith crisis and how to navigate one. I don't know that there's one correct way to navigate a faith crisis, right, somebody's going to have different things when they go through that mental shift, but we'll talk about some different things that you can do or what you might want to do. And then the other episode that I'm super excited about is we're going to try to have a discussion about how to disagree appropriately.

Tyler: 17:16

We believe in proclaiming truth and we want to stand firm in that truth, and there are some doctrines in the church that in today's society might be difficult to stand behind all the time, and we want to be able to stand behind those truths and hold them up for what they are, as being doctrine, but also we want to be able to engage in discourse that is appropriate and civil and ultimately, as President Nelson has talked about, we want to be peacemakers, while not backing off of our beliefs, if that makes sense. So there's a happy medium there between those two ideas. So we're going to wrap this one up. We just wanted to say thank you for listening.

Tyler: 17:57

It's going to be an adventure for all of us. Please forgive us as we learn and grow on, not only like the doctrines or the different aspects that we're talking about, but also how to talk about things, how to podcast, how to edit, how to social media. This is all new. I'm a computer programmer, so I understand websites, but I don't understand marketing, and so this will be an adventure for both me and Sam. Any closing remarks? Sam?

Sam: 18:23

I was just going to mention that you were talking about how to podcast, and I thought I'm going to need some information on how to do that, as well as just information on public speaking. I do not want to be the one who's using filler words all the time and just causing headaches for those of you out there who that bothers.

Tyler: 18:45

And that's the beauty of editing, so editing will help us a lot there. But yeah, at the end of the podcast, we're going to invite you to do something as good, lds, missionaries, what we want you to follow our socials. We want you to follow the podcast. I don't know, different podcasting sites have different things, so, whether that's liking the podcast or subscribing to the podcast, do whatever it is. Yeah, reviews, whatever it may be, just engage with the podcast. How do you end a podcast? I have no clue.

Sam: 19:14

You need to get an outro for sure. Yeah, that's right.

Tyler: 19:18

Thanks for listening. I'm going to have to cut all this out. You want me to try? You go for it. I'm probably not even going to cut this out, to be honest. You go for it. Okay, yeah, so let's see.

Sam: 19:30

Thanks so much for listening. We're grateful that you took the time out of your day to listen to us. We hope that as we continue with this podcast, you will continue to learn with us and grow from grace to grace.

Tyler: 19:41

It's great Amen, thank you.