Episode 232: Spiritual Scrupulosity [Part II of IV]-On Confession, Sexuality, and Personal Authority

Subscriber-only episode

In this episode two [of a four-part series] Valerie and guest author Taylor Kerby delve into the complexities of OCD scrupulosity within the context of the Latter-Day Saint faith. 

They continue their conversation tackling the following topics connecting OCD spiritual scrupulosity with the LDS faith tradition: 

1. Spiritual Exceptionalism (addressed primarily in episode 231) 

2. Low emphasis on the cultivation of personal authority 

3. High anxiety around sexuality and an integrated sexual identity 

4. A transactional relationship with God 

5. An atonement theology that leaves people feeling anxious, guilty, afraid, or shameful 

The episode concludes with a call for church leaders to know their limits and a plea to direct individuals to professional help, aiming to foster a more supportive and growth-oriented environment for all connected to the church. 

SUBSCRIBE TO FRIDAY EPISODES BETWEEN 5/31/24 and 6/27/24: Premium content episodes of Latter Day Struggles can be accessed through ⁠a paid subscription⁠. Enjoy your first month of Friday episodes at a reduced cost of $3 as a thank you for joining the Latter Day Struggles subscriber community! Sign up here!⁠

WEBINAR: “Accepting Stages of Faith Within A Marriage” Valerie will host a webinar class for individuals and couples seeking guidance on how to stay united during a faith expansion experience. Special question/answer session directly after the webinar. Wednesday July 10th 8:30 CST. Come ask Val your burning questions and be part of the conversation! ⁠ Sign up here!⁠

SUPPORT: Like what you’re hearing at Latter Day Struggles Podcast? Make a one-time donation to ⁠her business Venmo account⁠ or become a recurring donor on Patreon⁠.⁠

CONSULTING: Interested in doing individual or couples work with Valerie or a member of her trained team? Time-limited packages with Valerie and extended work with her team of coaches and therapists are available ⁠...

Transcript

 Hi everybody. Welcome to Latter day Struggles. This is your host, Valerie. Pleased to be with you all here today and pleased to have Taylor Kirby here with me as a special guest. We are doing a part two of a two part series where we are talking about. The big topic, the important topic of OCD scrupulosity.

And this is in conjunction with my wanting to be a cheerleader and an advocate for his beautiful book.  The title of the book is scrupulous, my obsessive compulsion for God. If you have not already listened to the first part of this episode, I would absolutely recommend that you jump back and do I dare say you probably already have listened to that episode because this is a series.

What we talked about last time, though, to very briefly review is Taylor and I talked a lot about what OCD scrupulosity is. We talked about his reasons for laying it all on the line out there. We talked about how our faith tradition, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints does make one vulnerable for OCD scrupulosity, but also how it's important to have a complex relationship with the intersection of OCD scrupulosity and religion in general and the LDS faith in specific.

And then  I talked about the five vulnerabilities. Of OCD scrupulosity in the context of the LDS faith last time we started with we went deeply into the first of the five vulnerabilities where we talked about our penchant to want to be spiritually exceptional, the best the favorites of God, and why those who may struggle with OCD scrupulosity are going to be made worse.

By this tendency that we had, and then Taylor also offered some we had a conversation about some recommendations of how we might do better as a faith tradition to help to help all of us, honestly, with this struggle that doesn't do any of us or those around us any favors. So today, what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about the four other vulnerabilities of our faith tradition and how these might tap into those of us who struggle with OCD scrupulosity.

So let's hit  topic number two.  I would love for us to begin by talking about  the concept of personal authority and the idea that we have around confessing and being made to feel better by priesthood leaders. Now, I want to open with some thoughts on this myself. It occurred to me as I was really thinking and preparing for this, that the concept of personal authority is one that I am passionate about.

It's near and dear to my heart. And I think it's important to perhaps lay some groundwork around the idea of personal authority within the stages of faith paradigm because in early stages of faith or an early faith development  all of us are vulnerable and it's nice to have a container or it's a nice to have someone from the outside help us understand good bad, right wrong black white and things like that and so early on in our spiritual development  It's actually very normative or appropriate to have a lot of guidance and direction about how to situate ourselves in in the world.

And then as we grow, we slowly but surely become competent enough to become authorities ourselves to take on a little bit more self leadership in the context of how we relate to God, self, others, and even our faith tradition. So  let's go ahead and tackle this topic, Taylor, because I believe it's a big deal in general, but I also think it's an important topic for us to talk about in terms of someone who may struggle with OCD scrupulosity.

You in your book  really had some really beautiful things to say about this. I think it might be nice to open up with maybe share with us a little bit about your own struggles  with it. Having the appropriately  growing ability to be your own personal authority. And I love the story in the book that you talked about regarding your need to consistently confess to your dad, who happened to also be your Bishop.

Let's go ahead and kick this conversation off with sharing a little bit about that. And then let's just go deeper.  

Absolutely. First, to reiterate and expand on a little bit of what you said. Part of the struggle in this area, both for people who have scrupulosity and just for general members of the church, is that our theology surrounding confession is really muddy. 

It's, for instance, pretty unclear when you should confess a sin to one in authority and when you can take care of it on your own. At least, in the most orthodox way, right? What is difficult and in my view, rather troubling, is that often the delineating line is when this when the sin is relevant to sex or sexuality. 

And so we've created a system  in large part perhaps due to our  insecurity around sexuality, where when a sin is sexual, and I'm not,  that is normally the sign that you ought to go talk to somebody about it.  There are other sins you need to confess to a bishop to be sure, but this is the one that gets brought up most, right?

And if you're a young man or young woman in the church, this is probably the thing that your mind goes to when you think about sins to confess to the bishop.  So my challenge when I was a 14, 15 year old, boy was that sometimes as a person growing up in this world, I would have sexual thoughts  And I was told in my youth  classes that our thoughts are something that we can control this is something, I don't know if it's still said to the youth, I hope not, but this is something that was said to me all the time.

Was that our thoughts are something we can control, and we can learn to control our thoughts. And sometimes we would have lessons where they would say, if you can, your thoughts lead to actions, and your actions lead to this, and this leads to this. And if you can control the thoughts, you can control the downward flow.

And I am not convinced that any one of us can control our thoughts in full. None of us can control what walks onto the stage of our mind in full. But especially those of us who struggle with OCD or any other kind of mental illness. And so when I was a kid, if I had a thought that I thought was impure, I felt a need to repent of that immediately.

By kneeling and praying as we talked about in the last episode.  But it was also my conviction that sin could not fully be repented of on my own and that I needed to go talk now to the bishop, because I had this bad thought. And until I could talk to the bishop, that anxiety, that pressure cooker that I described in the first episode would grow and grow and grow.

And for better or ill, my bishop was also my father. And for me, this actually became a really beautiful thing because my dad, while he wasn't educated in scrupulosity and how all of that worked, and he didn't quite recognize that there was an issue happening here. He did know that my concerns about my salvation and my soul were unfounded. 

And  one, and my dad would tell me, Repeatedly,  that I was okay, that I was worthy, that I did not need to be concerned about repenting for this or that. He didn't think to have me see a counselor or something like that. He just, he didn't have a schema or an understanding that was an appropriate choice. 

He was able to discern and recognize  that what I was experiencing was very different  from a genuine need for repentance. And I am grateful for that, in large part because I know, having spoken to other people who have had similar struggles, that, that is not  always the case. In fact, it is probably more often than not, that when someone goes into the bishop,  and, starts quote unquote confessing for having a sexual thought or something, most bishops,  I think this is based on, my own experience, not on any research, right?

But I would imagine that most bishops assume if you're coming into their office, you've done something wrong and we need to deal with it.  And so there, there are people who unnecessarily go through a rigorous repentance  process, for sins that are truly non existent. And as a result, their relationship with scrupulosity is reinforced, legitimized, and given a vehicle to continue on forward. 

I want to pursue what you're talking about in two separate directions. Taylor, the first thing I want to talk about is, will you respond to your thoughts on How would this be different if we helped our youth cultivate a sense of their own capacity to better understand their goodness without being reinforced from the outside on that?

Yeah, this is one thing I talk about the book, or talk about in the book quite a bit, is that oftentimes with the youth we really have two categories of sermons as it pertains to the youth. Category one is, you need to take this seriously, you need to get in gear, you need to move forward, put your shoulder to the wheel, right? 

I think it's pretty clear to see how that reinforces scrupulous behaviors, right? Category two, and what's interesting is this category is often given to the young men, this category is often given to the young women, right? So there's a whole gender thing we could unravel here as well. But category number two is you are so special.

You are so good. You are the noble chosen generation.  And that is, as we discussed in our first episode, that's bad, too, because it reinforces the stakes of our obsessions. It legitimizes our need to continue this hard arduous process of being a scrupulous person  and also doesn't create a pathway for relief.

Interestingly, both of these sermons also reinforce, as I spoke in the last episode, in my, what is in my view, a very idolatrous path of worship that is entirely self focused. In version A, it's you need to make yourself better, polish yourself, make yourself clean, make yourself pure. Version 2, it's you're already pure, don't ruin it. 

You are the, you are God's beautiful gem, don't spoil yourself.  The other, the real elephant in the room, in my view,  is that,  as I describe in the book, sex and sexuality is viewed as really in fact this is the name of one of my chapters, the default sin.  When we talk about immorality, when we talk about, stumbling blocks and sins and spotting our white garment,  we go immediately to the thought of sexual sin.

as though sex and sexuality and sexual sin is the paramount  archetypal  sin. That's problematic in many ways. I'd love to talk about this more. I think it runs counter to our view of God, our understanding of who we are and what it means to be made in God's image. As we worship a God that has a body, I think that it is a means of not fully reckoning with the beauty that the restoration gives us In the way that we the restoration churns away from original sin telling us there was no sin in eden that when Adam and eve looked on their bodies saw their nakedness.

It wasn't because they realized there was something shameful we know all of these truths from the restoration and we haven't chosen at the cultural level to apply them to our understanding of sex and sexuality and what it means to be a good versus a sinful person to more directly answer your question what can we do?

For our youth, it's better two things.  Number one, to reiterate what I said earlier in, in our first episode, we need to be willing  to commit to the reality that God  is loving and universally accepting  that his love for us is not contingent on who we are or what we've done and our relationship with him is also not contingent on either of those practice. 

I think it is also important to be much more mindful about how we discuss sex and sexuality with our kids.  

So thank you for that. Thank you for that. So you're bringing us back to re figuring or re understanding a relationship with God.  I hope and anticipate will probably be the solution to each and every one of these vulnerabilities.

It's about  our better understanding our nature as good  as enough as infinitely lovable. And so when a child really understands this doctrine and this beautiful theology that sometimes I feel like is lost to the larger body of Christianity, right? I think that in and of itself as it's simple on some levels, but it's also very complex because it's so deeply rooted.

The idea of original sin feels like it's profoundly rooted in deep Christianity, inclusive of Mormonism, honestly.  

Yeah. And in fact,  to that end, let me circle back more directly to the question of personal authority. I truly think that one of the primary missions of Joseph Smith was to push back against some of this ickiness that we see elsewhere in Christianity and that unfortunately has found its way into our community. 

I think that to understand the God of the Restoration, the God that we worship, we have to really ponder and understand the story of the garden. They're the Garden of Eden. This is perhaps our most sacred story. This is the story that I really think we need to pay more attention to.  One of the things that is unique to our church that separates us from the rest of Christianity in really dramatic ways, is our theology surrounding Eve, and our understanding  that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they made  the correct choice,  or at least they made a good choice.  They did the right thing that ultimately led to their personal development as they entered a world of trial and opposition and adversity  that allowed them to grow and develop and become better.  And in my book, I talk about how my favorite novel is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and in this, not in this novel, the people in this futuristic dystopian society have developed a drug that they keep on them at all times.

And this drug, when they take it, makes them instantly happy. And they have, as a society, decided we are never going to be sad, we are never going to be angry, we are never going to exhibit any negative emotions, we are going to be happy all of the time. And throughout the course of the book, we discover that not only does this create for shallow people, it also creates for spiritually shallow people.

There's this fascinating chapter at the end, where one of the characters explains to the other that we used to have this thing called God. We used to have this thing called Scripture, and we don't have that anymore. We now have Soma, our drug, that makes us happy no matter what. In our restored theology, we understand that in order to find God, to build a relationship with him, and indeed to become like him, we have to live in a world of imperfection, difficulty, and of complicated choices. 

When Adam and Eve were in the Garden, they were told explicitly, do not eat the fruit.  And yet eating the fruit was the right choice.  One thing I've been thinking about a lot is the way in which, often in life, we are faced with unwinnable or unclear decisions.  And  I think it is important to teach the youth  to follow the example of Eve and Adam. 

And to recognize that when they are making decisions,  they're going to take in a lot of data. They'll listen to what mom says, they'll listen to what dad says, they'll listen to what young women, young men's leaders say. They'll listen to what church says. They'll read the scriptures. And guess what? All of those voices might say similar things, or they might say slightly different things.

Sometimes the scriptures might say something a little different than your church leader. Sometimes the official stance of the church, as you understand it, might be a little different than what scriptures or dad says, but ultimately it is up to us as spiritual agents endowed with the light of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit to make our decision by pondering upon all of this data. 

And moving forward and God recognizes that as we go through this very messy process, we will make mistakes. That's why we have a savior to make it okay in the end, but we have to move forward. We have to get messy. We have to make mistakes. And that's okay. I think that is the theology of the restoration.

I also think that is quite different from what most of our kids get. In their youth lessons, nine times out of ten kids in youth lessons get  do the right thing, follow the choice, listen to what I am saying and do this. We are not good at telling our kids to think for themselves to make their own choices as Eve  showed us we ought to do.

That's really beautiful. And as  a lover of Eve and one who I feel like is one of the most important characters of our theology. I love everything that you're saying about the example of the figure of Eve, because she teaches us how to be complex thinkers, how to weigh and measure the complexities of the human experience, and then to choose according to what feels best to us.

Even sometimes when it feels like it's going against something that is more simplistic. And I really appreciate your, your sharing your perspective on that, Taylor. One thing I'll just throw in as we move to the next topic is I wish and I invite if those of you are in leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and I'm especially speaking to bishops here.

I feel like a piece of this is to better understand your stewardship to your constituents, to your members. And I don't want to say especially to the youth, but also to the youth, because I feel like in some ways, this is where we are. Youth are heavily encouraged sometimes to take things to an external source rather than learning how to, they outsource their own spiritual enoughness.

Rather than recognizing that we ourselves are agents for discerning good and bad and right and wrong. And that between ourselves and God, oftentimes we have enough to navigate. And if we ever do feel to go to a bishop, the bishop's role really, as much as anything is to show an outpouring of love and support for the process. 

Of learning and growing, which is what we are here in this life to do. If I could choose, gosh, there's a lot of things I would choose, but if I could choose one thing that I wish we could, a word that we could take away from the parlance of the Latter day Saint tradition is that the bishop is a judge.

The bishop is really more than anything, a caregiver of their congregation, where they help shepherd people towards Christ. If ever they want that companionship, and it makes it challenging for youth.  Because sometimes things are made worse by their relationship with the bishop. Sometimes things are made worse by going to the bishop.

And there, I know there are some parents that discourage their children or their adolescents from having any kind of a relationship with the bishop because bishops oftentimes in meaning and well intended bishops don't exactly understand their role, and they may actually exacerbate a complex relationship between a child and God.

Absolutely. And more often than not, I found that bishops believe that more is always better, be more involved to give the child more to do to more to think about, and oftentimes that's not the case. The only thing I, everything that you said is 100 percent on the money. I just one thing to add is this also.

If you are a bishop, it's important to recognize when something is in your wheelhouse and when something is outside of your wheelhouse. We have therapists in the same way that we have doctors. If someone came to you with a cardiac problem, you wouldn't try to treat that yourself. When someone comes to you with scrupulosity or depression or anxiety or anything else, that's not for you to treat. That's for a therapist to treat and your role is to love them throughout that process. 

Beautifully said, Taylor. Let's move on to vulnerability number three. So to quickly review vulnerability number one is is struggles with spiritual exceptionalism in the context of the LDS faith, but vulnerability number two is our struggles with encouraging the cultivation of personal authority and vulnerability number three that we're going to jump into is sex our struggles with sex, sexuality, and our theology of the body.

I want to open this by saying, I think, sex and sexuality is a fraught subject in all of religion. I don't think it's Christian specific and I don't think it's LDS specific. I think we, we have some of our own idiosyncratic struggles with it,  but I do think sexuality is a topic that absolutely has to be discussed in the context of OCD scrupulosity.

And in Taylor's book this topic is woven through the entirety of the book, because I think a lot of scrupulous behavior. Is really geared towards sex as the sin that ends all sins. And so will you take over for just a minute, Taylor, and talk a little bit about how your own scrupulosity journey is interwoven with our struggles with the theology of sex, sexuality, and the body and the LDS faith.

Absolutely, and this is one place in the book where perhaps I was a little too honest, as we alluded to in, in episode one. I jumped the gun a little bit with this, but,  like our theology of the garden that separates us,  entirely from Christianity. In fact, it is one of the primary reasons why we are often  told that we are not Christians by our Christian brothers and sisters is that we believe that God has a body and that when we discuss being made in the image of God we take the scriptures at their most literal Interpretation that we have a body just as God has a body.

I have two arms and two legs, God has two arms and two legs.  Sex and sexuality, at least presumably, is something that exists in the afterlife, exists in heaven, exists after the restoration, and is a profound part of what it means to be a person and indeed a child of God. One thing that we often say in church is that or rather when we're explaining the plan of salvation, is that the per, one of the purposes for us coming to earth was to get a body.

And then we leave the sentence right there. And sometimes we'll give examples, when we're talking to kids, we'll give examples like you couldn't play basketball without a body, could you? And we have no idea, we don't know what spirits can do, right?  One of the great implications to me  is that our heavenly parents want us to experience sex and sexuality in healthy ways.

That this is a part of our earthly journey, and indeed, one of the reasons why God has chosen to endow us with the embodied experience.  And while I didn't answer your question directly,  I think that,  as we looked at how to heal and how to create a better relationship with sexuality, as I, I would imagine all of your listeners are well familiar with the ways in which youth lessons and our conversation and our attitudes in church can  be damaging to sex and our sexual relationships.

As we look to how we can heal,  I think that we have to begin  with the theology of the restoration,  that  our bodies are made in the image of God,  that our sexual feelings  are something that link us to our Heavenly Parents rather than separate us from our Heavenly Parents. As a young man, if I were to have a thought that was a sexual thought that I thought was an impure thought,  I firmly believed that was Satan implanting that thought. There was a moment I can remember actually the exact moment I had the realization that thought didn't come from Satan, it came from me,  it came from my body wanting to do things. 

And that was a profound shift for me, the recognition that my body in and of itself was having sexual feelings rather than Satan coming in.  To force sexual feelings on an otherwise pure body. I remember being a kid wishing that I could somehow churn off my desires to be around girls and whatever.

I wish so much I could turn that off and then turn it back on once I was married.  In the church, we have a hard time articulating to our youth,  And are articulating to anyone.  Let me back up. I think that we're doing better explaining to youth and to members generally that sex  isn't icky and bad.  That sex in and of itself is not an icky, bad, terrible thing that we have to put up with because we want to get, think we're doing better there. We've got work to do to be sure where we continue to come up short in, in my view,  is explaining that  we also have a sexuality.  I think that for many members of the church,  it is difficult to understand, and forgive me if we're diverting into a tangent I think it's difficult for many members of the church to under, to understand our sexual desires as a part of an identity, rather than just conceptualizing sex as an act we perform with a spouse. 

And the hard reality is that the God that we worship sent us down in bodies  with sexualities that want to connect to other people in certain ways.  And I think it's well past time that we understand that those sexual feelings are things we have in common with God, rather than obstacles in our way of God,  and that those feelings are a part of our identity, that sexuality is a part of who we are. Sex isn't just an act we perform as married couples. 

Okay. Thank you so much for that response, Taylor. I'm really struck by how good of a job your book did in articulating the really fraught topic of sexuality when it comes to OCD, scrupulosity, the fact that sort of let me actually read a quote from your book.

You talked about, you said this, I was spiritually exceptional. I had a special relationship with and dedication to God. And second, sexuality was the great undoing. It, more than anything else, was a clear manifest threat to my spiritual exceptionalism. So you're noticing that we're intersecting a topic that Taylor and I have already addressed.

That he was special and that sexuality was the thing that was going to ultimately be his undoing. And so as he developed as a young man,  he really ran into some problems because number one, he was a sexual young man and his body and mind and soul was doing all the things that bodies and minds and souls do in adolescence.

And also the very thing that was happening. The very normal thing that was happening was not okay. And so he was having thoughts, he was having feelings, he was having experiences. And  He was feeling profoundly guilty and shameful about even his thoughts. And you mentioned before a second ago, Taylor, how important it is for us to really think about and disentangle the reality that thoughts are not sins.

A thought is something that passes through the mind and everyone has all varieties of thoughts. But that is something once again, that is not necessarily well taught. In our faith tradition or in a lot of faith traditions, and therefore it's going to be a complex topic for many people. But for those who are going to struggle perhaps with OCD scrupulosity, this is going to be a really big one because what ends up happening is one feels as if they are at war with themselves from the moment they wake up until the moment they fall asleep because their thoughts are going to be passing through their minds.

And the more they don't want to have them, the more likely it is that they're actually in fact going to have them. And so what you talked about in your book is that you actually began to you wanted to quiet these thoughts and sensations down, and you felt a lot of internal consternation because of the war that you were experiencing within.

And it actually moved into some self harming behavior sexual, some sexual in nature, self harming behavior. If it's okay, can we talk a little bit about that right there? Because I think that's important. Okay. 

This is one thing that I went back and forth on it, including in the book, and felt that at the end of the day, if we were going to do this, we were going to do it right, we needed to put everything there.

The way you described it is absolutely perfect. As a young man, I often felt like I was at war against myself, as I alluded to a minute ago. I firmly felt that when I had a sexual thought, that was Satan implanting that thought into me. And every time I was in seminary, and they would talk about the ways that Satan's doing all of this in the world, the way I conceptualize it, and indeed the way I think many people, many young people conceptualize it, is that God, he's coming in my body.

He's here. He's going to get me this way. And I  got into the habit, the self harm habit of hitting myself, particularly when I got an erection. I would hit myself in the groin often until that erection went away. It wasn't always super hard, but it was enough to be just a little painful and to redirect my mind.

away from anything sexual.  This is a behavior that went on for years, for a very long time.  This is one that took a lot of work to overcome, and one that I didn't recognize as being self harm until much later. I don't mean to be crass, when I thought about self harm I imagined something more akin to cutting or, something more drastic and it didn't occur to me that what I was doing was ultimately a self harm behavior, but again, it felt worth it.

Because I was fighting a war with Satan for control of my body. And again I want to reiterate that I think a lot of this would have been different for me  had I been taught  the real truths of the Restoration. That my sexual feelings, my sexual urges and arousal, when you made the Venn Diagram of me and God, this was something in the middle.

This was something that linked me to God rather than separated me from them. Had I had been, had I been taught about sex and sexuality in that way, rather than being taught sex as something that would pollute my pure spirit,  I would have been able to avoid, I think those self harming behaviors.

I really appreciate your vulnerability and sharing this with us, Taylor, because I think, again, even those who may not struggle specifically with OCD scrupulosity, I know very few people who really have a very  healthy and robust understanding of the theology of the body and sexuality is something that is God ordained.

And a lot of grownups don't know how to understand it themselves, much less teach it to their children or their young men and young women's classes. And I think we have a long way to go yet  in this topic, because is it a powerful currency in which to relate? Of course it is. Is it sacred in nature? Yes, it is. And yet also at the same time, this does not translate in something that we need to be terrified of 

to your point. I remember once meeting with a bishop and this is after I was married and we were still scrupulosity type stuff. And he said he made a comment  about sex and marriage that I think about all the time.

He said, some.  some people with with sex in their marriage  have a lot of trouble with it. I don't understand how it all doesn't come together, but I guess they have trouble. Think about that all the time and that we have been really bad At understanding the complex nature of sex and sexuality.

And this is a topic for a whole other series of episodes. I recognize that. But  to that end, I would encourage any, anyone, but particularly any LDS person that is about to be married or to go and do couples counseling with their future spouse or current spouse. One's relationship with sex and sexuality is so fraught and complex no matter if you were raised Mormon or Catholic or whatever - Atheist, Jew, Muslim. Everyone has a very complicated relationship with themselves in their own body and bringing two of those very complicated relationships together Is an incredibly fraught exercise that can be beautiful and also  because it is so emotionally vulnerable can leave us with a lot of scars.

And so  this is not the topic of my book but it is one pitch.  Couples counseling is a wonderful thing. And I would encourage anyone, especially those about to become new married couples, leaving our LDS community. For many of whom this also means embracing their sexuality in a real way for the first time please sit down with a counselor and have them help you untangle your own relationship with sex and sexuality. It's a very difficult thing to do with just you and your spouse bringing all of your assumptions about sex and sexuality together on your own.  

Yeah, I couldn't agree more because I'm actually a marriage counselor and I have a lot of background in sexual health. So I'm thinking yes, please. That would be so good for so many of us.

And it's heartbreaking to see couples come to me who have struggled for sometimes 15 and 20 years. In their sexual relationship and quite frankly unnecessarily like this did not need to go on this long and a lot of it has to do with not only a fraught relationship with sex and sexuality and theology, but some of it is just simply education.

They lack a lot of education around their bodies around arousal around really things that we need to do a better job of just educating ourselves around and. for having me. What you're discussing there just to close this kind of topic up is this sort of is in some ways really linking together the topics we've already discussed to recognize that healthy human beings take ownership in their own wellness.

So that's speaking into personal authority that we've already been talking about. It also talks about, or this is combining also our first topic, which exceptionalism in many ways.  Lemme say it this way, those in or around the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. All of us tend to have a sort of a, an uncomfortable relationship as we evolve and grow around issues of sexuality.

It's just amplified, I think sometimes when we struggle also with anxiety conditions. And so to just recognize that this is something that all of us need to nurture and to take care of. And then finally  we were just talking about how sex and sexuality is something to be embraced from a theological perspective and to recognize that.

Sometimes we really get in our own way in terms of our own growth and development, and it is something that needs to be talked about. We could probably spend much more time talking about this topic, but those who struggle with OCD scrupulosity almost inevitably are going to have a really painful and complex relationship with themselves as sexual beings because we at the church do such a a good job, or a bad job.

Of helping people understand sex in the context of sin and sinfulness. The last thing I'll say before we move on to the last topic, because I'm going to combine the last two topics, because I think they're related, is that I feel in some ways, and you actually touched on this in your book, Taylor, that If we are to err on the side of being too strict and not living life and being a little bit more open to experience, even if it means we learn and grow and stumble and fall, it's my experience because I believe in the nature of growth and atonement as part of as a necessary part of the human condition. That we actually do better for ourselves as growing human beings by actually experiencing life and stumbling and falling as inevitably we all do, rather than the alternative, which is to be good, pure and shiny and live in absolute fear. 

Absolutely. It is. It continues to disappoint me when the story of Eve is in so many ways our central story. It is disappointing to me that when that is our foundation, that we continue to try to create it. Absolutely. Eden spaces for ourselves and our kids. I firmly think that for many members of the church they would prefer a reality where their kids don't do anything,  don't make any mistakes, don't and would certainly prefer that to the opposite, a kid that has too much fun in high school. I imagine many, some of your listeners will disagree with me, but I think the story of Eve and Eden teaches us the opposite lesson. 

Amen. 

That it is better to live life a little bit more fuller and make a little, a few more mistakes than it is to do the opposite. 

Thank you for that. Let's go ahead and tackle vulnerabilities number 4 and 5 together.

So once again, to review, we have been talking about some of the vulnerabilities of our faith tradition that make it challenging for someone who is predisposed to OCD scrupulosity vulnerability. Number one is our spiritual exceptionalism struggles. Number two is our struggles with cultivating personal authority.

Number three is our anxiety laden theology around sex and the body. And number four and number five that we're going to tackle right now, which I'm pretty comfortable tackling together because actually they're a little bit of a review. We have been actually touching on these throughout our conversation.

So this is a nice cherry on top. I would love for us to talk a little bit in a little bit more detail today, Taylor, about  our need to re imagine God and our Savior, Jesus Christ and the Atonement. I think the more we understand. the nature of God in a healthy way, the more we heal from the wounds of perfectionism, shame, and of course, on the extreme end, OCD, scrupulosity. What can you say about that?

In the most simple terms if you were to only listen to one sentence of my response, that one sentence would be this.  I think that we need to see God as a collaborator with us in our salvation,  rather than as an angry or disappointed parent. And let me unpack a little bit what I mean by that, starting at the angry or disappointed parent.

We are very good in the Church community, I think, at saying at least over and over again that God loves us, that Jesus Christ loves us. We, that, that's a very familiar and true ringing phrase for us. And I think this is particularly important for bishops and other leaders to understand.  Just saying that God loves us  doesn't solve the problem of scrupulosity, and in fact can increase it for this reason.

Let me give you an example. We know, I, I know, that my mother loves me.  However, it is because I know my mother loves me that when I disappoint my mother, I  experience more heartbreak.  If my mother didn't love me, I could disappoint her all day long and I'd still have all sorts of things to work through in therapy, but it would be a little easier, right?

And so I do think that we have a tendency in the church to imagine God as perhaps not a God that gets angry with us. We can go that direction, but I think more often we have a tendency to imagine a God who just really gets disappointed  in our bad behavior.  And because we're told so often that God loves us, I, we are put in a position to feel that disappointment  more viscerally and more painfully. 

When I was struggling with scrupulosity and I would come around to feeling as though I needed to repent, I was always feeling like I was disappointing my father in heaven.  On the other side of that spectrum the angry God, if not angry, we can imagine a God sometimes as Latter day Saints who is overwhelmingly strict.

And perhaps himself a little OCD.  One scripture that I was quoted that was quoted at me many times in my youth was that God cannot accept sin with any degree of allowance. And when I took that to mean, was that God cannot accept me with any degree of sexual thought, period. And number one, that's, it's just wrong. 

But it, it certainly fostered a difficult relationship for myself. Moving towards the first part of my statement, to see God as a collaborator with us in our salvation. I talked a minute ago when we were discussing the story of Eden, that when Eve was making her decision to eat the fruit, she took in a lot of data.

She took in what God said. She took in what the Serpent said. I imagine she had some sort of conversation with Adam. They let all this kind of swirl in her head and she made a decision. And I discussed how we need to tell our kids that they're going to hear a lot of stuff, going to get a lot of input from a lot of people.

Scriptures and church and God are all included. And then it is in, it is up to us. to make our choices after pondering the input of all that data. For me, it has been very helpful  to imagine God as a partner and an advisor along that journey, as opposed to someone judging me for any less than perfect step on that journey.

One thing, this is a little strange maybe, but one thing that's been very powerful to me was learning that in the Jewish tradition, there's a long acceptance and understanding that sometimes you get to argue with God. We see Moses do this. We see Abraham do this. God tells them to do something, and they say, why should I do that?

And then they go back and forth with God for a while. And it turns out that Abraham isn't wrong to do that. Moses isn't wrong to do that, to question God. It was good! They were having a conversation and a collaboration. It was part of the revelation process for them.  And I think that approach to God is much healthier and also much closer to the reality of what God is like. 

It is very seldom in our life, I think, that God will tell us exactly what we ought to do. And in fact, if he did, we wouldn't have the opportunity to exercise agency and grow and  It is more often the case that God will the Holy Ghost will whisper or other things will come into our mind or sometimes the revelation comes as we all ponder the right choice. But viewing God as a collaborator in that process, as a friend along the way, is I think a much better way especially for those with OCD to understand our relationship with our Father and Mother in Heaven.  

Thank you for that, Taylor. I think to add to what you're saying,  another thing that I want us to at least spend a moment on debunking is this idea of a Savior needing to stand between us and an angry God?  I was shocked as I have been in my own growth journey that felt so normal and acceptable to me.  And I think for a second, why don't we spend a moment just reconfiguring again re imagining the role of Jesus Christ, not suffering for us as terrible sinners that, where our sins need to be, paid for because we are that bad and we need to become clean before the Father.

I think in some ways, there's just, again,  just a couple of minutes, cause I know we could go on and on here, but just talk a little bit about that because again, I think that is a theology. That yes, it absolutely gets in the way of growth and development of somebody who is struggling with OCD scrupulosity, but I dare say that is something that really gets in the way of all of our growth and development as gods and embryo ourselves.

Absolutely. The big takeaway for me is this, that. It is important for us to be humble in our understanding of the Atonement. And what I mean by that is this, we do not know how it happened, nor do we understand how it works. What we have are metaphors to help us make sense of the experience of the Atonement.

And one metaphor that we use has to do with a God who is angry at us and then Christ takes upon himself that anger. Or in less dramatic ways, maybe we owe a debt to God. And instead, Jesus comes in and pays that debt for us. In some instances, we owe, we sometimes imagine ourselves owing that debt to Satan, and instead Jesus pays that debt, which is also weird and problematic.

What we do know,  to be true, is that our Heavenly Father wants to have a meaningful parental relationship with us, and that relationship I do not think would be possible if he were full if they were full of a consuming rage  in regards to our sins. We don't have time to unpack all of this and indeed this is something that I think all of us have to ponder.

What we do know is that the Atonement is the means whereby we become whole  whereby we become one with God and the way that our anxieties and our fears and our problems are made okay, the way in which the problems of the world are made good again how that happens we do not know. But it is in no way it is I think problematic to believe and against the tide of course the restoration to imagine it is by appeasing the anger of God.

The only, the last thing I will say is that one book that is worth consulting is The Christ Who Heals. This is Fiona and Terryl Givens' book that tries to help us reframe our understanding of the atonement as not a means whereby we pay back God or where, God has paid back, but rather the means by which Christ heals all of us who are broken in one way or another. 

Thank you for that. Yes, we can't shout out any of Terryl and Fiona's books enough on this podcast. I'm a big fan of them. And Fiona's been on, on the show a few times. So I'm grateful for that shout out. And yes, I think one of the most beautiful things that we can become more acquainted with is this idea that through the atonement of Jesus Christ we learn that.

Yes, we are human and yes, we are all wounded and Jesus Christ is a healer and that is inclusive of all of us and that doesn't make us bad even as we recognize that life is the experience that we all need to have inclusive of our wounds  to learn how to become.  like them and to learn how to return home. 

One thing that is often asked in, or not often, but that I've been asked before in Sunday School lessons is how many drops of blood did Christ sweat for me or did he shed for me?  And I think that question really misunderstands God's priorities in the Atonement.  One thing that has helped me is there's a philosopher by the name of Rene Girard, who was a Christian theologian and a sociologist actually, who  did, who thought really long and hard on Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

And he was really preoccupied with the question of why would the Son of God die? On the cross.  hanging for the world to see. And his answer to that question was that Jesus was hung on the cross  as a means of God trying to get humanity to rethink its relationship with violence.  That the Son of God dies in this terribly violent way for the world to see,  in hopes that we, the world, would look and recognize it as time to bury our weapons and move away from our violent, terrible tendencies. I don't know if that's true, but what I do know is that  when God looks down at the world,  and when God decided that it was time to send his Son to make things right in the world,  I have come to the realization, indeed  the perfect knowledge, that God's priority was not Taylor Kerby's sexual thoughts.  God sent his Son into the world to rid us of the violence and the pain that we continue to inflict upon each other.  And that is at its core, what the Atonement attempts to do in addition to healing us as individuals.  

Thank you for that. That's really beautiful. I want to close our episode up today by actually reading just a couple of little sections at the end of your book, as you share  some of the learnings that you some of your wisdom, because you are in some ways a wise man because of your own suffering, because of the experiences that you had In walking through the pain and suffering of OCD scrupulosity and letting this become a call and a mission to help other people so that they may not suffer as much as you did because of how what you went through and how much you learned.

So let me just spend a moment, if I may  quoting you, if that's okay. You say this: "The measure of our religion of our righteousness is the extent to which we reach out to God beyond ourselves in caring for his children. God's first focus is not on our own goodness.  He cares about our doing good.

"God is found not in being perfect, but in making the world more perfect. Our righteousness  is an idol when it is an end unto itself. For years I had served that idol. It had brought me real pain and trauma while bringing me no closer to God. As a man trying to put away childish things, I see God in every student's tear, every friend who just needs to talk, every coworker who needs to vent, and every one of my daughter's scraped knees and the homeless man sleeping outside of Target."

You go on to say, "I don't suspect that I will ever find myself, great therapy notwithstanding, fully cured of my scrupulosity. If I must be scrupulous now, I want to at least be scrupulous for something.  I refuse to ever again be scrupulous for personal purity. Personal purity in my own theology is an insidious, idle God with an inward looking liturgy.

"Purity does not think outward. It does not even point to God. It points to the self, the goodness and righteousness and valor of the self. I no longer believe in a God of personal purity who endorses a strict individual righteousness as the salvific and all. If I must be scrupulous, and it seems I must. I will not be scrupulous for me.

"I no longer believe in a God so shallow and needy that he requires me to be scrupulous for him.  That God, I now believe, would not be worthy of worshiping at all.  Atheist Dan Barker calls God the quote, most unpleasant character of all fiction, unquote. And I must confess, even as a believer and active Latter day Saint, he's not all wrong.

"That kind of God, I want nothing to do with. I want to believe in a God worth worshiping. A God who demands immediate genuflection in the Walmart aisle is not worth my time. We often say religion's function is to make us better. Indeed, I agree that it can, but I do not believe that is religion's primary purpose.

"Religion does not automatically make us better selves. Rather, it magnifies our passions, multiplying within ourselves that which we worship. It makes us more like the object of our devotion. And what we worship cannot exist outside of our understanding. In religious devotion, we take what we deem as holy.

"We elevate it above other virtues. And in that devotion, allow those virtues to grow in ourselves. In short, what we worship, we become. And for that reason, it isn't enough for a religious person to worship God. It is the kind of God that we worship that matters."

Anything you'd like to say as we close Taylor today?  

First I think we ought to have you do the audio book. There are a couple of things I really hope  people walk away with after having read the book. The first is if you're in a position of authority. 

Know your limits.  Know when to refer someone to a therapist.  Know that's not a failure on your part as a minister in Zion. That's actually that's you being wise and discerning.  Second, for every member of the church,  I hope that we can rethink a little bit  what it means to be a good Latter day Saint. 

And I hope that we can use the wisdom found in Eve's journey to inform. That decision or to inform that understanding. Being a good Latter day Saint, again, is not about cultivating the most pure  sparkly version of ourselves. Being a good Latter day Saint is about reaching outward and loving others.

As we said in the first episode, it's when we lose ourselves, we find ourselves. And as someone with scrupulosity I find I have to tell myself frequently whenever I'm having. Those obsessions pop up again. I have to remind myself that the gospel isn't about me, that my religion isn't about me, and, ultimately, those anxieties are a means whereby my theology and religious practice turns inward towards something that is not God. 

Lastly, and this is the hardest part, I hope that as members of the Church, after reading this book, or thinking or pondering on our own,  we take some time to really unravel and think about our relationship with our body.

I think it is imperative  for us to think about what the Restoration teaches and separate that from the sort of Christian culture that we can find ourselves swimming in, or at least swimming alongside. We don't believe the body is a barrier to God. We don't believe that our passions are something that separate us from the Divine.

We believe that God has a body  and that our bodily feelings, urges, and even our arousals  are one of the primary reasons why we were sent to earth. We were sent to earth to get a body.  Lastly,  I hope that as people read the book, I hope that they can relate to my experiences, to my own journey of scrupulosity. 

But I also hope that this book can be utilized beyond the treatment of scrupulosity. I firmly believe that a lot of what I have to say in the book can and ought to be applied by members of the Church of all stripes. And that if we can think hard about the truths of the Restoration that I have tried to list in this text.

I ultimately, truly believe we can become a better, more holy and more Godlike people. I wish if I could wave a magic wand, I would bring some of these lessons, the things that we've discussed today. Into the hearts and minds of all Latter day Saints regardless of their struggle with mental illness because ultimately I think that this understanding of God this understanding of Atonement, this understanding of more mortality that we've discussed today, ultimately would make all Latter day Saints a little bit better. And bring them in a little closer to the meaning and power of the Restoration.  

That's beautiful. What you just articulated, I think is so important to close with, which is the struggle with OCD scrupulosity is really it's on the extreme end of the spectrum of one's struggle with certain things that I think all Latter day Saints would benefit from understanding, because I think we all struggle with these things.

It's just more a matter of degree than kind.  And we would do so well to take, I hope what we have talked about today and integrate that into  our own relationship with goodness, truth, love and our relationship with an evolving deeper, richer understanding of God. And  I thank you for being here with me today, Taylor.

It's been a fun conversation. 

Thank you. It was an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you having me. 

Yeah. Thank you all for being here with me this time on the Latter Day Struggles podcast. For those of you who are benefiting from the richness of these conversations that we have a couple of times a week. I am so grateful for you, for those of you who are subscribers, you're listening today.

And I really am grateful that you are valuing my professional time the way you do, because this is my full time job. It's a big job and it takes a lot of effort. And I'm grateful that you value that. And please, if you will rate and review this podcast. Please share this far and wide with those in your circles.

And if there's anything that I can do to help you in your faith expansion journey, either in or around the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, jump on to Latter Day Struggles. com where I have a myriad of offerings to help you because I care about your growth and your development. And I will see you all next time.

Bye bye.