Proclaim Peace Episode 33 // Faith, Hope, and Love: The Core Principles of Effective Peacemaking with Scott Rasmussen

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In this episode of the Proclaim Peace Podcast, hosts Jennifer Thomas and Patrick Mason are joined by Scott Rasmussen from Interfaith America to reflect on their journey through the Book of Mormon as they approach the series' conclusion. They share their insights on how this process has transformed their understanding of the Book of Mormon, particularly the final book, Moroni, revealing unexpected changes in their perspectives. Join them as they discuss the impact of this journey on their views of peace and how to have hope within the hardest circumstances.

Timestamps

[00:03:46] Moroni as a peacemaker.

[00:04:43] Peacemaking softens our hearts.

[00:08:35] Peacemaking through personal growth.

[00:13:57] Geopolitical impact on personal lives.

[00:15:23] The importance of "how" in peace.

[00:18:38] Ethics of Jesus and nations.

[00:24:55] Peacemaking in the Middle East.

[00:26:01] Parent Circle: Voices of Loss.

[00:30:40] Navigating conversations of difference.

[00:36:00] Listening as a peacemaking skill.

[00:38:11] Peacebuilding amidst violence and hate.

[00:41:38] Non-violent conflict resolution examples.

[00:45:39] Peacebuilding through faith and love.

[00:51:04] Faith, hope, and love.

[00:54:03] Charity as an antidote.

[00:57:22] Finding peace in Christ.

[01:00:00] Faith Matters Podcast Network.

Transcript

(00:03-00:05) Jennifer Thomas: Welcome to the Proclaim Peace Podcast. I'm Jennifer Thomas.(00:06-00:15) Patrick Mason: And I'm Patrick Mason. And this is the podcast where we apply principles of the gospel and read the Book of Mormon to become better peacemakers. How are you doing, Jen?

(00:16-00:21) Jennifer Thomas: I'm doing OK, Patrick. I am actually a little bit sad that our journey is coming close to an end.

(00:22-01:16) Patrick Mason: I know. It has been a long journey. Thank you to all the listeners who have stuck with us for more than 30 episodes and well past the calendar year in which we thought we were going to finish this in. So thanks, everybody, for sticking with us. And really, genuinely, we appreciate it. We've had so much amazing feedback and conversations with listeners. who have either been with us the entire journey or part of the journey, listened to a few of the episodes or all of the episodes. So thank you all for the encouragement and for the support throughout all of this. We are hoping to do a second season, hoping to send out more word about that and what that would look like. So stay tuned for that. And we may be asking for some help along those lines, but it really has been a great journey. Here we are. kind of now towards the end of the Book of Mormon.

(01:17-02:02) Jennifer Thomas: Yeah, I've been reflecting for the last, I think, week or so, how much this process has really changed how I think about the Book of Mormon. And it has not been more true, surprisingly, than how I thought about this last book of the Book of Mormon. I think I found expected changes in the way I would think in other scriptures, or it just confirmed what I already believed about peace, say, in the case of the anti-Nephi-Lehies. But I've been very surprised as I've read preparatory to this final episode to realize how much I'm reading the chapters of Moroni differently than I had ever before. And I don't know if that's true of you, Patrick.

(02:03-03:24) Patrick Mason: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just given me a whole new set of tools and a whole new set of lenses to look at all of this. as I'm reading the scriptures, and in this case, Moroni, I have all of the voices of all of the peacemakers that we've talked to throughout the podcast in my head, and the wisdom from them, their insights, the things that they've taught me. And so, it's just, You know, I think sometimes it seems like, and we're going to talk about Moroni, you know, this is a very lonely book. He's literally all alone. And I think peacemaking can feel like a lonely enterprise for a lot of people. It seems like the forces arrayed against us are so much greater than the forces we have. No doubt Moroni felt that. But I think it's so helpful to have this library, this chorus of voices saying, no, we're not alone. And in fact, there's so much strength that we can draw on from one another. So yeah, I've brought all of that as I think about this text in very new ways.

(03:25-04:32) Jennifer Thomas: And this has really specifically, I mean, I agree with absolutely everything you've said, and this has been specifically true for me as I've thought about Moroni. And I've thought about him as a peacemaker and what it would take to view the world the way he views it, which is with extraordinary grace. We'll talk about this with our guest, we hope, but just this desire to bless those around him and in spite of, he hasn't been hardened by his experience. I'm just so struck by the fact that he has had really awful things happen to him and he has not been hardened by it. And I guess my testimony of peacemaking after the last year or so is that that is exactly what it does for us. We, I think, went into this thinking, what could peacemaking do for the world? And what I've realized is that one of the lessons that I've been gleaning is what it can give to me and how it can protect me, be very protective of my soul, and keep me oriented towards Christ in a profound, active way. So I'm just really grateful for that and grateful for Moroni as an example of what that looks like.

(04:32-05:01) Patrick Mason: That's a great point, and I think Morona is a great example of this, that the peacemaking, it keeps our hearts soft when we're intentional about it. It keeps us from being crusty and calcified and hardened, and that is, that's an enormous grace. That's a gift. And yeah, and so yeah, I'm excited about our conversation today and how we can dive into that.

(05:01-06:50) Jennifer Thomas: We're going to have a good one. So we would like to welcome, in just a minute, Scott Rasmussen. He is currently serving as the Director of Democracy Initiatives at Interfaith America, where he leads a series of programs for civic and faith leaders to strengthen their commitment and capacity to relate, respect, and cooperate across lines of difference in supporting a pluralistic and healthy democracy in the United States. These programs include the Voda's Sacred Fellowship, which is where I met him when I was invited to participate in that. And I can truly attest to the fact that as an organization, they're bringing people who have very diverse views into a room and asking them to figure out how to work together towards common goals. Scott served for a decade as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, with overseas assignments in Eritrea, Poland, and Jerusalem, and domestically in Washington, D.C. As a diplomat, he led programs to facilitate people-to-people exchanges and in support of peace-building programs between the Israelis and Palestinians. After leaving the government, he worked as the head of various organizations, including as an executive director of Hands of Peace, a Chicago-based nonprofit. that helped American, Israeli, and Palestinian teenagers learn to see the humanity in the other. And as I said, he currently is working for Interfaith America. So we would just like to welcome him and we're excited to hear his thoughts. Scott, we are so delighted to have you here with us today. And I think by the end of our conversation, our guests will know why. But before we get into all of the nitty gritty of your experience as a peacemaker, let's start with the question that we ask all of our guests, which potentially is also the hardest question you're going to get. And we'll give it to you right out of the gate, which is how do you define peace?

(06:50-09:15) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah, so I have to say, I think I told you before we started recording, I have listened to almost every episode. And every time you ask this question, I've loved hearing what the guests have answered and thought, oh, I'd love to incorporate that and think about it. And every time I come away, I think with a different answer myself about how I define peace. But as I was thinking about it for today, I think for me, peace is a state of being. It's a way of living in the world. And what came to mind was a quote from a talk that Elder Neal A. Maxwell gave, actually, in 1980. It's a talk called True Believers in Christ, and it's a pillar in my faith, in my life. And in the talk, he quotes Malcolm Mudridge, who's a British journalist. And he's talking about kind of what is our role in the world? What is our purpose of being here? And the section that Elder Maxwell quotes, he says, is our, you know, being here in the world, we are quite simply to look for God and looking to find him and having found him to love him, thereby establishing a harmonious relationship with his purposes for his creation. And to me, that really encapsulates how I think about that way of living in the world, peace, as both something internal and external. So that internal element of living in peace is looking for God, which I think can look different ways at different stages of our lives, and finding Him and loving Him, and that's a continuous internal journey. But then the external part of it, establishing a harmonious relationship with His purposes for His creation. So one of my favorite things about Our theology in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we believe that we can become like God, right? That's His purposes for His creation, that we grow and develop and become like Him. And I think that's our role on earth is to grow and develop ourselves, but then also to help others have that opportunity to grow and develop themselves. And that's not just setting people up spiritually for success and helping them learn about Jesus Christ, but I think it's also the structures we organize in society and how we set ourselves up to help people thrive and flourish. And to me, that's a big part of what peacemaking is. And so for me, peace is that way of being in the world that we are loving God and establishing a harmonious relationship with his purposes for his creation, our brothers, sisters, and helping them grow and develop and become like him.

(09:16-10:20) Patrick Mason: That's a fantastic definition. I love that sense of to love God means to love the things that God loves, including God's, and especially God's creation, and especially other human beings. So that's fantastic. I can already sense that as a kind of animating principle for you in your work and your career. And so you work now for Interfaith America, as we mentioned in the introduction. Maybe we can talk more about that later. But the bulk of your career has been spent working for the U.S. State Department. in postings abroad. And so, you know, we'll have lots to talk about, and we'll dive into the Book of Mormon and so forth. But I wonder if you'd share a little bit about that, about some of your experience, and especially what motivated you to do that kind of work, to be willing to move all around the world, you know, with the State Department, and how you thought about that, both at the time and maybe in retrospect, as the work of a peacemaker.

(10:21-11:01) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah, so for me, the motivation to get into this work, and it's interesting, I used to tell this story about what motivated me to work for the State Department, but now it's become, I think, a broader, what's motivating me in my career in peace building. So it's actually an experience I had on my mission. So I went to France, served in France, and I got to France one month after 9-11. So 9-11 happened while I was in the MTC and I got to France and everybody at the period, you know, it was October 2001, everybody was coming up to us as missionaries saying, we support you, we support, meaning the United States, not the church necessarily.

(11:01-11:03) Patrick Mason: You weren't baptizing lots of people.

(11:05-14:20) Scott Rasmussen: But we support you, we're with you. This is terrible. This is something that's happened to all of us, et cetera. And so I was there through 2003. So we went from just after 9-11 through the buildup to the Iraq war and actually the invasion and a complete shift in public opinion, particularly in Europe, where there were mass protests against what the United States was doing at that point. So as I was someone who was interested in politics and history before my mission, so it was just interesting to watch this as I'm serving my mission and how people shifted in their response to us as Americans. And there was one particular day, I think this was just after the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003, my companion and I were walking in a park in a suburb of Paris, and a gentleman approached us. He was clearly drunk and was shouting at us things about the United States and war, and we were trying to, you know, diffuse the situation, kind of get to a situation where we could walk away. But he came right up to us and in the middle of his kind of rant and raving, he just reached out and slapped me across the face and knocked my glasses off. And it really was a moment of like, I don't remember thinking or doing anything. The next thing I remember is I had picked up my glasses and we had just turned and walked away. And some people came and grabbed him and pulled him aside. And there was no other confrontation with it. So this gentleman, I'm guessing just based on his appearance and the neighborhood we were in, he's probably of Algerian or Tunisian descent, so from North Africa. And it just really hit me as we walked away. I'm like, here I am, a 21-year-old American in a suburb of Paris, trying to talk to people about Jesus Christ. And this gentleman of Arab descent comes up to me ranting and raving about something happening in Iraq. And it just started to put all these pieces together. What is it about international geopolitical politics that makes people at such an interpersonal level respond and act in this way. And so that, it really was both the questions at the geopolitical level, but also that interpersonal level that got me thinking, I would love to be in this for a career and helping people understand, at the time, it was helping people really understand why the United States does what it does. And thinking about that from a, like in that geopolitical kind of state to state level, but also people level. So, So yeah, so I returned from my mission and later on joined the State Department and served for 10 years with assignments in a number of countries overseas. But that story kind of animated all of my experiences as I got to work on policy-level things, but then really see how they impacted people on their day-to-day interpersonal lives. And that just continues to motivate me now, that the geopolitical, the things we all read about in the news, whether we're talking about international politics or domestic politics here in the United States, those are really important and they can get us really riled up. But where I find my grounding is how does it impact people personally? And then how can I, in my space, in my sphere, help myself make sense of what's going on in the world, help them make sense of what's going on in the world, and how do we move forward together?

(14:22-15:22) Jennifer Thomas: So this is fascinating. I'm always so interested in how just very short experiences sometimes can change the trajectory of things for us. And I want to link that sort of to this next expanding question that I want to ask you, which is we're sort of in this world right now where we see a lot of people saying that basically ends justify means, right? We maybe had a different ordering principle before this, but now it's sort of the ends, whatever, how we get there is what matter, or where we get and where we land is what matters, and how we get there doesn't matter. But I think probably your experience has taught you something different about that in terms of peacemaking. And I'm wondering what your career has taught you about the ways that the how matters as much as kind of what you do. Like, you know, you can try to get to peace as a member of the diplomatic corps, but how you do that matters, right? So I'm just curious, what have you learned about that? Why does the how matter?

(15:23-17:20) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah, the how, this has become, I mean, you used it before, a really animating principle for me, thinking about, and I think it is related to the ends. So I think about this in terms of a personal level, then maybe I'll pull it back up to a bigger level. Ultimately, we want to be in relationship with people, right? I mean, peace could look like, I think in the way we often think about peace, either in a personal relationship or global level is the absence of conflict. And I know this is something you've talked a lot about on the podcast, and it's not just the absence of conflict, but that's what we imagine. So we imagine however we get there, however we get to, so we're not fighting anymore, that's fine. But where does that leave you? And I think Operating in the world with that definition of peace as an absence of conflict and then just pursuing whatever means to get there has left us with kind of this cycle of, well, then you fall back into the conflict because you haven't addressed the underlying problems or concerns. And I think that's the same in a marriage relationship, right? You have the same fight over and over, same argument over and over and over, right? Until you address what is the underlying thing here. And I think it's the same at a global level. So when I think about how It's rather than getting into the conflict just to get through it and get to the other side where there's this peace, where we're not having the conflict anymore. At the end of the conflict, I want to be in relationship with this person. So how I navigate the conflict, how we navigate that discussion or that conversation, or at a global level, that negotiation is going to determine where we end up at the end. And if we have set ourselves maybe on a better path toward, I think, true peace, right, which is that we're flourishing and working together versus this kind of the negative piece of Yeah, we don't have conflict, but we're probably going to fall into it again, because the way we showed up with each other didn't really address the underlying concerns.

(17:20-19:12) Patrick Mason: Can I ask, Scott, a follow up on that? As you're talking about, I'm thinking about your role working in the State Department. So you are an employee and representative of the government of the United States of America. You're also individually a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and committed to these kinds of principles. And I assume, and I don't know, so tell me, but I assume that oftentimes those principles and values lined up, but there were probably other times that they didn't, that maybe you had to speak for or represent actions of a government that maybe you would have done things differently if you were the president of the United States, whatever that might've been. Can you talk about that? I was actually just having a conversation this morning with some other friends. We were talking about Ukraine and so forth, the role of individual Christians as we relate to big, hairy international politics, and does the ethic of Jesus even translate at that national level? Can you just talk about how you thought about this and think about it in terms of these big, huge, as you said, geopolitical concerns, the actions of states and state actors, they always affect individual people, and you're an individual person acting as a representative of a big, huge nation state. Does that…so where does…I guess I'm asking at the core, like, does the ethic of Jesus, does the Sermon on the Mount apply to nations? And how as individuals do we operate at these different levels from the interpersonal to the international sometimes all at the same time. That's like, I just threw a lot at you. I apologize.

(19:12-19:17) Jennifer Thomas: I'm usually the one that asks seven point questions, Patrick. So thank you for taking that.

(19:17-22:46) Scott Rasmussen: If I don't get all the points, let me know. But I think I would say in the short, the short version, I think, yes, the ethic of Jesus, this is gonna be emotional for me. Sorry. I think it does apply to nation states. I do not have a good answer for how that works. other than to say that nation states are made up of individual people and how they show up, I think ultimately does filter up. And maybe I'll say more about that in a second. But this question of working for the government, when sometimes policies or what you're being asked to do doesn't line up with what you would either do personally or maybe even conflicts directly with your personal values or kind of ways of seeing the world. It happens all the time. And I actually teach a class on American foreign policy at a small university here in Spokane. And we talk about this all the time. And this happens, I think, in a lot of careers. You face instances where you have to promote something or do something that maybe doesn't align with exactly what you think. So yeah, I had experiences like that. And I think, I mean, particularly when I lived in Jerusalem, there were things about American policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and toward those people living in that part of the world that I didn't agree with. But I'd sworn an oath, right, and I served at the pleasure of the president. So I executed those policies, but I found what helped me navigate that was, again, this how I showed up in the conversation. It wasn't just coming in and saying, this is the way you got to do it because this is what we're saying. It's building relationships with people and saying, this is what we're doing and trying to help them understand and answer questions and be as open and transparent as I can. Obviously, I'm not the decision maker. I can't read the president's mind or what Congress intended exactly all the time. But I can still show a human face. rather than this kind of monolithic. And I think that's where we get into the, we think about nation states, we think of them as these huge actors, right, that kind of don't have faces and what they do to each other doesn't impact real people. But that was, I feel, a thought part of my job was to not only represent a human face in implementing those policies and helping people understand, try to understand what we were doing, but then also at the same token, I think diplomats do this all over the world, reporting back to Washington and saying, this is the impact of the policies. This is what we are seeing in real people's lives every day. And I think that's the role of a diplomat, is to be that face. Edward R. Murrow, the journalist, has a great line that I love talking about diplomacy. And he says, I forget the entire quote, but basically at the end of it, he says, what's most important is the last three feet. Meaning you can have all this interaction, statements from governments and negotiations and whatever. But what's important is that you have people in a room that last three feet between you and someone you're talking to face to face in that relationship building. So I think, again, that gets back to that, how are you showing up in that space? I've had to deliver really difficult news to people. And there's ways to do that. And there's ways to do that that still recognizes, sorry, their dignity as human beings. and trying to honor that. And I think that's, for me, that's how I navigated that tension of maybe being in spaces and having to do things that I didn't agree with personally. But I could, the way I did it, I could still stand up with that ethic of Jesus.

(22:46-24:55) Jennifer Thomas: So I love that because it basically says to me that the way you're standing up is both in love, your discipleship is a demonstration of human love, but then also advocacy, right? That you are acting as an advocate for people, even when you can't necessarily, you don't have the power to change something. This is making me think very specifically about the text that we wanted to kind of dig into today, which is the book of Moroni, which is short. But as I was preparing for this conversation, it struck me how remarkable this text was in that Moroni states up front that he is writing this specifically to extend salvation to the descendants of the people that are currently trying to kill him, that are hunting him to death, that have destroyed his entire civilization. And his sort of last acts are just this profound act of peacemaking where he's trying to do exactly what I think you've just described. The geopolitical has spun out of his control. It didn't go the way that he or his father wanted, but he is determined in the end to stand as a disciple and to extend love and advocate. I was trying to get myself into a headspace where I was like, okay, I could do this. I could extend that kind of love to enemies who have potentially slaughtered all of my family and I could care about their children when I know that they hadn't cared about mine. But it seemed really difficult. The good news is that I have had conversations with you, and I know that you've had lived experiences that maybe Patrick and I, or well, probably Patrick has, but myself and some of our listeners have not, where you can give us examples of people who are alive today who have practiced peace at that level, who have cared about other people when it was against their self-interest. I know that you've spent a lot of time working with people. You've mentioned this in the Middle East. And I was wondering if you could share some of those examples with us. What did you learn from Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers?

(24:55-31:35) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah. So, as mentioned, I had the opportunity to work in Jerusalem from 2017 to 2019 with the government and U.S. government. And at the time, I was part of my portfolio was working with grants to peacemaking organizations. So organizations that work with Israelis and Palestinians to bring them together. at the grassroots level. And I've stayed involved with that work since I left the government six years ago now. And the people that I've met in this space are, without a doubt, the most courageous, the most Christ-like people I have encountered anywhere. And most of the people I'm thinking about are not Christian. And they are the people that inspire me and give me hope in just what you're describing, Jen, how to take Moroni's example and put it in our world today. So a couple of people come to mind, friends of mine, people that I've had the chance to work with. And one, there's a good organization called the Parents Circle Families Forum, which is an organization that works with Israelis and Palestinians And the members of the organization are people who have lost family members in the conflict. So either, usually children, that's why it's called the parent circle, but sometimes siblings or an uncle or an aunt or something like that. Anyway, they have lost a family member in the conflict. What they do is they, their essence basically they say is, if we, the people who have paid the ultimate price in this conflict, if we can come together, and talk about finding a way to move through this conflict and to move to a place where we can live together without violence, then anybody can do it. So some of the people that I think about, there's three in particular. One woman named Robbie Damlin, she's a well-known spokesman for the organization. She had a son who was part of the peace movement and then was serving his military service in the Israeli military and was killed by an Israeli, or sorry, a Palestinian sniper. And she tells the story about how, and it's not my story to tell, and Grigi, you can look her up online and find her telling her story. She talks about how when she, when they came to tell her that her son had been killed, she said, you will not, you are not allowed to kill in my son's name. Basically saying you can't use his death as a reason to go forward and do more destruction. So I think of Rabi, I think of two fathers that I've seen. They often work together, one Israeli, one Palestinian. The Israeli gentleman's name is Rami Elhan, and the Palestinian, his name is Bassam Arameen. And both of them had daughters, I think eight to 12 years old, if I remember correctly, who were killed in the conflict. Bassam, his daughter, was shot by an Israeli soldier, and Rami, his daughter, was killed in a bus bombing in Jerusalem. And so these two men, what they do is they go around Israel and Palestine and around the world telling their stories together. And again, kind of this message of this is our experience in the conflict, paying the ultimate price, and we still choose to come together and promote a nonviolent way forward in resolving this conflict. And they are both deeply committed to their people, right? It's not about abandoning who they are, their identities, and what's important to them in how the conflict ultimately is resolved. is that the center of that, where they're starting from, is that human dignity, that individual life matters, and that violence is not going to get us any way forward. So I think of them a lot, and actually thinking about Mormon and Moroni, watching their entire world collapse around them, I imagine to be a lot like Robbie and Bassam. Another, just another kind of example that I, so I had the opportunity also to work as executive director for an organization called Hands of Peace that brought Israeli and Palestinian and American teenagers together in dialogue about the conflict. And for the Israeli and Palestinian teenagers, for most of them, they were 14 to 16 years old as they participated in this program. For most of them, it was the first chance they'd had to really sit down and talk to someone from the other side. And you can imagine all that that brings up as they talk about their experiences, about the fear and uncertainty that they live with, but then the stress, as some of them described it, kind of the anxiety-inducing conversations of listening to the other side, talk about that. And there was one young woman, a young Israeli woman, she was probably 15 or 16, and after going through this program, she said, I learned how to have a conversation with people who think differently than me and not be stressed out by it. And I love that because we all have conversations with people we disagree with. And again, that could be your spouse, your kids, your teacher, whatever it is. And it is stress-inducing, anxiety-inducing, if you're like me, who already has a high level of anxiety, it ramps it up even more. But we could all use that practice, right? Because we do engage in those conversations of difference. And they can be big political differences, they can be Palestinians-Israeli differences, or they can be your neighbor over, you know, you're cutting the hedge too short, I don't know, whatever it is. But how do you learn to, be in those conversations and stay in a place where you're going to be able to move forward. And again, kind of having that relationship goal at the end in mind. So those are just two examples of people that I've met and their example. I'm always careful when I talk about this because I don't want to think like I'm using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to try to It is terrible. It is horrific. These are real people with real lives. What I'm hoping to illustrate is their examples are something that I can draw on and learn from in navigating conflict in my own space. And I should say, one reason I left the government and came back to the United States is I had multiple Palestinian-Israeli friends say to me, and they still do today, why are you here working on our conflict? You have enough problems at home in your own country. you should go back there and do some work.

(31:37-31:40) Jennifer Thomas: Clean up your own yard first, Fetty.

(31:41-31:47) Scott Rasmussen: But I draw on their examples and their work to kind of inform how I show up in the world every day.

(31:50-32:10) Jennifer Thomas: So what do you think, I'm just trying to figure out, what are the skills they're bringing to bear? What is it? Is it that they're listening? Is it that they're empathetic? What do you think the people that are set apart in your mind as having a strong capacity to do this, what are they drawing on? What are they doing?

(32:13-32:16) Patrick Mason: And what differentiates them from their neighbors or family members who aren't doing that?

(32:17-33:07) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah, right. Yeah. And that's I mean, that's part of what in doing this peace building work. That's part of the question that researchers are always asking is, you know, do people come to this work because they're predisposed to it? Do they come to it because they're curious and then the work does change them? I mean, I'm sure I know there have been volumes written on that and lots of things about not just in this context, but in conflicts all over the world. In my experience from just observing it, I think, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but I think the one thing that does set them apart, and this is evident in personal conversations with people that I've met, is this commitment to seeing, I'll put it in kind of Latter-day Saint terms, seeing everybody as a child of God. And it's not just seeing that, right? It's not just recognizing it, but it's centering that in every interaction and every conversation.

(33:07-33:10) Jennifer Thomas: It's not a throwaway line, right?

(33:10-35:59) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah. I think it's that old. The quote we often hear from C.S. Lewis, right? About if you could see the person you're talking to, if you could see what they're going to become, you'd be inclined to worship them or something like that. And I think that's how the people that I talked about, like Robbie and Rami and Bassam, that's what they do. And I don't know if that's how they were before they lost their children, right? I suspect it was, because that just seems to be the kind of people that they are. But it is in every interaction, every conversation, there is just this deep, love, charity, I think that emanates from them, and it informs how they show up in the world. And I know for some people that I've met, I think it is grounded and centered in their faith, whatever their faith is, whether in this context, it's, you know, Islam or Judaism, or sometimes some Christians that I've met who are involved. But whatever it is, whatever that well they're drawing on, I think it is that. I think that's the skill they're drawing on is centering the divine nature of each individual. And I would say the other thing that they do, and this is something I… one of those skills that you talk about and you always wish you had. I don't know how people actually develop the way they do, but it's listening. They are tremendous listeners, all of them. And what's interesting is when I was working with a lot of people like the people I just described is who, when I first encountered them, it was because I was a government official. We had money, right? We are giving out grants. Their organization is interested in the money that we're giving out to help them advance their mission. It's a great symbiotic relationship. So, but my approach was always, you know, I'm there to learn from them about their organization and what they do and how they do it. And so we can make a decision that this is something we want to invest in or fund. But inevitably in all those conversations, I talked more than they did. And I left every time being like, how did that happen? I was trying to learn and listen from them, but just the, I think it's their, their curiosity and their willingness to listen. and just pull you into a conversation, and that's a skill I do not have, is a way to sit with people and just be genuinely curious about who they are, what motivates them, why they do what they do, how they do it, their families, which just breaks down so many barriers when you have that And I think we've all encountered that, right? People who genuinely are interested in you and listen to you, even from the very first get-go, the first time you've met them, and you walk away thinking, wow, I've known this person all my life, and I don't know what the secret sauce is, but I think there's definitely something there.

(36:00-36:32) Jennifer Thomas: I feel like over the year, one of the things that I feel like I've learned most is that one of the biggest obstacles to peace are just the false assumptions we make about other people, what their motivations are, what they think, what's driving them. And then we build whole narratives about them based on those false assumptions. And I love that what you're saying is the only way to get past that is to love them enough that you're willing to listen. And then those assumptions just start to get fractured. And then you're in a place where you can start to build.

(36:34-38:10) Patrick Mason: So I love hearing these stories of individual peace builders in contexts that seem almost impossible, right? Where they're up against just overwhelming odds. So it's truly inspiring. But I could imagine somebody listening and saying, yeah, I'm also inspired by their individual actions. isn't the moral of the story that all of that peacemaking work in the end didn't make any difference, right? In the face of October 7th, in the face of terrorist attacks, in the face of overwhelming state response by Israel, or we think about Moroni's context, right? All of the preaching of the gospel, all of Mormon sermons about love, all of that, it didn't do enough. to change the hearts of the Nephites certainly didn't do enough to stop the aggression of the Lamanites in the end, right? There's some beautiful stories where it did so for years or even decades, you know, in fourth Nephi, but in the end, right, it seems rather weak in the face of the forces of hate and of violence and of enmity. So how do you think about that in a Book of Mormon context or in a kind of real world geopolitical context where there are overwhelming forces of hatred and violence and contempt?

(38:11-44:27) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah, yeah, and people, whenever I have the chance to talk about the work that I've done in Israel-Palestine, the work that I'm doing now here in the United States, that's always the question, right, that comes up is, but it didn't work, and particularly in Israel-Palestine with October 7th. There's a, I would call it a myth going around, that after October 7th, that the peacebuilding work kind of died and that peacebuilders left and stopped doing their work. And that's not true. For some people, yes, they may need to take a break from, because peacebuilding is hard work. You are engaging, it is stress, like I said before, stress, anxiety-inducing. It is not easy. So sometimes you do need to take a step back and take a breath and collect yourself. And I think the Book of Mormon is, I mean, the quintessential example of this, right? So like you said, Mormon, Moroni, at the end, we have this juxtaposition, both at the end of the Book of Mormon and in the Book of Moroni, of describing the depravity of the people and their obsession with violence, and then juxtaposed with tremendous sermons on love and faith and hope and living in the world. But in the end, we know the end, and the Jaredites ended the same way. I, so when I think about it in like our context today, I like to think about, one is we have this obsession, I think this is not unique to Americans, but I think Americans have a particular obsession with kind of ends. Like we like to say that something has ended, right? Like slavery ended, and so all the problems resulting from that were gone. Or, you know, we got to this point, and so everything, we don't need to work on it anymore. which is just untrue, right? We know that as individual human beings, you resolve today to do this and you did it really well today and then tomorrow you're going to fall off the horse and you're going to do it again. And so I think one is recognizing just that pattern and that we are, when we're talking about nation states, we're talking about groups of human beings who really want to try something, have values and principles that they're trying to live up to, and sometimes they'll make it and sometimes they won't. And I know some people don't like that because they feel it's still kind of squishy and doesn't really get to it, but I think that's, for me, that's what operating as a disciple of Jesus Christ teaches me, that we're working toward an end state at some point, but that isn't now, and that we're making progress toward that. The other thing I do think it's helpful to think about is that there are examples of where it does make a difference. So we look at Israel and Palestine, and it looks dark, and it is dark. And there are examples of other conflicts in other parts of the world, so like in Northern Ireland. So for example, a lot of Palestinian-Israeli peacebuilding organizations will take people to Northern Ireland to learn from what happened and what worked and what didn't in resolving that conflict. or going to South Africa to learn about apartheid South Africa and how they navigated through that conflict and the changes there or other parts of the world. And when they go, they say, look, there are still tensions in Northern Ireland, there are still tensions in South Africa, but they have found a way from a baseline start from, we're gonna live together, let's figure out how to do that. And so I think it's important to point to those examples, and the Book of Mormon has, I think, my favorite example is the anti-Nefi Lehi's, who made this commitment to non-violent living, and it cost them dearly, but then ultimately changed the hearts of their enemies. And so for me, as I think about it, it's that. It's finding those examples of where it does work, and I think this is really what living by faith means, you're envisioning the world you want to get to with the high values and the high principles and ideals, just as you do in your personal life. And sometimes you fall short and you get up and you keep going. Just if I could, another friend of mine from the Israel-Palestine context, a gentleman named Suleiman Khatib or Suley. So he has a book that's about his story. I don't want to try to share all of his story, but just briefly. He was, as a teenager, stabbed an Israeli soldier and then was put into prison for more than a decade. And he talks about his experiences in prison. But one of the things that he was exposed to in prison was they showed a film about the Holocaust, which was the first time in his life that he had ever heard about the Holocaust. And so he talks about how he then went and found books and tried to learn everything he could about the Holocaust because he couldn't imagine that that level of, you know, systematic violence could happen. And that it happened to the Jews, right? In his mind, the people who were, the Israelis, the people who were imprisoning him. So after he left prison, he has since formed an organization called Combatants for Peace, which brings together former Palestinian terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on who's talking, who's defining the conversation, and Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, and they're committed to saying violence isn't working. We're going to try something else. And to me, that's just what I have learned from him, and I think applies to this question, is he tries to live the reality that he wants to see. and it doesn't work every day. He still has, there's still trials for him, there's still trials for his family, unbelievable difficulties living under occupation, but he maintains that vision and that commitment to, I want to live in this world without violence, where we can live together peacefully, and so I'm going to live that way each day. And for me, that's really what it comes down to, looking at the global problems, national problems, what's in control, what I can control is what I'm doing. And can I envision a world in my space where I'm living peacefully with my neighbors? And that, I think that gives me hope and gives some direction, right?

(44:27-45:28) Patrick Mason: In the darkness. I think that's incredibly powerful. And I think Yeah, there's no doubt. And we can't be naive to claim that the Peace Building has 100% success rate. I mean, we just can't claim that. I don't know what the percentage is. It might not even be over 50%. I don't know. I mean, depending on the context. or other things, but I know what the success rate of continuing to engage in the cycle of violence and revenge and hatred is, and that's zero. So peace is a non-zero number, and it's better than that. It doesn't work all the time, but I think part of it, and this is, you know, when I think about Moroni's writings, and part of it is he's channeling his father Mormon, Like, to be a peacemaker is to live in a world of faith, hope, and love, right? I mean, these are the great Christian virtues that the Mormon talks about, that Paul talks about in the New Testament. And

(45:29-45:39) Jennifer Thomas: And Patrick, can I just interrupt? They talk about in letters to people who are isolated, small groups of people who are isolated. I just wanted to point that out, right?

(45:39-46:34) Patrick Mason: Yeah, they're not talking about this in the abstract. I mean, the greatest peace builders in world history are people who know that they're on the pointy end of the stick, right? I mean, Gandhi wasn't talking about this in isolation or in the abstract. Martin Luther King wasn't talking about Mandela. you know, the peacebuilders you've talked about there in Israel-Palestine. And so I think we have to, it's the both-and thing of recognizing, no, this isn't perfect, this is not like a straight line path to success, whatever that is. But it is a kind of confidence and resilience, it is a clear-eyed recognition that the other path leads nowhere. and that we're gonna live in a world motivated by a different set of values. That's the world that I'm gonna try to create.

(46:34-47:30) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah, and I would say, if I could, sorry, Jen, just- No, please. Just what Patrick just said, the peace builders that I've met that I think are the most effective, and by effective, I mean, I think in terms of their ability to draw people in to their work, are exactly those people who admit that this isn't perfect, and we're not saying it's perfect, right? And because there are groups who kind of paint a rosy picture, and they don't have a lot of power to draw it, because people can recognize that it's not real, it's not all rosy. And I think it really is this, they live by faith, hope, and love, that there's faith in what is to come, hope in what is to come, but it's not an, passive faith, it's an, I'm an active contributor in building that. And the tool, if you will, I'm not sure that's the right word, but the tool that I will deploy most in that is love, in building that world.

(47:32-50:53) Jennifer Thomas: So I was just going to share, I recently heard an interview on NPR with John Green, the author. And he talked about the fact that he was speaking to why he holds on to hope. And he said that he's temperamentally not inclined to that. And he wakes up every single morning faced with the despair of the world. And he articulated something so beautifully, far better than I will. So I encourage people to go find that interview and listen to it. But he basically said there's a narration of the arc of basically humanity that is one of despair. He said that whether it's climate crisis or whatever, it's just this story that we can tell ourselves that the good will always fail, that the bad will always win, that there's nothing I can do. And he said, and the reason that story is so appealing is because it's comprehensive and it explains everything. And he said, and you have to find a way to tell For him, hope is the way out of that. But for me, what I took away from that is the need to have a different comprehensive story, right? I want a story that explains everything, and that includes the bad. And that's what the gospel does for me. It explains the bad, but it also explains what the power of the good is, how it can change and transform people's lives. And he sort of ends, at one point, this conversation saying that he turns to facts to sustain his hope. And the example he gives is that he carries this piece of paper in his wallet, and I'll get it wrong, but basically he says, I think it was the year he was born or the year he graduated from high school, I can't remember, 15 million children died of starvation in the world. This year, it was only five. And again, I'm getting the numbers wrong, but his whole point is there are facts that prove the contrary, that good can achieve things, and we have to turn to that comprehensive story. So we're out of time, but I do want to close by just asking you a quick question about the end of the Book of Mormon. So we know that it doesn't have a happy ending. And I'm so struck by the fact that the Book of Moroni is this distillation of the core elements of the gospel, prayer, priesthood, baptism, sacrament, the things that are absolutely required for people to kind of have a functioning church. But then he includes this letter from his father that talks about all of the things we've just mentioned here, and basically, essentially says in so many words, if you do all of those things, but without the change of heart, without you know, being loving without doing all of these things, then it isn't going to work. And you had shared with me that it struck you that this was a letter that Mormon must have written to a group of people who were holding fast in their discipleship. He was writing to someone. So we tend to think of this comprehensive failure of the society. Everyone's hating everyone. But clearly there was a cadre of saints that Mormon was writing to that, as Paul, he knew were believers and were living this out. So I'm just curious if you could kind of close this conversation by sharing with us what you think we can do to be those people, to be the people that hold on to a different narrative and live together closely in a believing community of peacemakers in spite of what's going on around us, right? Not even in denial of it, but in spite of it.

(50:54-55:14) Scott Rasmussen: Yeah, so I think Moroni 7, I think we all know, because it's faith, hope, and love, and it's a great sermon. Notice this until you listen to the Proclaimed Peace podcast and kind of reading the Book of Mormon with a peacemaker's lens, but notice that this is an insertion. Moroni is almost at the end. He has this sermon or letter from his father that I imagine is something he drew on a lot, and that's why he wanted to put it in, right? That he's like, this really meant a lot to me. In verses three and four, Mormon talks about the peaceable followers of Christ and your peaceable walk with the children of men. And so I imagine that there is some group of saints somewhere in their time that still trying and still living, even amidst all the darkness that we normally think of at the end of the Book of Mormon. I think reading this chapter with that in mind and then thinking about our own situation in our world today, I think what I've drawn out of this is just what we were just talking about, is that faith, hope, and love. I think that's what Mormon is setting up for this group of saints in this time. They know the darkness. They can see the world around them. He doesn't need to dwell on that in this sermon. But what he's saying is, I'm noticing that you are peaceable followers of Christ. And then I think he describes how they live in these chapters. He talks about their commitment to what is good. And that's the first 20 verses of the chapter. And how anything that's good, or everything that is good, comes from Christ. And I think that goes back to what we were just talking about with some peacemakers that we know and have encountered, either that we know or we see in history, this commitment to the vision of the world they want to build. And that wherever that goodness is coming from, in verse 13 when it says, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually, and everything which inviteth and enticeth to do good comes from God. And then he jumps right into, with that, into living by faith. And again, that's what I think, I think that's what peacemaking is. is a real call to step into, I'm envisioning this world. And that's what we, I think that's something in our theology we understand about our discipleship, right? Is that we're here on this earth to learn and to grow and to build the best world we can, knowing that Christ will make it all right in the end. We don't have to solve the story ourselves, but we are doing our part in our moment. And I think that's what living by faith and hope is. And then I just think that the close Just to kind of summarize it, it's a description of charity and inverse 25 right which is very similar to the description and definition of charity that Paul gives to the saints in the in in the old world, as it were. And I think that's what everything is pointing to. And I think there's a reason that the book almost ends right with this, that this is how you have to operate and live in the world. And I think, I'll just say the last thing, with charity, I think inherent is this curiosity. And I think that is the real antidote, I think, if we're talking about in the United States, maybe, to polarization and the struggles we're facing in our own communities and families and country, is getting curious about someone, Jen, like you were saying before, and where we can get to where we can tear down those assumptions that because you voted for this, or you support that candidate, I know all these things about you. And I think charity invites us into a curiosity where we don't know all the things about them, other than that they're a child of God, and that's where I'm gonna start. And what I love is how Moroni, or Mormon, I guess, writing the sermon ends it, right, that he talks about charity, then he says, then when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And that's the message to me of the Book of Mormon, of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, of being a peacemaker, is to become like him, and he will see us and recognize us and we will know him because we have developed that. It's not because everything's gone swimmingly for us. It's not because it went easily for us. It's because we've traversed like the ultimate peacemaker. We've gone through the conflict, not around it or avoided it.

(55:16-57:21) Patrick Mason: That's really beautiful. And what I'm thinking here is I've heard a phrase, we're recording this episode about a week after Easter, and I've heard in two different sermons over the last week that the phrase, the worst thing is not the last thing, that that's actually the promise of Easter. that the worst thing is not the last thing. And I think, I've always thought and written and theologized around the idea that the Book of Mormon doesn't have a happy ending. But as I think about Moroni chapter 10, he points us to this idea that the worst thing is not the last thing. He has experienced the worst thing. right? It cannot get worse than what Moroni experienced, literally the annihilation of his entire people, all of his family, all of his friends, the destruction of the church, right? I mean, everything is gone. And he tells us in Moroni 10, it's not the last thing. And this is why he's writing, and this is his faith and hope in Jesus. And the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice, you know, all of those kinds of things. And so, Scott, you're helping me rethink that maybe the Book of Mormon, it's a very, very sad story here with the Jaredites and with the Nephites. But at the core, at the heart of a peacemaker is to believe that there actually is There is something else. We hope for a better world as Moroni tells us. So thank you. So how do you, the last question for you is how in a world of contention and contempt and now you've done like your Israeli and Palestinian friends have told you, you've come back to the United States to help us work on our conflicts. How and where do you find peace?

(57:22-59:09) Scott Rasmussen: So the short answer is, I find peace in Christ. And I think how I connect to Christ or that peace changes over different stages or seasons of my life. Sometimes it's been a place that I like to go, right? Sometimes it's a person I like to talk to or a scripture. But right now, where I go to find peace right now is a song by a Christian artist called Always Good. and the artist is Andrew Peterson, and I encourage you to look it up on wherever you listen to your music. But the song is essentially a conversation between someone in a trial and struggle with Christ and kind of saying, don't you see me? What's going on here? And asking Christ to be with me in the trial. And then over the course of the song, realizing he is with me. and he always has been, because he's always good. And all that is good is, like we talked about before, comes from Christ. So I go to this song now when I'm kind of seeking that grounding feeling, and that feeling of being close to the Spirit and being close to Christ. And what I've found is interesting is I go to the song and listen for it, so that I can draw on that message of, how can I have Christ with me? How can I be with Christ? And when I walk away from the song, almost every time after I listen to it, I leave feeling, how can I be with others in their struggle, in their trial? And so it has a real, again, it's that loving God and his purposes for his creation, I think, both ends of that piece. That's right now where I find peace is always good by Andrew Peterson.

(59:09-59:27) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you, Scott. It has been a delight to have you. And you have landed this little journey we've been on. You're our final guest. And you just really brought us home exactly where I think we where we would have ideally liked to land. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being with us.

(59:27-59:32) Scott Rasmussen: A real pleasure for me. Appreciate it. Thank you for doing this project. It's been a real blessing for me and I know for many others.

(59:35-59:54) Patrick Mason: Thanks everybody for listening today. We really appreciate it. We just want to invite you to subscribe to the podcast and also to rate and review it. We love hearing feedback from listeners, so please email us at podcast at mweg.org. We also want to invite you to think about ways that you can make peace in your life this week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

(01:00:00-01:00:15) Jennifer Thomas: Thank you for listening to Proclaim Peace, a proud member of the Faith Matters Podcast Network. Faith Matters holds expansive conversations about the restored gospel to accompany individuals on their journey of faith. You can learn more about Faith Matters and check out our other shows at faithmatters.org.