Doug: What a treat today to have John Bytheway back with us here on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. And it's always fun to introduce you--I can introduce you a million different ways--a friend that I've known for many, many years. We were just talking about the good old days, you know, before marriage.

John: Yeah.

Doug: And we were talking about family and then of course education, but let's just kind of stick to the liner notes here. Graduated from Brigham Young University, favorite speaker and teacher, Master's Degree in Religious Education, part-time instructor at BYU, author of many best-selling books and audio products, wife Kimberly. Now, it says four children, but we have just had an addition.

John: Yep. We've got to update that.

Doug: Yeah, update that as of just a couple of days ago.

John: Yeah. He was born on Super Bowl Sunday, the doctors pointed out. In fact, one minute before the Super Bowl started. Kim was watching Anne of Green Gables on the hospital TV.

Doug: I was going to say, that must have been a traumatic experience for those doctors, you know.

John: Yeah, they're like, "We've got to get this done so we can go in the other room."

Doug: That's right. Come on, Kim. Get going. Well it's a delight to have you. What's the new baby's name?

John: Timothy.

Doug: Timothy. Well we welcome Timothy. I mentioned the books, I mentioned the tapes--we used to say tapes, now CDs--and this one is No-Brainers. Now, before we talk about No-Brainers: Five Hard Decisions that the Gospel Makes Easy--I love these two little, there's a little devil and a little angel on the cover. Those wouldn't happen to be your kids would they?

John: No, people have asked me that.

Doug: Those are rent-a-kids.

John: Yeah, Deseret Book does their own cover, and that one made me laugh.

Doug: Yeah, it's makes me laugh, too. I looks just like a Halloween costume that my son wore one year, as a matter of fact.

John: Does it?

Doug: Yeah, okay. What else has been happening in your life? You know, the addition of a new baby, what else is going on?

John: Well, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

Doug: Yeah, me too.

John: I'm teaching part time down at BYU and up at the Salt Lake Center. I do some part-time work at Deseret Book, and no complaints. Life's good.

Doug: Of the myriad of things that you are involved in, short of taking care of your family, what do you enjoy the most? I mean, speaking, being an author, working at Deseret Book, being in a classroom. What do you like the most?

John: Um, you know, I like all of them, but I think the one that weighs the most heavily on my mind now is being a dad.

Doug: Mm-hmm.

John: And having five children that are a piece of cake right now because they're seven years old and under, and you know, being aware of the world that they're growing up in.

Doug: Oh, yeah.

John: I think more than anything that's what occupies my mind and sometimes keeps me awake at night.

Doug: You know, prior to us doing this interview I had a great but yet startling conversation with people at the Attorney General's office, the FBI, and former First Lady Jackie Leavitt joined us to talk about some of the chat rooms and some of the dangers that are out there on the internet. And it's interesting that this just happens to be on my mind today. The portals that flow into our homes, just open lines, that if we turn the spigot it flows so freely into our home.

John: Yeah.

Doug: And it can either be pure, wonderful light and knowledge and water or it can be just sewage.

John: Yeah.

Doug: And these are things that, honestly, when I was a teenager, when I was dating, as a young adult, these things were still science fiction. And now, as you mentioned, your kids are younger than mine. My youngest now is nineteen, but oh, man, even still I worry about it daily.

John: Yeah. It's ironic the software is called Windows. It can be--you know, the internet--a tool or a weapon. But it can open windows into the world that you normally would never peek into.

Doug: Mm-hmm.

John: And sometimes they kind of intrude on you.

Doug: Oh, exactly. And it can happen, it really can happen innocently.

John: Yeah.

Doug: And then if you have any desire at all to seek it out it just flows.

John: You can find it. Even if you have filters. I've had kids email me and say, "My filter's a joke."

Doug: Oh, yeah.

John: "What do I do?" And they get stuck in there and it's, yeah, it's a scary world.

Doug: You know, I've mentioned this to my kids. When I was a kid you had to decide to, and even go out of your way, and even be somewhat crafty at being naughty. It was an effort. It's not even an effort today.

John: Right. And you can, the illusion is--and actually I talk about this in the CD--that it's, let's see, what are the three A's I've heard? Affordable, Accessible, and Anonymous.

Doug: Yeah.

John: The idea that, you know, years ago if you wanted to go buy something you had to look at a checker in the face.

Doug: That's right. And you had to worry whether the bishop was going to walk through the front door, you know.

John: Right. But now you can, in the privacy of your own room, bring some of the worst stuff the world has right on your computer.

Doug: That's right.

John: And so it's a different world.

Doug: Let's talk about No-Brainers: Five Hard Decisions that the Gospel Makes Easy. What was the inspiration for this new CD?

John: Well, for a long time I've had youth leaders that, you know, very kindly say, "How come you don't do something about making good choices?" And I've thought about it, and I've thought really the, probably better than talking about choices would be talking about consequences. I've done things where I've, Standards Nights, "Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this." But wouldn't it be nice to say, "Here are real consequences for real people that did this." And I wanted young people to see that while they might think living the gospel is hard, when you look at the consequences it is the easiest way to live.

Doug: Absolutely.

John: Because the consequences come back, and they laugh, and they can affect your whole life. So that was the idea. Instead of just "Here's the do's and don'ts." Just say, "Here's the consequences." And what was kind of fun--our radio audience cannot see this, even if I hold it up to the microphone, but I made this stick because of a quotation that I heard. Henry Emerson Fosdick said, "He who picks up one end of the stick picks up the other."

Doug: Right.

John: So I make a big deal about this in the talk, and notice every time I pick up one end I pick up the other. But what Korihor tried to say was, "Whatsoever a man did was no crime"--in other words, there is no other, there is no consequence. "When a man is dead that's the end thereof, there is no consequence." And I always ask the kids, you know, "Finish this phrase for me. `What happens in Vegas....'"

Doug: Stays in Vegas.

John: And they all finish it. And I say, "There's the same idea, that you can do all this and there's no consequence. It's okay, you can get away with it."

Doug: Right.

John: But, in fact, there are. And these are some of them. So I picked five things and talked about those.

Doug: Let's talk about the first of the five, then, and going to the consequence maybe first and then how easy it would be to avoid that.

John: Yeah, well the first one I just thought, that kind of affects all the others, is "Who should I be friends with?" The big choice.

Doug: Oh, boy. How many times have I gone over that with my kids?

John: Yeah. And I tried for a long time, and then finally I thought the best way I could think to explain it was, it's like you're getting in a car with somebody. You want a ride and you get in. You're going where they're going.

Doug: That's right.

John: And you're in the back seat. You're going where they're going, and you better know where they're going before you get in the car.

Doug: That's right.

John: And that can be a great thing, and that can be a scary thing depending on where they're going.

Doug: And how they're going to get there.

John: Yeah, exactly. Because you're going where they're going. There was a friend of mine, Steve Kirk, years ago at his mission farewell he said something so funny. He said, "I want my friends to know they've made me what I am, and I know that they'll be held accountable for that."

Doug: Yeah.

John: You know, they were good friends. But it was a funny way to say it. And I thought, yeah, you're going where they're going. And the thing that is hard about friends is it just kind of happens.

Doug: I know.

John: You don't really pass out applications and take interviews for, "Okay, are you going to be my friend? Let me hear your background." It just kind of falls into place, and so it's one of the toughest things you can ask kids to do is look at your friendships and maybe change them if you have to.

Doug: Many of us if we were really asked to trace back the genesis of a friendship, it's really kind of hard.

John: Yeah, you don't know.

Doug: It just kind of evolves. It just all of the sudden happens.

John: Yeah.

Doug: It comes almost out of the ether. Before we take a break, what is another one of the hard decisions that, again, the gospel would make easy?

John: Well, the second one that I wanted to touch on was smoking, drinking, and drugs. And these, I mean, with smoking I didn't spend much time on it because I thought the consequences are printed right there on the package.

Doug: Yeah.

John: This will kill you. But some don't have that printed there. And I think for more kids today, you know, probably for more, alcohol was more of a temptation.

Doug: Yeah.

John: And I've got a guy in my ward who is a recovering alcoholic that just made the greatest comment in High Priests once, in our priesthood quorum meeting. He said, "You know, when I started drinking I have to admit I had a great time."

Doug: Yeah.

John: He said, "I had a lot of fun." And then he said, "And then it turned on me, and it dictated where I went, where I spent my money." He said, "I lost my wife, I lost the chance to raise my two children, I lost my job." He said, "In twenty-five years I spent five hundred thousand dollars on drugs and alcohol." And that description was so good to me I asked him for permission to use that. Because it was fun at first but it turned on me.

Doug: Yeah.

John: And that was the consequence. And I give them a couple of more like that, that yeah, it might be fun at first, but.

Doug: Yeah. This is another thing that just in the last week on my regular show we have talked about. I had the people from Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, I had some of the local authorities who came in, and honest to Pete, the downsides, especially for younger drinking--and they have the display where they show the sober brain, the sober brain on the left of the kid who doesn't drink at all.

John: Yeah, I caught the tail end of that.

Doug: And you look at all the brain activity that's going on, the memory functions and all of that. You look at the sober brain of the fifteen year old that drinks a lot, and they're sober at the moment, the activity in that brain is miniscule.

John: Yeah.

Doug: Then you look at the addiction factor, that for someone who starts drinking at age twenty-one, it's a five percent chance you'll become addicted. At the age of thirteen and fourteen, it's a forty-five percent chance that you'll become addicted. It is just frightening. I worry about that so with kids today. And like you said, alcohol--you know, isn't it funny, Utah used to be seen as almost, "Oh, those conservative Utahans, all those Mormons," because we have the Utah Clean Air Act and things like that.

John: Yeah.

Doug: Now Utah is actually behind the ball on that. I think smoking is so clearly recognized as dangerous.

John: Yeah, there was something I saw about California having outdoor smoking in certain outdoor places a ban on that.

Doug: Well, look at JFK Airport. I mean, we allow smoking in our airport where they don't in New York, in LA.

John: Right. And there's another thing that happened. I ran into a friend, a high school friend, downtown. He said, "Let's go to lunch." And he's a few years older than I am, and he mentioned a couple of guys a few years older than he was. "Remember these guys from school?" "Yeah." "Do you remember they were kind of partying and drinking a lot?" "Yeah." "Do you know what? They both kind of cleaned things up, went on missions, came home, went to school, and got successful in business and stuff." He said, "They started traveling, and both of them in a hard moment," and we all have those, "they took another drink." And he said, and it was so funny, it echoed my friend in my own quorum. He said, "They lost their marriages; they lost their jobs."

Doug: It turns on you.

John: And it turned on them. And now--that's not what you see on the commercials.

Doug: No.

John: But when you look at the consequences it's an easier way to live to just say, "I'm not going there in the first place."

Doug: Yeah. I've had the chance to talk with some of the former Marlboro Men...

John: Mm-hmm.

Doug: ...as they were dying of cancer.

John: Yeah.

Doug: People that did smoking and chewing tobacco things where their whole jaw now is gone to cancer, and they look like something out of a horror movie.

John: Yeah.

Doug: Let's take a break. We'll come back. I want to talk about the other No-Brainers, coming up on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. Our guest today is John Bytheway.

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Doug: John Bytheway is our guest on Everyday Lives, Everyday Values. And before we let the time slip away let's go to the other of the hard decisions that the gospel makes easy. We've handled two; let's go to three.

John: The third one I had was just "Should I view pornography?" Elder Holland made a statement a few years ago that the door to ludeness and vulgarity and obscenity swings only one way and only opens farther and farther, it never seems to swing back. So it's just going to get worse.

Doug: Yeah.

John: And it's so easy for kids to find that I thought we've got to talk about this because in my Standards Nights, don't do it, don't do it. Well, what if you've gone down that road?

Doug: Yeah.

John: What are you going to do?

Doug: Yeah.

John: And I've got a friend, he's a mission president right now in Chile. You know, Brad Wilcox. You've probably interviewed him before.

Doug: Sure. I know Brad.

John: He'll be back in July, but he got a letter from a young man that said, "You know, I went over to a friend's house."

Doug: Yeah.

John: And we talk about that. Is that the kind of friend, are you going where he wants to go. But this friend showed him some pornography, and this kid got so addicted that he said, "My grades suffered, I felt terrible about myself, and I'd try. And then I'd get caught back up in this bad habit again. And then I'd be tough for a while, and then I'd get caught up in it again." And he said, "I'd just give anything if I had never started in the first place."

Doug: Yeah.

John: And once I am able to share this and see the consequences it helps to see that is a harder way to live than to just say no in the first place. Even though you're intensely curious as a teenager, and it's just right there, a mouse click away, sometimes.

Doug: Oh, yeah.

John: But it's so much easier just not to get started down that road. And one of the things that was really kind of fun with this talk is to find--on my little stick here I've got "Choice/Consequence," I've also got "If/Then." The scriptures, I found dozens of if/then scriptures. If you do this then this. And to me one of the most poignant was this if/then from Section 63, Verse 16: "If any shall commit adultery in their hearts then (and the then is implied) they shall not have the Spirit but shall deny the faith and shall fear."

Doug: Yeah.

John: And one of the worst things that can happen is to lose that protection and guidance of the Spirit.

Doug: You know, I think everybody to one degree or another has felt that. And sometimes it is a gradual, but all of the sudden you wake up one day and you just go, "I'm missing something. Something is missing." And it might be because of a bad feeling you had toward a neighbor, it might be because of something like you've just described. But that is a terrible thing to feel like you have lost--and sometimes you don't even notice it, it just slips away.

John: You know what's fascinating about it? Sister, you know, Dr. Wendy Watson.

Doug: Oh, absolutely.

John: She did this experiment with some women--this is on a CD of hers called Let Your Divine Nature Take the Lead--of just this experiment. And after a couple of weeks these women came back and just said all these amazing things that had happened to them. Anything you would want from any self-help program in the world had happened. Greater patience, greater ability to be with their kids, greater love in their marriage, greater ability to want to clean the house, more energy, all this stuff. And then she explained what she did. All she did was tell them, "For the next two weeks I want you to pray with real intent that you will always have the Spirit to be with you."

Doug: Wow.

John: "When a crisis situation comes up, imagine the Spirit being right there, and then handle it." And I mean, I couldn't sleep that night. I was thinking, "Duh! That is so obvious."

Doug: I know. It's so simple.

John: What is the last line in the prayer on the sacrament that we say every week, "That they may always have His Spirit to be with them."

Doug: That's right.

John: So obviously Satan's first goal, "I've got to get the Spirit out of this kid, out of this woman, this man, this adult, so that I can drive them into something worse." And here's the if/then: If you get involved in the things that get your lusts going you'll lose the Spirit.

Doug: Boy, absolutely. What's Number Four?

John: Number Four--I've got to turn my pages here--is "Should I keep the law of chastity?" And, oh, this is probably the toughest subject I have ever tried to handle in a youth talk because certainly you can see the consequences. But what if there's not a pregnancy? And I actually borrowed some things from Brother Michael Wilcox that you've probably interviewed. He tells just this heart wrenching story about this wonderful young lady who had had some problems in her past, cleaned up her life, was thoroughly renewed, cleansed by the Atonement, as we all know can happen, but then got engaged to this wonderful guy. And the hugest question I've ever tried to address, "Do I have to tell him about my past?"

Doug: Yeah. Oh, boy, really.

John: And, you know what? Just having to agonize over that question is a consequence.

Doug: Reason enough not to do it.

John: Yeah. I can't give you answer. In fact, Brother Wilcox says, "I was in company of a member of the Twelve and asked him that very question. And he said, `Nobody can really give that counsel. Those are such personal and private decisions that can only be made with the inspiration of the Spirit. No one is going to give a blanket statement on that.'" And so I didn't either.

Doug: Yeah.

John: But the question, having to agonize over that, "Do I want there to be this big secret in our marriage? What if it comes back through another friend somehow?"

Doug: Source or something.

John: I mean, it's just a tough question.

Doug: That is tough, because on one hand your slate is clean.

John: Absolutely. And we know that.

Doug: Christ has paid the price, and so have you.

John: Right.

Doug: But yet.

John: But on the other hand, having a secret in your marriage like that is not a good thing. And that's why I think that, you know, whoever Brother Wilcox talked to was wise to say, "You can't make a statement on that."

Doug: Yeah.

John: But, I mean, to agonize over that is a consequence.

Doug: Right. Final, Number Five. The fifth hard decision that the gospel makes very easy.

John: Oh, sorry we're just running out of time. The fifth one was just "Should I come to Christ" and ask him--repent of my sins, come to Christ, and kind of give my life to the Lord?

Doug: Right.

John: And there's a great statement that President Benson made once that men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that he can make a lot more out of their lives than they can.

Doug: Yeah.

John: And one of the things I had to talk to the kids about was I knew there could be an objection in some of their minds. "Wait, I know somebody who does all that stuff you talked about. They're rewarded with popularity and friends and a cell phone that takes pictures. And now you're standing up here telling me that I wouldn't be happy." But the consequences always catch up. And there is greater happiness--I loved what happened. Jesus says, he's preached a hard sermon--this is John Chapter 6, I think--and everybody leaves. He says, "Will ye also go away?" The Twelve, and was it Peter? "Where would we go?"

Doug: Yeah.

John: The words of eternal life. And there's scriptures that I love to read here towards the end about, "How could you have given away to the enticing of him who is seeking to hurl away your soul to endless misery and endless woe?" And you're thinking, "Well, duh." There's no-brainer scriptures, I call them, because these seers see things so clearly. And when you see the consequences it does become clear, and you think, "Why would I go that way?"

Doug: That always frustrates me in those lucid moments where I go, "How in the world could I have thought that I could or should or would get away with this." I mean, I think everybody's done that.

John: Yeah.

Doug: And you do ask yourself, again, in those lucid, rational moments, "Why in the world would anybody ever fall into that snare?"

John: Yeah. And that's I think one of the great things that these scriptures do with if and then statements is kind of point out to us consequences before we go there. Or if we have gone down these roads a little bit we can think, "The way out of this has been in front of me all the time. I clean up my act, I come to Christ so that he can clean up my act."

Doug: Mm-hmm.

John: And there is no happiness outside the plan of happiness.

Doug: Yeah.

John: Duh. No-brainer. You're not going to find it. You can try, but you won't find it out there.

Doug: Good luck.

John: Yeah.

Doug: John, I wish we had more time.

John: Me, too.

Doug: Every time you're here I wish we had more time to talk, but the CD we're talking about is No-Brainers: Five Hard Decisions that the Gospel Makes Easy. John, it's always great to have you here. We wish you good luck. What are you working on now?

John: Man, it's about the dumbest decision I ever made, but I'm trying to write a book on Isaiah.

Doug: Oh, good for you.

John: And it is the most humbling thing I've every done. So, but we're working on it. It's Isaiah for Airheads, so we hope it'll be out later this year.

Doug: We'll look forward to the results. I need that book.

John: Airhead being the author.

Doug: No, no, no. I need that book, so. John, thanks for joining us.

John: Thank you.