Maxwell Institute Podcast #172: How Do We Protect the Innocent and Help the Repentant? Featuring Brigham Frandsen

Rosalynde Welch: Forgiveness is a central commandment for any man or woman who chooses to walk the way of Jesus Christ. But so is the Christian responsibility to protect the vulnerable. What happens when two commandments--like the commands given to Adam and Eve in the garden--come into conflict with one another? Can we protect the innocent and fully forgive the repentant? As our Mother Eve demonstrated, spiritual dilemmas like this call for our courage, our creativity, and our faithful trust in God’s power.

On this episode of the podcast, I interview Dr. Brigham Frandsen, professor of economics at Brigham Young University. Brigham happens to be my little brother, but I’ve looked up to him almost my whole life for his intelligence and his goodness--and his athleticism, something I was not blessed with.

I invited Brigham on the show because I was curious about what disciple-scholarship looks like in quantitative or technical disciplines. Most of my guests this season have been scholars of the humanities--history, philosophy, literature--things like that. It’s not hard to draw connections between those fields and the faith that we share. But are the methods and findings of economics, engineering, and mathematics equally relevant to the gospel?

I think Dr. Frandsen shows convincingly that they are. Brigham shared with me an economics paper looking at the effects of certain policies aimed at rehabilitating ex-offenders by making it easier to get jobs after they’ve served their time. But those policies turn out to have unintended consequences that may harm employment opportunities for certain groups with clean records. So how do we protect the innocent, while helping those who want to turn their lives around? It turns out that this is a question with profound implications for lived Christian discipleship, and with immediate application in religious settings like a Latter-day Saint ward.

The Savior said, “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.” Elder Holland adds this: “It is, however, important for some of you living in real anguish to note what He did not say. He did not say, … ‘In order to forgive fully, you have to reenter a toxic relationship or return to an abusive, destructive circumstance.’” How to live in this tension is a question we should be asking -- and it’s the topic of our conversation today. I hope you enjoy it.

Welch: Brigham Frandsen, welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast. And welcome to the end of our course.

Brigham Frandsen: Thank you. Good to be here with you, sister.

Welch: I know this makes it extra easy and extra fun because we're siblings. Brigham, today we are talking about some pretty heavy themes, accountability, forgiveness, something like repentance or starting a new life. But we're going to be talking about them in a different sort of tone or key than our listeners might be expecting from the Maxwell Institute podcast. And this is actually a little bit of an experiment that I've been wanting to try all season long. But I'm only getting to it now, which is to interview a scholar outside of the humanities who thinks in numbers and hypotheses and works in a different sort of way of gathering and collecting data. And yet your work as an economist really does have implications for our spiritual life and our collective religious life as well together. So we're gonna see if we can translate from the realm of economics into the realm of faith today.

Before we dive right into the article that we're going to launch from, I wonder first if you would just talk a little bit more about that, about how you integrate your faith as a Latter-day Saint with your job as a professor of economics, the academic discipline that you've devoted your life to. You teach at BYU. I'm sure you've thought about this. How does your spiritual life integrate with your professional life, if at all?

Frandsen: It does. It for sure does. I love teaching and researching here at BYU. It's pretty much my dream job. And a big reason for that is because I don't have to wear two hats in my life. Economics professor sometimes and committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ and others. Here at BYU, it's the same hat. Some of that integration happens in the classroom. So last year I taught on Tuesdays right after the BYU campus devotional. And at the start of class, we'd talk about what everyone got out of the devotional for a minute or two before diving into econometrics or machine learning or whatever was on the slate for that day. Or at lunch in the hallways with colleagues, we're just as likely to talk about the latest conference talk as we are about the latest cool economics paper. So it really is integrated, especially here at BYU, my interest in economics and my commitment to the gospel.

Welch: How was it that you first got interested in economics?

Frandsen: My first experience with economics was in high school, AP Economics, and I hated it. It was the boringest thing ever. I didn't think I would ever want, you know, after I finished that class and took the AP test, I thought I was done with it. Was studying physics at BYU and my sophomore year I had a free period and my sister Naomi was also here at BYU and we thought we'd like to take a class together.

Welch: Hehehe.

Frandsen: We both had room in our schedules to take Econ 110 from Larry Wimmer here at BYU. And that really opened my eyes to what economics really was. It wasn't the formula for GDP that I had learned in AP Economics in high school, but it was a new way of looking at how people make decisions, how people think about allocating scarce resources, how people think about achieving their objectives, whatever they are. And that kind of made me fall in love with economics and ended up double majoring in economics and physics and then now I'm doing economics for a living.

Welch: Yeah, well when you put it that way, I really can see the relevance of economics when you think of it as a question about human beings and about our motivations and about the choices that we make under conditions of scarcity. Those questions have immediate relevance to both our individual spiritual lives, what motivates us, and also how we live together as saints in a church, right, where we have to share resources and allocate them in certain ways.

Do you remember Professor Wimmer? Do you remember him bringing the gospel into the classroom in any particular ways, or did he have a certain way of integrating his faith with his work?

Frandsen: So he did. Larry Wimmer also happened to be my stake president and at the time in my student stake there and so it was pretty great to you know on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the classroom see him talking about economics and then on Sundays and stake conference teaching the gospel and it really was one of the same. He wasn't two different people. He was the same person and was really powerful for me to see that in my professor, a scholar and a disciple as one person.

Welch: Ah. Yeah. Well, let's dive into the article that you brought to me. It was a fascinating article. The title is The Unintended Consequences of, quote, ban the box, statistical discrimination and employment outcomes when criminal histories are hidden. And this was an article that was written by two scholars, Jennifer Doliak and Benjamin Hansen. And it was published a couple of years ago in 2020 in the Journal of Labor Economics. I learned a ton from reading it and it raises some really fascinating questions. So set this up for us. What are they looking at? And briefly, what are their findings here?

Frandsen: Sure. Yeah, so this paper is written by my friend Ben Hanson. He's a professor at University of Oregon and his co-author, Jennifer Diliak, is an economist at Arnold Ventures. And Ben and I were undergrads, undergrad economics majors together here at BYU. So we go way back. Ben and Jennifer got interested in ban the box policies, just reading about them in the news a few years ago.

“Ban the box” refers to the box that many employers have job applicants check to indicate whether they've been convicted of a crime. From the point of view of the employer, you can understand why they would want to know if a potential employee had been convicted of a crime. That's kind of relevant information about the reliability and trustworthiness of a worker. But from the point of view of the ex-offenders themselves, you can see why the box could be so damaging. It's like a big Scarlet A or Jean Valjean's yellow passport from Les Miserables that he had to carry around, naming him an ex-criminal. You would think the best way to prevent ex-offenders from becoming re-offenders would be to allow them to get jobs and climb out of the economic situation that might have led them to commit a crime in the first place. So with the hopes of helping ex-offenders get jobs and keep them from returning to crime, many states, counties, or cities have enacting these policies that make it illegal for employers to ask applicants about criminal history. But–

Welch: So that's what it means by ban the box. They're banning that box that you would have to check on an employment application to say, yes, I have previously been incarcerated.

Frandsen: Exactly. Exactly, they're banning that box. But Ben and Jennifer thought there might be a dark side to these ban the box policies that were meant to be so helpful. If employers were not able to pinpoint which of their applicants were ex-offenders, it might spook them away from hiring people who belong to a demographic group with lots of ex-offenders altogether, namely young black or Hispanic men without much schooling.

So they set out to find out if banning the box helped or hurt. And they had to get a little clever to do this. You might think it's easy to figure out if ban the box policies helped or hurt. Just look at cities or states that ban the box and see if more young black or Hispanic men are able to get jobs in those places than places that don't ban the box. The problem is that cities and states that ban the box...tend to be places with the largest number of ex-offenders. No surprise. But it means that even without ban the box, you'd expect those places to look different from cities and states that didn't ban the box. Economists call this selection bias. And to get around selection bias, Ben and Jennifer had to find a way to compare apples to apples, or in other words, compare cities and states that banned the box to cities and states that look like them. So their idea was to compare

Welch: Mmm.

Frandsen: Cities and states that banned the box early to places that also banned the box, but just a little later. So if it's more or less random, exactly when the political pieces come together to enact a ban the box policy, then that should be a fair comparison. And what they found was surprising, at least to those who expected ban the box to help. So banning the box made it harder, not easier for low skilled young black and Hispanic men to find jobs.

Welch: Hmm

Frandsen: The very groups the policy was meant to help were actually hurt.

Welch: Why is that?

Frandsen: And so the reason why is that because when employers couldn't screen out ex-offenders it became much riskier to hire people who belonged to groups with lots of ex-offenders so they stopped hiring from those groups altogether. Economists call this statistical discrimination, and the collateral damage was young black or hispanic men with a clean record who are now being lumped together with ex-offenders and not able to find jobs.

Welch: Mm. Wow. So was this a surprising finding for you?

Frandsen: For me, as economists, we're always thinking about the unintended consequences of things. And so, for economists, it was not that much of a surprise although it was a surprise that they were able to find such clear evidence for it. We think about economics and we think about incentives and we think, okay, this thing could be going on but the fact that it was a large enough effect for them to actually detect was surprising for me when I read this paper.

Welch: Yeah. One thing I really like about what the authors did here is that I feel like they were able to really bring out the human stories and the human stakes in the midst of the data and the policies. And they really helped me to see things through the point of view of an ex-offender, right? I think all of us know somebody who has made a mistake in their life, sometimes a big mistake that has had real consequences that might include some time in jail. And yet we know that they're capable of change, and we know that they can get their life back on track. And as you say, a job is a big part of that. So we can see why banning the box might seem like it would help, because if you can just get that person into an interview, then there in the interview, they can show a potential employer, like, yes, I am job ready. Maybe I had this in my past, but I've changed. I'm going to be a reliable employee. I'm going to make, you know, I'm going to be worth your time and worth your investment in me. So we want that. So why not just ask employers to do that? What's the big deal about having, about banning the box and just asking employers to interview, you know, the applicants that look best? And then at that point after the interview, screening out maybe an ex-offender or somebody who doesn't seem job ready.

Frandsen: So that is actually one compromise that's been suggested. Don't ban the box, but look at the information later. Give people a chance to sit in front of you and get to know them, and then afterwards look. And that, I think, would be a good compromise. And that would ideally get the best of both worlds, where you do give ex-offenders a chance to rehabilitate and to get that path towards a job. And economic opportunities that can hopefully keep them from falling back into whatever got them in trouble in the first place, but without exposing those with clean records, without lumping them together with others. So that would be a great compromise, and I think that's been implemented in some places. Another possibility is there are some kinds of industries and jobs where having a criminal record isn't a deal breaker. And if you can steer ex-offenders towards those kinds of industries and jobs, then they'll have this path back without exposing those with clean records to the statistical discrimination that could come from lumping them all together. And there's some evidence that there are pathways like that too. Jobs, industries where having a record isn't a deal breaker.

Welch: I really appreciated the authors really helping us to see it from all different points of view and see what the trade-offs are here and how those have effects in human lives. So I asked you to suggest an article that had some kind of bearing or significance for our ethics, our spirituality as Latter-day Saints. What was it about this paper that seemed relevant to spirituality, to religion, and to our collective life?

Frandsen: So this paper, to me, really speaks to ideas of repentance and forgiveness and redemption, which are all wonderful things, but which also come with complications of welcoming someone back who may have violated our trust or betrayed our community, welcoming them back. And once again allowing them to be part of our families, part of our community, and some of the difficulties of accomplishing that. So this idea of this Christian idea of repentance, I think has a lot to do with the idea of making the criminal justice system more about rehabilitation than about retribution, which I think is a wonderful goal. And of course rehabilitation can't happen unless ex-offenders can be assimilated back into mainstream society. And it's not just about the ex-offenders' opportunity for redemption and repentance, but for the rest of us too. I've visited jails a few times and I can't help but feeling that so many people whose days and years are squandered behind bars could have so much to offer their families and the rest of society if they could be helped along this path to rehabilitation.

Welch: Yeah, absolutely. It brings up so many New Testament passages of visiting those in prison and going after the lost sheep and reaching out to the sinner, right? We see these themes so prominently in the ministry of Jesus Christ and they really are central to what we want to do as members of the church and how we want to draw all of God's children into the gospel net.

One interesting thing about this paper is that it talks about the availability of information, access to public information. In our day and age, this kind of information can collect around us as sort of online digital entities and then can just follow us throughout our lives. Information is much more transparent and much more available than it ever has been before. And when you put that next to this idea of our conviction that people can repent and can receive a mighty change of heart and it can become new creatures, it seems unfortunate that they might be denied the opportunity to move forward in that way when this cloud of digital information about their past might follow along behind them. But then as this paper shows, on the other hand, when you restrict access to that information, then these other unfortunate effects also tend to pop up. Yeah. What do you think about, how available should information about our past be?

Frandsen: Yeah, this is a really tough question and this paper brings up, you know, one instance where that's really tough. Another place where this comes up is, say, insurance. Let's say you're applying for health insurance. How much should your past health history be available to insurance companies? Maybe no one's willing to give you insurance if you have a certain health history. And so that's really tough. And I think there are no real easy answers. One thing that we have to make sure is that the most vulnerable groups are protected. In the case of this paper, of the Ban the Box paper that we've been talking about, a vulnerable group are young, low-skilled, black, and Hispanic men who have clean records. And we need to make sure that they're protected. In my health insurance example, a vulnerable group would be those who have pre-existing conditions and yet need insurance going forwards. And so whatever the solution is, whatever information we make available or don't make available, it's important to remember who are the groups who stand to suffer, who are the groups who are most vulnerable and are gonna need support.

Welch: I like that. It seems to me that economists tend to talk a lot about this idea of the trade-off, right? A trade-off. In this paper, we see a kind of trade-off between the one, like maybe that one ex-offender who is job ready and is looking for work, and then sort of the rest of the flock or his demographic peers who have no record at all, right, and are looking for work. Do you see a trade-off? Maybe first talk about what a trade-off is, and then do you see a trade-off at work here in this dynamic?

Frandsen: Yes, I think for sure there's a trade-off with ban the box the interests of ex-offenders we're definitely being traded off against those who have clean records, but we're being lumped in with the ex-offenders by this ban the box. So economists talk about trade-offs whenever You have two legitimate but competing interests in this case. We have the interests of ex-offenders who, who are desperate to find a way to get jobs and improve their wellbeing. And you have the interests of another group. In this case, it's those without a criminal record who are gonna be lumped in. And where kind of, whatever you choose, you're gonna be helping one group, but hurting the other. That's the classic trade-off that economists talk about. And we have a real trade-off here. It's a dilemma. And almost all the time, with trade-offs, there's not an obvious answer. We talked a little bit about this before, but with ban the box, the answer is you need to find some kind of compromise. And you mentioned a great one, which is let's not ban the box, but let's just make it so that information comes out a little later in the job application process, so that employers know that they will be able to, if they want to, to screen out offenders from ex-offenders. They then won't be spooked away from interviewing or hiring, say, young black men who have clean records. They'll be able to know if they have clean records eventually, but they will give the chance to ex-offenders to show if they are job ready. And if they have the willingness to get back into mainstream society. So that's almost always the answer and trade-off situations like these is some kind of compromise and I think that's one that makes a lot of sense

Welch: Yeah. So Brigham, do you ever, whether deliberately or unconsciously, apply economic concepts and thinking to the scriptures? I'm thinking here about the parable of the lost sheep, and I'm thinking that there's a kind of trade-off that you could see in here, right? If the good shepherd goes after the one lost sheep while he's leaving the 99 unprotected, right? And there's a trade off there for the welfare of the one. Now, of course, Jesus didn't intend to give this parable as some kind of exercise in economic thinking. So do you think that's the right way or the wrong way to approach that parable?

Frandsen: I do all the time think about economic trade-offs or incentives when I'm reading the scriptures. So this parable of the lost sheep, to me the lesson of the parable of the lost sheep is not that one sheep trumps the other 99, but rather that at one point or another each of us is that one lost sheep. And the purpose of covenants and the purpose of covenants and ordinances and repentance is to help each of us, when lost, find our way back safely. And most often, God uses ward families or friends or family members to bring us back in and that necessarily brings complications along with it. As we saw in this paper, I think that's also true in our lives, in our wards, and within our families. There's tons of examples in the scriptures about this. So, you know, if we think about, well, first of all, the mandate to forgive and to welcome back into our families. So in the Doctrine and Covenants, you know, we have this scripture that says, ye ought to forgive one another, for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord. I the Lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but it is required to forgive all men. You know, we have lots of scriptures like these or beautiful ones in the Old Testament. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Or in the New Testament, when Jesus said to Peter, or no, when Peter asked Jesus, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me and I will forgive him, till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not until seven times, but until 70 times seven. So every time I hear this, I think, who would do that? Who would set themselves up for pain and hurt and betrayal 70 times seven times? Are we really supposed to do that? That is the mandate. That's what Christ is teaching us. And we see people actually doing this. In the Book of Mormon, we see examples of people who really hurt their community and were welcomed back. So Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah, they did real hurt to their community and they were forgiven and welcomed back. Corianton, the son of Helaman, he betrayed what he was supposed to be keeping and he was forgiven and welcomed back. Think about Saul, who then became Paul and what he did to early Christians and yet became one of the greatest, one of the greatest apostles. Peter himself, he betrayed Christ three times. And Christ welcomed him back and charged him with the leadership of the work. And so as hard as it is and as complicated as it is to forgive and welcome people back and really it necessarily involves making ourselves vulnerable, that is our charge. But how to do it in a way that protects the most vulnerable. That's the challenge. I don't think that's an excuse not to forgive and not to find a way to welcome back, but it is our challenge to find a way to protect the vulnerable in doing this.

Welch: You know, when I invited Dr. Frandsen on the show, it was a bit of an experiment. I really didn’t know whether economics had anything to say about the gospel of Jesus Christ. So it was amazing as our discussion kept touching on key questions about discipleship, and community, and the divine nature in each one of us. I was reminded of our friend Kate Holbrook and her book Both Things Are True, which the Maxwell Institute published earlier this year. In that book, Kate explores precisely this tension between forgiveness and accountability. She summarizes her view as “Forgiving and Remembering”--which strikes me as a helpful way to navigate the tradeoff between protecting the innocent and helping the repentant. I was also reminded of Melissa Inouye’s new book, Sacred Struggle, in which she describes the Church not as an escape from problems, but actually as a “hub for problems”--connecting us to all the afflictions endemic to human nature. That idea has really changed my thinking about what church should be. And finally, I was reminded once again of the brilliant interpretation of Jacob 6 offered by Dr. Deidre Green, in her Brief Theological Introduction to the book of Jacob, which I’ve referenced before on the podcast, maybe multiple times. Dr. Green focused on the character of the Lord in that parable, his persistence and energy and innovation in nurturing his olive trees. That idea has been a much-needed encouragement for me many, many times in my own church service and family life. All these insights came together for me as I talked with Dr. Frandsen in the second half of the show. Truly, as President Nelson taught, “All truth is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Whether truth comes from a scientific laboratory [or an economics paper] or by revelation from the Lord, it is compatible.”

Yeah, yeah. You know, you read all those scriptures and my heart just sings and this, you know, the teaching about forgiveness just inspires me and makes me so glad to be a follower of Jesus Christ, especially when I picture myself as the lost sheep who will be welcomed back. But then I think for a minute about going to church on Sunday where it's moved out of the realm of the scriptures and it's moved into the realm of the real life. And as you say, then it can get a little complicated. And then I say, wait, hold on, hold on, really, Jesus? Really? You're asking us to forgive that many times and welcome back somebody who has made big mistakes and might well make them again. As you say, Brigham, I really appreciate what you said earlier that oftentimes there's not an easy or clear cut answer. And that, and we're looking at ways of doing a little bit better and protecting the innocent a little bit better while allowing the maximum space for repentance from those who need it. How, I mean, how do you think this kind of dynamic could play out in a ward?

Frandsen: So here's an example. This is not a real example, just to be clear. But actually every piece of this example comes from a situation that I have experienced or lived through. So imagine this, all right? Imagine there is a father and a young mens leader in your ward who struggles with an addiction to painkillers. And while in the grip of that addiction, this brother devastates his family and abandons the young men who should have been able to look up to him, but are now wondering if everything that he had been teaching them was a sham. Imagine this situation. It's not a victimless crime. There are real victims here. And of course, one of the victims is this man himself, a victim of addiction. And imagine that, as happens many times, that this man ends up being able to, you know, get some leverage over his addiction and is on his way back. And his family forgives him and rallies around him. The ward forgives him and rallies around him. And he falls back into addiction. And it's another cycle of devastation and abandonment. But once again, he has a desire to pull himself back together and his family rallies around him again. The ward rallies around him again and he comes back. What is the right thing to do here? He's betrayed trust not once, but twice, and maybe more times. There is a risk to further harm and betrayal of those that he might interact with. Is the right thing to say, no, we gave you a second chance and now you're gone? No, I don't think so. In fact, I know so. I know that's not the right thing to do. And yet there is risk to harm. So what should a family do in a situation like that? What should a ward family do in a situation like that? Is there a way to forgive and welcome this brother back into the ward family as in full love and fellowship, but in a way that will still protect those who could be hurt by another lapse? And I think there is, I think there is a way, because the church and the ward family is a big place and there are lots of ways in which people can be welcomed back, lots of ways in which they can contribute to the spiritual life of the ward and serve others. There are so many ways that can happen. That's one of the, I think, inspired aspects of the organization of the church is all the many different ways that people can help and serve, regardless of what their capacities are or regardless of what their weaknesses might be. And I think that's why things have been set up that way. Why are there, you know, greeters and hymn book organizers and you know, everything under the sun. There are all ways in which people can serve and partake in the spiritual life of the ward. And I think if we have that view of finding a way to welcome people back instead of finding an excuse to shut them out, then we can find it.

Welch: I love that, Brigham. Your example, it creates these feelings in me, right? It creates, first of all, a tremendous feeling of love for what we have in a Latter-day Saint Ward family and the trust that exists within that sacred space. It's a pretty rare institution in our world today that can create that experience. And I give thanks for every day the opportunity to live to be a part of a Latter-day Saint ward. But it also gives me this kind of feeling of exhaustion and heaviness because the reality is that problems like this are never ending. You know, this is an ongoing problem in this hypothetical man's life and in the life of his ward. And he's just one member of an entire ward where multiple such ongoing issues exist. And so it gives me this feeling of exhaustion. Like church is just this place where we encounter problems again and again and again. And then I think the Spirit speaks to me and says, yes, and that is the point. That is the point. And I will not leave you comfortless. You are not gonna be left on your own to figure this out. But yes, church is a place where we are put into contact in the most intimate ways with the most difficult aspects of human nature. And yes, you are asked to figure it out because I'm trying to develop your own divine nature. I'm trying to help you see the world as I see you as your heavenly father. And this is what you're asked to do. I might one of my favorite readings of the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob 5 is this idea, of course we can read it in terms of the house of Israel and the gentiles and God's large-scale plan for saving all his children. But what I love is just noticing how energetic and innovative the Lord is in figuring out the solution to this problem, right? He is struggling to help this tree grow and he has to try time and time again, try different things to make it work and to solace the problem. But He is tireless and he does not stop until he has found a way to make both the branches and the roots thrive together. And I think that’s the kind of energy and innovation and optimism that we’re also asked to marshal as his under-shepherds here.

Frandsen: Yeah, exactly. I love that way of seeing the allegory of the olive tree as creativity and energy in finding a way to make it work, finding a way to allow this tree to thrive and applying it to us. A ward is a way of finding a way for every member of our Ward family to have the opportunity to thrive.

Welch: Yeah, I love that. So I have found sometimes, I am not an economist, but I dabble and I enjoy reading sometimes, talking to you and reading about social science and economics, and sometimes it can be hard to, we talked about this a little earlier, to apply economic thinking or economic concepts to church contexts. It can seem sort of clinical or kind of cold-hearted, almost too rational, right? And there may well be some Latter-day Saint beliefs that do challenge a strictly utilitarian view that tends to prevail in the social sciences that we're just out here to create the greatest good for the greatest number. Is there a time and a place to apply economic ways of thinking to the gospel, and then another time and a place to put them away? How do you see that?

Frandsen: No, there is absolutely never a time to put away economic thinking. I like to think that God is the best economist, and the best physicist, and the best historian, and the best everything. I think economics has an uncompassionate reputation only among those who don't understand it. And maybe that's the fault of the economists. But here are some ways in which economics absolutely grooves with the gospel. So think about the Christian mandate to care for the least of these. A lot of economics is about understanding the causes and consequences of poverty and thinking about policies intended to alleviate disadvantage. Also one of the central ideas of economics is and the gospel is the concept of agency. So in second Nephi, you know, Lehi says, men are free according to the flesh and all things are given them which are expedient to man, and they are free to choose liberty and eternal life through the great mediator of all men or to choose captivity and death." He emphasizes choices, and that's what economics is about, or in the Doctrine and Covenants, section 58, "'For the power is in them where they are agents unto themselves.'" So the protagonist in literally every economic model ever written down, is an agent. That's the word we use in our economics models, is an agent whose preferences and choices determine outcomes. So this idea of agency I think is central both to the gospel and economics. Another idea central to economics is the idea that agency can be bounded by external or internal constraints. One is limited resources. So I wish I had 36 hours in the day and the energy to make the most out of all of them, but I don't. And economics and the gospel has a lot to say about husbanding finite resources. An idea if that's fairly recent in economics, but not recent in the gospel, long understood in the gospel, is the idea that personal limitations like finite willpower or the inability to trade off present and future gains in a rational way, or temptation. These are all very much part kind of cutting edge economics, but our ideas that we've been talking about in the gospel for, you know, Jesus has been teaching about them, you know, thousands of years ago. And then one unexpected area that we talked about today, the Christian idea of forgiveness and second chances. Who knew that would also be the, you know, the principal idea in a paper published in the Journal of Labor Economics. So I think that economics, if it has this, this kind of clinical, uncompassionate reputation, that means that we economists need to do a better job of helping people understand what it's all about, and that it's a great way to think about these really important principles.

Welch: That's a good robust defense of your field, Brigham. I appreciate it. It seems like my, you know, this is my kind of working way of approaching these questions is that, as Latter-day Saints, we genuinely believe that all truth can be circumscribed in one great whole. So we don't need to be afraid of any particular method of learning and gathering truth. If it is true, we have the promise that it will be compatible with the gospel, not only compatible, but it will enliven the gospel and will bring it to light from the inside. So we are to go out, just as section 88 says, and learn out of the best books and seek all the knowledge that we can find. And then ultimately there comes a moment and a point where we rely on the Spirit to show us what direction to take that knowledge, right? All the information that we've learned, all the methods that we've mastered. What end do we put that toward? And I think that's where revealed truth and the tutelage of the spirit come in to show us where to aim and direct the knowledge and the skills that we have. Does that resonate with you?

Frandsen: Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly right. There's the thing that the gospel can provide that is really irreplaceable is exactly that. The direction where the knowledge should be applied towards. It's, you know, these questions of is versus ought. And there are so many disciplines and different ways of learning truth. And economics is one way to do that and one way to think about the constraints that we face and trade-offs among competing interests. And the gospel can tell us how to resolve those trade-offs. Economics can tell us these trade-offs exist and the gospel can help us resolve those trade-offs.

Welch: Brigham, as we're heading towards the end of our conversation here, I wanted to ask you a question that I often pose to my guests on the podcast. It's about asking questions and asking better questions. As an economist, you come up with a hypothesis and then you find ways to test it. Questions are really, really important in your study design. And it's my hypothesis throughout this season of the podcast that the questions we ask in our religious and spiritual lives are equally important. We can ask good and productive and fruitful questions, or we can ask questions that are badly designed and just cause more confusion, or in fact lead us down the wrong path. So how can we ask better questions in our spiritual and religious lives?

Frandsen: So it's interesting that you should bring this up. So in the econometrics classes that I teach at BYU, on the very first day, I tell my students that economics starts with asking a question. And I think asking a question is an act of humility. It's an act of curiosity. It's an act of agency. Asking questions is something that I'm convinced God approves of. But it's not really asking a question if we have a predetermined, if we've already predetermined the answer. We have a word for that kind of question. That's a rhetorical question. So a rhetorical question might be, how can the church be true if x, y, z? That's not really a question. That's really a statement of a predetermined conclusion that no church that x, y, z can be true. The counterpart to a rhetorical question is a sincere question. One that might go like this. Is it possible for the church to be true and also X, Y, Z? What part of my understanding would have to change for the church to be true and also X, Y, Z? It's sincere questions like these that are powerful and can lead to increased understanding. The restoration itself started with a sincere question, not a rhetorical question. And so when I think about asking the right question, part of asking the right question is asking sincere questions, not rhetorical questions. Having the humility not to predetermine the answer in our mind before we ask the question, but to have our mind opened to answers that we may not have supposed before. And when we ask questions in that spirit, they can even be the same question, but asked in a spirit of humility that can make all the difference.

Welch: I really like that. I have found that as well that in my own life, and in my professional life as well as my spiritual life, sometimes the most productive investigations that I've undertaken have been starting with two different things that seem unrelated or seem intention and then trying to figure out where they overlap, if they do, or whether there is a genuine tension there. But starting with these two things and seeing how they come together and what fruit is born by putting two ideas together, as you say, in good faith and in sincerity and in openness to whatever it is that might emerge. Wonderful. Well, Brigham, any last words you'd like to share about this article or about the themes we've been talking about or about your life as a Latter-day Saint?

Frandsen: I've really appreciated the chance to talk about what I spend most of my day doing, economics, with you on this podcast. I never would have thought that there'd be so much overlap between the scholarly papers that I read and study and the gospel. It was really you asking the question. We were talking about questions, but asking the question, is there a paper or piece of research that you think overlaps. It was that question that you posed that actually had me think through what and see papers in a new light and think through what do these have to say about my Christian beliefs and about how we live in a ward family, how we live in regular families and I've loved the chance to explore these ideas with you on this podcast.

Welch: I think it was President Kimball who charged us as professors and faculty at BYU to bathe every discipline in the light and color of the gospel. And it's been a lot of fun, Brigham, to splash around in that bathtub with you today. Thank you for joining us on the Maxwell Institute podcast.

Frandsen: I've really enjoyed it. Thank you, Rosalynde.