Thomas B. Griffith - Lawyer & Federal Judge

About This Episode

Thomas B. Griffith - Lawyer & Federal Judge shares insights from their mission in Johannesburg, South Africa and how those experiences shaped their career and life.

About Thomas B. Griffith - Lawyer & Federal Judge

Thomas B. Griffith - Lawyer & Federal Judge is featured in this episode of The Best 2 Podcast, sharing how their mission experience influenced their personal and professional journey.

Key Topics

• Mission experiences in Johannesburg, South Africa
• Career development and growth
• Personal transformation through service
• Lessons learned and applied

Watch the Episode

Full Transcript

Full Transcript

you know the iconic LeBron James celebration the silencer where James emphatically beats his chest and forcefully pushes his hands down to the floor over rais knees after getting a clutch bucket well that’s the same celebration I couldn’t help but do myself in my work cubicle a few weeks ago when I learned that our guest today Judge Thomas Griffith had agreed to an interview on the podcast judge Griffith is a retired judge who spent 15 years of his career working on the Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals what’s often known as the second highest court in the land that’ be the second highest Court behind only the Supreme Court of the United States but in another way this court is kind of like a AAA baseball team filled with all of baseball’s top prospects for some additional context when judge Griffith retired a few years ago his retirement ceremony was attended by five sitting Supreme Court Justices throughout his career prior to his retirement as a judge brother Griffith worked as a seminary teacher the Senate legal council of the United States what’s known as the chief legal officer of the United States Senate and as an assistant to the president and general Council of by today he still resides in the DC Virginia area but travels to Boston often to teach a class at Harvard Law School my friend Nick an attorney living in Washington DC joins me to talk with brother Griffith about his mission to Southern Africa from 1973 to 1975 brother Griffith is a master Storyteller who in this episode shares stories about his conversion to the gospel as a 16-year-old living and working in a paride South Africa during his mission the importance of teaching complex topics simply and a lot more all this coming up [Music] next so that’s a Hine a portrait of arasmus 16th century Christian humanist Catholic this is hine’s Portrait of Thomas Moore 16th century Christian hum they were good friends and had this really interesting correspondence course Thomas Moore became a Catholic saint he was beheaded by Henry VII these guys were resisting Luther and their Reformation they recognized there needed to be change in the church and they were humanist in the sense that they engaged in classical learning they wanted to reform the Church by having to focus on scripture you know I don’t want to get carried away here but they’re pretty inspiring they were faithful and committed to the church and they recognize the church needed to get a lot better and they wanted to help it do you know Brian fisnik the latterday St Peter I don’t know him oh come on go look him up you need to look him up he’s like the most important living latterday Saint painter this an awesome painting he can’t tell from there it’s called divine intervention and right there is a guy studying and up here is this group of angels and one of the Angels is reaching out to help him but the lead Angel is holding him back like saying oh come on no no no no no he can get it interesting make it work for it yeah that’s awesome are you you’re a big sports fan yeah did you ever see on Twitter there’s an account that’s called Art but make it Sports have you seen that one no no no tell me about it oh they’ll take like shot of the day you know somebody scoring the winning touchdown outstretched lunging for the end zone and he’s this guy he’s just like a total art connoisseur he knows so much art and he’ll match it with a famous picture from art history he’s so good it’s it’s really hilarious to see what’s it called I gotta look it up I think the I think the handle is art but make it Sports art but make it I’ll fight it’s it’s really funny and he’s so good people people thought he was using reverse AI or something to you know search it and he’s just no he’s just knows art like the back of his hand it’s pretty amazing that’s fun so you got into auka auka I I don’t even know art well enough to engage but I mean pukaa you got oh oh any of Puka yeah the puka yeah I’m sure he does actually is this guy a lot to they say he’s doing this no no he’s not he’s not just whatever Salan in the Sports World he’ll match with an art work of art but I was just going to say I actually just recently watched a man for all seasons which is on Thomas Moore yeah like a couple weeks ago but anyway that was very insightful what you said to hear about kind of how he challenged the church back then and what I am so impressed what led you to watch it there was actually a cooworker at my nonprofit Law Firm that I work out he wanted to have like a movie night felt like it was you know legally related and so that’s what we decided to watch I’m pretty certain that I haven’t saided anything in a public setting lecture speech or something that doesn’t somewhere refer to Man For All Seasons I teach a class at Harvard Law School by the way I couldn’t get into Harvard as a student but now I teaching there which is just rich and and with the first two days we watch the movie and then we talk about it it’s the best so funny so are you home in Washington area or are you up in Boston no I don’t I don’t don’t have a home in Boston I go up there to teach just for a couple weeks in January we we live about an hour outside of DC a little over an hour outside DC in the Virginia Countryside okay so what I want to do judge brother griffi brother I’ll call you brother Griffith your honor judge Griffith couldn’t make it but um Griffith could so okay okay great what I like to do is get a little bit of background of your secular life and then we’ll go into the mission which is really the main focus what we’re talking about so really one of the first questions just secularly that I wanted to ask is at what point did you know you wanted to go into the legal field and then from that point become a judge yeah yes so I grew up in the Washington DC area at Deep Roots here I’ve always been interested in National Politics as a high school kid I worked on Capitol Hill as an intern for Congressman Morris Udall Democrat from Arizona and so I just had that Bic fever you didn’t stand a chance so the people that I looked up to and admired not all of them but many of them were lawyers and so there was all there was always in the back of my mind that oh this is something you can do to to help participate in that National discussion so that was always in the backround line so my mission persuaded me not to do that and so I came off by missions and I was set on becoming a seminary and Institute instructor so I pursued that and actually that was my first career I was hired by the church educational system did seminaries and institutes ran the programs in the Baltimore Maryland area for three years and just loved that I love that was just the people I worked with and things I to do I just loved it but I had a feeling that maybe I shouldn’t do that the rest of my life and so I went to law school and decided to pursue that the judge thing I never had any idea of being a judge look I I like the law I don’t love it I mean I’m not one of those people that when I have Spar t what I do is read law there are people like that I endured law school one of the happiest days of my life was the day I graduated I like it a lot I’m very interested in it but I don’t love it I really never thought oh gee I’d really like to be a judge but through series of strange incidents and coincidences I ended up being the chief lawyer for the United States Senate for four years and when I finished that I was back at my Law Firm where I was a partner prepared to do that the rest of my life when an influential friend called up and said hey have you ever thought about being a judge because you’re in kind of a unique position you’re a conservative who has got friends who are Democratic senators and that’s very attractive too easy confirmation exactly exactly so somebody proposed it I went and talked to some friends who were judges and I thought okay yeah maybe this would be really really interesting so I allowed you know I I don’t want to say that it was forced upon me but it wasn’t my idea but what somebody presented to me I thought oh this would be cool so I sort of you know threw a hat in the ring so to speak interesting and so what would you say your favorite part of your career as a judge what if you had to distill it down to well you know a thing or two what would be your favorite part oh that’s actually quite easy for me and I think true for most look it being on the DC circuit was just I mean I had to I felt like forced gum you know I just had to pinch myself all the time by what am I doing doing here with these really cool people talking about these really consequential issues I I just felt so fortunate to be there so being with my colleagues who were just spectacular jurists and even better people dealing with the I really like the docket of the DC circuit administrative law that that actually interests me a lot those were all great but they don’t come close to the greatest part of the job and that’s relationships you form and the work you do with your law clincs that’s for me and I think it’s true for many that’s the greatest part of you’re working at Close Quarters with these really bright ambitious good young people who want to serve the country who love their country and working in close quarters with them for a year and then keeping in touch with them after that to help them in any way you can as they progress through life and their careers that’s clearly the best part of job yeah so is it a it’s a pretty rigorous process just you know going through and just selecting clerks right is that walk through the process of that a little bit the first day that my clerks were in my Chambers the judge’s office is called Chambers first day they were in Chambers I sat them there I said look you’re going to get to know me better than anyone outside my family okay you’re you’re going to see me up close in personal Wars and all so I’ll tell you right off the bat I could not have clerked on the DC circuit okay you know I did okay law school I was fine but I didn’t do well enough that I would be competitive for a job in the DC circuit now these young people are some of the finest students at finest law schools in the country and it’s hyper hyper competitive and so we would get the very best and brightest from the best law schools and invite them to come work with us for a year and that was largely done they apply through an normal process but it’s largely done based on recommendations of law defensors you have relationships with at these law schools whose judgment you trust and way Professor X calls me up and says judge I’ve got this wonderful student I know Professor X I trust her that gave a lot of weight to those sorts of recommendations a good word goes a long way huh yeah yeah yeah okay interesting Nick did you have any specific law questions I was gonna turn over to you as our attorney and residents here yeah I don’t know if it’s that law based but I I thought it was interesting that you brought up relationships and how important those were in the law world you know I am pretty new as as I said earlier but it seems like in law school and then even after everything seems to be centered socially around alcohol and I’m just wondering how it was for you to navigate that scene cuz for me you know not drinking sometimes people stop inviting me out to you know go out and happy hour or whatever because they know I don’t drink so I’m just wondering like how was it for you to kind of navigate the networking and building these relationships well in in law school so as I was I was not a traditional law student I was little older married and four kids and so not that I tried to hide my commitment as a Latter-Day Saint I didn’t but I don’t think I could have if I wanted to it was all over the place you know BYU Church educational system married four kids you were branded yeah no so I not that I wanted to avoid that but if I had wanted to avoid I know how it so so right through the outset I was branded that that’s the word and so so no I never got invited to happy hour no I I want to go I know it asked me and I really wasn’t that deeply involved in the social life of my class I mean I formed several really close friendships but my situation was so strange I really just didn’t have time to socialize I was in a much different place than most people are in law school so that’s not a good uh measure now in law firms again I maybe I’m naive but I as I look back over my life I think people treated me better than they probably should have when they found out that I was a latterday say was all in I think they made some assumptions that I was glad for them to assume and it was something for me to Aspire to but I never got the sense that it was a lie of ility at all now maybe I’m missing it maybe behind my back they were you saying all sorts of things but I never got that sense you know I’d go to firm Retreats and firm dinners and stuff you know always had a ginger ale in my hand or an orange juice and I never got the sense that that was looked down upon it all in fact I really think I got bonus points so that so I don’t know may maybe my experience isn’t representative right no I remember reading out on your bio about when you were appointed and how it was kind of trying to get like nonpartisan support from everybody and it seemed like I saw a couple quotes from The Washington Post about how people from both sides felt like you’re a man of integrity and man he stuck to his word and I probably would attribute that to like you said that image that you fostered throughout all the years so and I’m I’m the beneficiary of that I S like I created that I mean in Washington DC at least in in the the legal circles where I found myself I was the beneficiary of others who had set great e examples and so really amongst the people that I associated with when they thought latterday Saint they thought something really good A lot of that comes because of Rex Lee the former BYU president he was the solicitor general of the United States which is like the coolest lawyers job in the world and he was so well regarded because he first he’s a great lawyer second just a great human being and so when people found out that I had even the most tangential connection to Rex Lee they immediately thought better me and that’s been my experience in the Washington legal community that you’re always going to get people who haven’t had experience with latterday Saints and so therefore they may you know fall prey to some stereotypes but at least the people that I could have working with and among didn’t have those stereotypes in matter fact The Stereotype they had was one that I had inspired to be like you know hardworking friendly open these sorts of things so you know there’s an important book that was published over a decade or so ago called American Grace by Robert putam at Harvard and his co-author was David Campbell and I think can see the most comprehensive study of the state of American religion that’s ever been done and they did a lot of surveys of what the American people think of various religious groups and unfortunately lattery Saints are way down I you were down with Muslims and we’ve been there you know Catholics in the 1960s were down there as well now they’re up on the 90% range we’re still underwater you know we’re like at 50% approved until they survey somebody who knows the latterday scene and amongst that group we’re up there we’re at there you know 90% or so which is a a nice little that’s been my experience I work among people who had been with Latter-Day Saints and they thought better of them but people who haven’t been amongst latterday Saints it’s it’s true for all of us it’s easy to fall into stereotypes you I’m certain I do that with all sorts of people who I don’t know I’m certain I have stereotypes about groups that I haven’t had much interaction with and as it turns out when you finally interact with others you find out oh they’re really good people so and that’s actually a lesson from the mission right I let you learn that on your mission very much so for sure you do yeah so we probably should get into that I feel like I could talk to you about your career in your life for a long time but since we’re doing Mission stuff we’ll get into that that’s only because I’m old so well you’ve had you’ve had so many interesting experiences and met so many interesting people that it’s fun to pick your brain on those but I really am curious to hear about your mission stuff so you are a convert to the church and there’s plenty of interviews you’ve talked about that so people can go listen to those if they want to but you have any specific memories with the missionaries teaching you as you were becoming a convert or what do you remember yeah yeah no I have distinct memories of that I was 16 years old at the time and I had great set of missionaries Elder Thompson and Elder dewal and they were fabulous this is the old days of the flannel board you know you guys probably don’t know that said the flannel board and put little figures on it which seemed kind of childish but it was actually quite effective I had great memories they were wonderful people and I was pretty easy for them I had had some profound experiences that led me to have those discussions so I think I was pretty easy for them it didn’t close great obstacles for them so that was 17 right when you joined the church 16 years old 16 so right away you thought okay yeah like you were bought in you know I’m joined the church and now I’m going to depart on a mission oh I wanted to be like them I mean I so admired them I thought how cool would this be to be able to do what they do and be like them yeah so from from Geto I was hoping that I’d be able to do that unfortunately I had parents who although members of the church are very supportive of me doing that so yeah that’s pretty amazing that goes a long way doesn’t it to have them give you license to do yeah what you believe you know instead of trying to be a barrier or whatever I was prepared to you know support myself financially if need be they wanted to do it so that was pretty remarkable yeah it is so you were on board you wanted to go on a mission you got your call the call was not to South Africa it was to Southern Africa is that correct it was in Johannesburg South Africa Mission but it included the the the Republic of South Africa the country of South Africa and a country that was then known as rodesia now known as Zimbabwe so that’s southern Africa not all of southern Africa though it’s just those two countries so receiving the call to go there I mean total other side of the world yeah blew my mind I was born in Japan my father was a US military up to Korean War he had my mom were stationed in the port of Yokohama so I was born in Japan and so I I just thought you know okay somebody in Salt Lake is going to see that and I’m going to go to Japan which would have been fine although I was little nervous that’s a tough language to learn you know and so I just kind of assumed that I was gonna go to in England my Bishop who had served the mission in France was just confident that I was gonna be going to FR hey no no you’re going to FR I had had you know six or seven years of schoeling in French I really wanted to go to the states I was really hoping for an English speaking Mission because I was afraid of the barrier that language would pose I didn’t want that to get in the way i’ had given no thought that I might be sent to home of Nelson Mandela that was strey markam yeah what years were you there from 1973 to 1975 okay so pretty interesting time yeah yeah not a happy time for South Africa and there was a war going on in Ria now Zimbabwe at the time and tense time Mandela was in Robin Island he was in jail this was the they deer of clte and so it was uh Tough Time tough time for the country so so with the apart heide beginning then as a missionary did you see that kind of thing in the day day-to-day life for you oh no yeah yeah the central organizing principle of the government in South Africa at the time was RS I mean they organized things completely along the lines of race so no no you you saw it everywhere there was strict segregation people of color of African bent could not live in European or white areas and vice versa so no no you couldn’t miss it it was like Jim Crow the United States in many ways you’d go to a post office and there would be a sign that for colorss Mr graci colorss only whites only it was it was like no it was like being in Georgia In 1855 sort of thing it was yeah pretty so your modern Western sensibilities screamed at you right they did they they did I also recognized that I was there to do something different I was there to preach the gospel of Christ to people that I was allowed to see and so this wasn’t the time to you know be a revolutionary in that sense I to be a different sort of of revolutionary but at the end of my mission I had a remarkable experience where we were able to teach a woman of color uh the phrase color is not a pejorative in South Africa it’s describing mixed race folks and descendants of the original Aboriginal folks there but I was able to participate in the teaching of a colored woman who joined the church right at the end of my mission and it was a remarkable experience and there’s one I had one little anecdote from that she was not literate her name was Ella bis she was not literate she came to work as a domestic helper in the mission ho and very much wanted to join the church and my mission president allowed my companion and I to teach here so that’s a bit of a challenge right she can’t read you know we had all these pamphlets and books and stuff you know you have to read so we asked the cup in the mission home a wonderful woman named dorotha story she was a European white woman if she would read to Ella this person of color now there was nothing in Sister story’s background or experience that would ever have her sitting down next to colored as an equal and reading those scripture but she loved the missionaries and we asked her to do it and she did it so I have this image of one night walking down the hallway and passing by Sister story’s room and it was one of these Old Mission homes places and I pass by Sister story’s room and the door was open and there on the bed the foot of the bed was Sister story this proud white woman reading from The Book of Mormon to Ella bankes this colored woman their society had tried to keep them apart but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is what brought them together and that was right as I was leaving my mission and I realized okay well the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Hope for all of us for every nation Kindred tongue and people the special hopes for this wonderful land of South Africa that’s been so divided along the lines of race and that was a powerful powerful experience and gave me a sense of just what the gospel could gospel is about a whole lot more than not drinking coffee it’s about a whole lot more than that and it’s about seeing what I saw that evening between dorothia story and elbi it’s it’s about bringing people together across these constructs that that humans have created these false divisions based on you know race and ethnicity and nationality and ideology and gender these are constructs that we use to divide us but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most powerful force to bring us at one uh across those divides yeah that’s beautiful it’s s very similar message to the story that you’ve told that I listened to it when you spoke to Terell given about it but being on the bus in Durban if you recall that yeah story if you would tell that that one as well yeah sure so I’ve been on my mission four five six months or something and you know I loved being a missionary I was diligent you know trying to think of new ways to get people interested we spent most of our time in those days knocking on doors in neighborhoods trying to get people interested and always thinking of new door approaches you know and not having a great deal of success with that but one day was our preparation day and we were taking the bus to the chapel where they had a in Durban in South Africa they had a squash court in the chapel how cool is that so we were going to play Squad that obviously was not approved by you know jge Ed sort of but we we going to go nowadays they’ve just got the pickle ball nowadays they’ve got the pickle ball courts in there a pickle ball court is it so we were all their way there and we all this bus and the bus went through downtown Durban in the middle of the day durban’s a large city large urban city and the bus got stuck I can’t remember re’s in foot re May might have just been traing but we were stuck there right near the center of deran and as I recall there was a large Town Square that we were by and I remember looking out over this town square and it just really kiding me oh my gosh you’re in South Africa I mean you’re halfway around the world because you look out over this Plaza and there were people dressed in African guard deran is on the Indian Ocean so you have a lot of folks from South Asia there you got the smell of Curry then you got the white European population that so just all these fols mixed together and it was kind of like you know every nation Kindred tongue and people right before you just right there I’m not a Mystic I don’t you know I’m a I’m an Evidence skeptic you know but I had a mystical experience because I was looking out over this had this really strong impression that came to me that Elder Griffith every person you see out there is hurting they hurt for one reason or another as a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ is to help them with that pain and that’s what you’ve got you’re not there to teach them a set of propositions about the the nature of God that’s part of the no that’s not the real message the real message is their love the Lord died for them the Lord lives for them he wants to help all of us deal with this pain from wherever it comes from from family relationships from societal structures what whatever we all have it and that’s your job I that changed my mission it changed with my Approach and I tried to keep in mind on my mission that every person I was dealing with was dealing with pain and that seemed right because I knew I was right iide knew that described me that seemed right that it described others and so I think that’s true and I tried to throughout my life I’m certain I hadn’t done this any close to the level I need to but I Tred remember that every person that I deal with we’ve all got pain and most of us are doing a pretty good job of hiding it and some of us are honest enough that we don’t try and hide it and that makes the rest of us feel really uncomfortable you know but but but that’s good that’s good so so I’ve tried to to keep that in mind when you know administering a program or teaching a lesson that we all we all hurt we need a Healer and we need heal and and that’s that’s Christ’s primary role he’s our healer I had a similar experience it was a little bit simpler but I remember early on in my mission being in the primary room we’re playing the piano I think for the primary kids to sing and and I was just still brand new everything felt so different the food you know the traffic everything’s so different and there was a moment where I remember looking at some of the kids in the primary room and you know kid’s picking his nose he’s picking his friend’s nose like they’re they’re te you know they’re they’re doing kids stuff and it hit me and I thought holy cow they’re the same like what I’m watching is the exact same as I would watch in an American Primary yeah and it’s like we’re all the same We’re Not So Different we want the same things and I think that’s stuck with me too where I think there really is a universal kind of want and a universal need and luckily you know the gospel is there to fill that so I’m sorry where did you serve where did you serve your mission I served in Cambodia really okay okay yeah so interesting well let’s see there was another question I wanted to ask you’ve also mentioned your mission present you said you really adored him so briefly tell us about the relationship you had with him and why it was special yeah I so I just assumed everyone had a mission president who they could just worship and turns out that’s not the case but many of us did and I did I was fortunate I had a man Robert Thorne who just was filled with love for his missionaries and you could just feel it the first time that I felt that was so you spent two months in the called the language training Mission then is now the Missionary Training Center Learning afans in Provo and then FLW to South Africa and then spent a couple of days at the Mission Home in Johannesburg with the mission president where he did some training some orientation and then he’d interview us and then after that we got our assignments for where our first area would be and so I spent you know like two days with President Lor there were nine of us in our group spent two days with him and that’s where I first detected this oh my gosh this guy is just filed with love the place where it really hit me was his interview me for the first time and he’s he knows a lot about me you know he’s got the file you know that’s got all this information about my backg friends so we’re having this this interview and it’s you know and he’s asking about me and my interest and stuff like that and at the end of the interview he was behind the desk and he came out from behind the desk and he came up to me and he put his arm around me now I’m not a hugger okay I’m getting better but I’m not I’m not a hugger you know you do the ancestry 23 DNA stuff like I’m 99.9% British Isles like I it’s I’m so boring there’s no ashkanazi Jew which I was really hoping for no West African I know I am just like I’m the whitest person you’re it’s just it’s really really disappointing but anyway and I’ve got all this British DNA in me it’s I’m not a hugger and yet he comes around and he puts his arm around on me it brings me right up to him and I’m feeling really uncomfortable because he’s hugging me right and he’s looking into my eye and he says Elder Griffith I love you and man I felt it I just felt it in my heart and he said can we pray together of course no no President we can’t pray again yeah we he said let’s kneel together and he said and if it’s all right with you I would like to put my arm around you when we pray well again I’m not going to say no but I’m feeling you the idea of this is just really this is really way outside my comfort zone and yet I felt it and I felt his love and I thought this man cares for me he loves me I will do anything that I can to help him and it just continued that way he called me to be his assistant and so I spent the last six or seven months of my mission as his assistant and he used us always I mean he brought us into everything and I just learned I learned so much you know i’ been a member of the church you like two years or so had a great Bishop elah in the church Earl gret great State president Julian low these are giants of people but for me that’s they icing on the cake I don’t know laying finishing the foundation you pick your metap was the time I spent my missig B for and it’s interesting now as an old man when you know I get to have some interaction with some of the senior leaders of the church and one of the questions I think like the question they ask is who was your mission president and when I say Bob th people know people know and so we kept in touch throughout his life I mean there weren’t too many months that would go by that he would call wasn’t just me he’d do this for everyone and he’s the type of guy that calling me I’m on the phone we talked for 45 minutes and at the end of the 45 minutes he’s got to go and I realize it’s been all about me he hasn’t told me anything about him he’s just been asking me about me so anyway a lifelong friendship there yeah yeah so I want to be respectful of your time one other story I wanted you to tell was your story about Rex Lee and teaching complex topics simply cuz you’ve told that before and I remembered it and there’s some really actually important I think Mission principles that are easily teased out of that so yeah so so Rex Le many people would argue the greatest certainly one of the greatest lawyers to argue before The Supreme Court widely respected in the Washington legal community and by justices the Supreme Court is is just considered what great great Advocates I I knew him because he lived in mlan Virginia where my parents lived and I would visit my parents and attend the W there and got to know him a little bit not real well but a little bit he invited me to be his guest when when I was in law school he invited me to be his guest in a in an argument for the Supreme Court like yeah that’s pretty cool and so so I went as his guest I’d never been I’d never been in any courtroom before here you know I’ve been to the Supreme Court which is a really impressive setting and I’m GNA see the great Rex Lee argue he went second his opponent got up and spoke first I can’t remember what the case was about this so long ago but I remember the first lawyer was a law school Professor representing a client in some matter and this professor started and oh my gosh this professor it’s brilliant I mean arodi articulate eloquent yeah I just thought wow these folks are good again and one reason I knew that this professor was such a good Advocate was because I couldn’t understand anything he was saying but that it’s like all my law school that was law school for me for three years really brilliant people I knew these people are really smart I really don’t know what they’re saying but man are they smart and uh so they finished and then and then Rex Lee gets out and I’m really excited to hear this wow the bar has been set pretty high by by your opponent let’s see how Rex does here and he begins he he launches into his AR he he had a bit of a stutter that when he got nervous and and even even though he argued for the Supreme Court you know dozens of times you tell he’s a little nervous so he started off a little bit of a stutter and I thought oh oh but then he got over the stutter and then he losted into his argument and as he began his argument in the first couple minutes my heart shank I couldn’t believe it I was so embarrassed for him it seemed to me more like he was talking to a youth Sunday school class that he was talking to the Supreme Court of the United States because I could understand everything he was saying even though I hadn’t read the briefs and stuff I could understand everything he was saying and I was just I was so embarrassed for him that it was so pedestrian you know that it was so simple well okay obvious the point is that’s why he was so great right was because he could take really complex ideas and he’d thought about them long and hard enough that he could make them very simple and I appreciated that hopefully throughout my career I never appreciated that more than that then when I was a judge myself and got the robe and sitting on the other side of the bench and and what you realize is you don’t know this case nearly as well as the lawyers they’ve lived with it for years you’ve been with it for a couple weeks and maybe a couple days maybe a couple of hours you know and what you appreciate most is people who can take complex ideas and make them simple so I developed a theory I never tested it with brother Lee before he passed away but I developed a theory that what one reason Rex Lee was such a great Advocate was because he had children that he read to and he served in the church where he had to teach people things simply so my advice to Young law students who want to become great adoc kids is the same I say the most important thing you can do is if you have children teach them read to them help them understand complex ideas if you don’t have children you know go to your pastor or your priest or your Rabbi and say I want to teach the 10year olds okay that’s where I want to be I want to be in there and take complex ideas and explain them to folks simply say if you’re not a Believer then then go volunteer at the the local library but you need to be around children so that you can learn the skill and it’s really a difficult skill taking complex ideas and explaining them simply Rex Lee did that I’m guessing an important part of his life to help him develop the skills was that he was a missionary and he taught in the primary and he taught in the young men and young women’s program and he had kids that he talked to a lot yeah I think it’s one of the coolest stories because you’re teaching on a mission right you’re teaching the most comp potentially the most complex things you could talk about and you’re trying to distill it into something very simple to somebody who’s never heard it or understood it and what a valuable skill that you can you know Come Away with that hard hard to kind of get otherwise as a 19-year-old kid so I I always love that story okay I know you you’ve got to go if I can just one final question I was going to ask how’s your testimony changed since you returned from your mission and what would be your counsel to a returned missionary who’s feeling disaffected or is now harboring doubts about the things they once testified of that’s just a quick final question for you huh this so here’s my my quick stab at it we we need to cultivate the spiritual habits we need to keep up the spiritual habits that we that hopefully we formed on our mission and that’s meaningful prayer not that not the checklist s of prayer but meulful prayer on a constant basis I I have a quote up here from CS Lewis in the movie shadowlands I pray because I can’t help myself I pray because I’m helpless I pray because the need flows out of me all the time waking and sleeping it doesn’t change God it changes me so that’s the first thing I’d say it’s just cultivate a deep prayer life be the type of person that prayer like we sing in the song prayer is you know Christ ’s native breath uh so I think that’s that’s that’s the first thing i’ say second thing I’d say is make the sacrament of the Lord suffer the central event of your life but build your life around preparing for taking the sacrament and then reflecting upon it make that the most important thing you do every week not just as a you know 10 minute 15 minute Interruption to your stay activities no no make make the sacrament of the Lord supper the central aspect of your life last make next to last when you go to church stop thinking about going to church so that you can be fed no that that’s for primary kids and and and youth and it’s good we’re good at that no where you are right now no no you’re there to feed if if you think you’re going to get your spiritual sustenance from two hours at church on Sunday oh that’s all it’s for it’s it’s for you to go take the sacrament and then for each of us to look for ways to help people around us and if you if we go to church with that frame of mind I’m here to take the sacrament renew my commitments to Christ and then I’m looking for ways to help other people you do that it’s a different experience it’s a cooler experience you’re sitting there asking the Lord who can I help how can I help them the different different experience last thing read everything you can about what’s going on with scholarship in the book of but most people aren’t aware of this you know get on the Maxwell institute’s website look at the stuff that’s happening because I’m telling you the last 20 30 years or so there has been a a sea chain in terms of the scholarship about about are there anisms in the Book of Mormon of course there are yeah Joseph Smith was living in the 19th century yeah you’re going to hear some of his Lang and some of his thought but no no no the scholarship on the Book of Mormon show shows us this is an ancient book written by multiple authors that is complex and profound at ways that you don’t get by just a surface reator but just living on the Book of Mormon videos no and so go to the Maxwell Institute look at the stuff they’ve that they’ve got there and study it and when we do that you come away with the okay this book could not have come from Joseph Smith it no that’s crazy where did it come from that’s when it gets interesting and and I believe the most elegant answer is the one Joseph Smith gave it came from an angel on Golden Plates was translated miraculously that’s crazy stuff right happens to be true and when we realize that’s true it invites us into a world of angels and spirit of a world beyond what we can see touch feel and measure and that changes anything one recommendation get Grant Hardy’s book published by Oxford University press called understanding the book of one best single volume about the book of morming that you can it Grant Hardy’s a imperative literature guide trained at Yale teaches at UNC and he’s taken his scholarship and how to engage in a close read of text and applied it to the Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is so much cooler than you and I think and that the video show and the Seminary teaches I had to run you’re the man brother Griffith thank you so much I respect you a lot I married you from a distance and and so glad to have the chance to actually get to visit with you so thank you thank you very much wish I had more time see [Music] you oh man wow that was cool that was cool the legend the legend himself I know this picture made him seem a lot more intimidating once we started I was like oh yeah oh this guy’s cool you you’ve yeah he’s a baller he’s a bit of a master orator he’s really good at storytelling yeah for real I mean the fact that he was in South Africa during a parttime time and everything that you would see and kind of I mean I so so what is interesting about this discussion right is less than other ones that I’ve had where those ones have a lot been like this is what the mission has done for me blah blah blah which is you know true this one is a lot more him talking about stories on his mission and you can see the value that he places on his mission but he doesn’t so much have to explicitly say I found my mission to be very valuable it’s just kind of like you can just tell that he’s kind of soaked it up and has kind of permeated every aspect of everything he does right m and then listeners can like you said hear the stories and pick up oh wow this is clearly like a valuable them to this man you had you heard that rexley story before had you heard him probably I hav heard any of those stories yeah no I honestly I was like taking like in mental nodes I’m like that’s a good because I just had a pretty big i f the motion for summary judgment which is basically just like an early stage to be like your honor we think all the evidence has been supported right now we think that we can win right now on the marriage like we don’t need to go to trial and it was like a pretty big motion obviously CU it’s like a final order if he grants my motion like we win the case but anyway I definitely struggled in aspects you know there were Parts where I was stammering like he said where I got nervous and I got thrown off by he asked me like a question then I tried to remember where I was in my argument and I was like stuttering through to get back into the flow anyway I just felt like that was the same message I had from that experience that he had just like just dumb it down because part of you is like these are attorneys and you want to sound smart and intelligent when in reality like they don’t have like he said they don’t have the time to like read up on everything that you write and so really just make it as simple for them as possible so anyway just when he was saying that I was like man I need to hear that and take notes and something I need to implement so anyway it was helpful for me and selfishly too I appreciated it yeah this will be the last thing and I’ll let you jump off but one thing that I really respect about I mean the amount of learning and reading and knowledge Gathering that he’s done over the course of his life is probably 10 times more than you and I have done combined right he’s just he’s read everything and I love that there’s a marriage between and that’s what the intent of this podcast is supposed to be right is that I don’t the spiritual aspect of a mission is and and church members everything is obviously crucial but there’s real marriage between the spiritual side of things and the secular side of things and so I like that his advice to a return missionary struggling with their own testimony isn’t just I mean there’s spiritual parts of it like yeah pray and and and focus on Sacrament and stuff very important but I love that there’s a secular side of it which is like dig into some scholarship on it the two really do go hand inand and I’ve felt some very spiritual experiences is in my own study by reading secular books right there’s a book called after talks about a guy studied near-death experiences but did it from a very empirical perspective where it’s like he measured you know what percent of near-death experiences had this element and that element and it’s not meant to be a spiritual book at all but with the knowledge and the secular side of it and you combine it with what you already know then it becomes a really profound experience right so I I love that that’s part of his Persona and part of his belief is really including the secular side of all things study knowledge Gathering of any kind you know truth is truth wherever you find it so yeah and also I felt like he took a secular way like you know having that different perspect like he talked about going to church and having like a different perspective right that technically isn’t like a spiritual principle that is like a psych logical principle of saying I’m going to come with a different perspective here it doesn’t mean the church is less true or more true because I take that perspective but maybe I get something different out of it and that’s just a secular practice because it’s like I think of like Victor frink’s you know man search for meeting that’s kind of what he’s teaching is like yeah I’m going through this terrible horrible stuff but I’m going to shift my perspective and focus on something else and so again I agree that I like that he put in like secular things too where it’s like hey go to church and you’re going to get more out of it not because it’s more true or less true or anything spiritually necessarily but you’re now coming at it of like a goal to serve others and you’re going to get something completely different and so I just like that you know like you said he’s also implementing like these you know kind of secular non-religious and I think that at least my understanding from what I’ve listen to your podcast and what not that’s kind of what you’re trying to get at is like more of that kind of secular crossover and whatnot but for sure I mean anyway spiritual side follows right it all follows but you can’t really disentangle them but I think you can look at them separately so it’s cool but anyway man thank you for your time we’ll let you get back to it but W that a cool experience huh it was again yeah it was a great experience I really like even us just talking now I just would love to have more time with with him he’s you like you had such so much knowledge there you really wish you could just sit and just kind of like you know whatever the scriptures sit at the feet how beautiful are the feet or whatever he’d probably shake his head at that but I agree with you for real Billy way it’s good to see you man let’s ’s [Music] cat okay that’s it for the Pod thanks to brother Tom Griffith for coming on today and sharing his experiences thanks to Nick for coming on to co-host thanks to Jake for producing the podcast and thanks to all listeners for tuning in um stick around we’ll be back for more episodes later [Music] thanks

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