Posted by:
rt
(
)
Date: June 15, 2012 04:26PM
De Standaard, one of Belgium's most reknowned newspapers, will do a spread about the mormons in Flanders in this weekend's edition. I have it on good authority that they also spoke to an ex-mormon: moi ;-)
I spoke to the journalist for about an hour and did some follow-up emails afterwards; the mormon concept of an afterlife, and who goes where and why is difficult to grasp for outsiders. The main take-aways from my contribution will be:
1. Once the facts about mormonism truly sink in, you lose your faith with lightning speed. The reason for this is that mormons are completely isolated from their surroundings. They live in a secular society but they are not a part of it. That greatly magnifies the shock of finding out you've been had all these years.
2. When you leave the mormon church, you also lose all of your friends. They will even become afraid of you and avoid you on the streets. If you were raised in the mormon church, like me, you also find out you don't know how to make friends. As a mormon, all other mormons automatically are your "friends". However, true friendship needs time to grow and develop. Instant friendship isn't real.
3. Mormon marriages sometimes break up when one partner leaves the church. Luckily for me and my wife, that was not the case but there were other issues. For instance, we had to learn that's it's OK for two partners to have different opinions on certain matters. Mormonism has a ready-made answer to everything. We had to learn to accept that some things are undecided.
A lot more was discussed but these points made the cut. I find this selection rather interesting. Simply letting these aspects of my story speak for themselves is very powerful, I think. No doubt the story will be full of mormon PR-crap as well (I know who else he spoke to) but people will see through that.