By: Len Hazell

Len Hazell — Sat, 07 Feb 2015 20:04:39 +0000

This is an interesting one article from my point of view, because rather than approach it as Mr. Anson has, “I don’t need to understand Mormon culture or learn how to speak like a Mormon!”
I would say as a former Mormon (and many of us who stand against the Mormon Church as former or Ex-Mormons) the statement rather should read “I don’t WANT to understand Mormon culture or CONTINUE to speak like a Mormon!”
Why you may ask?
The answer is several fold but first and for mostly it is because the whole of Mormon culture and lifestyle is based on being submissive and compliant.
You submit to the will of the church as a whole, to your local leaders, bishopric and stake presidents, you submit to the president and the prophets and apostles and you submit to the peer pressure and judgement of you fellow members.
Being a Mormon is all about being “More humble than thou” and with the humility comes compliance and obedience.
Secondly there are two very separate way of being a Mormon, the public way as sanctioned by the church spin doctors, which is what is heard on TV radio and in the press, the sanitised form of the LDS for public consumption. The version where all the historical “inaccuracies” (this is the LDS definition of inaccuracy by the way, where it means that the facts are actually totally accurate but not faith promoting and so are denied, or weasel worded in to incomprehensible gibberish) are denied and laughed politely aside and the “good works” of the church are flaunted in bright yellow high visibility jackets while scandals like the City Creek Mall are never talked about at all.
Then there is the grass roots version of Mormonism, where all the things denounced publicly as “Not official” doctrine are taught to three year olds and hammered in to them every week for the rest of their lives as of paramount importance for the salvation of your immortal soul in (the highest of the three) heavens.
Phrases like “Tithing is completely voluntary” are spouted publicly and then in church on a Sunday rephrased as “Of course it voluntary, you are perfectly free to not go to the Celestial Kingdom and to drag your family down with you, by not paying an HONEST tithe.”

Shadow Mormons, as you refer to them or hypocrites as they should more rightly be termed are cowards. Often they are people so invested (literally, it cost a lot of money to be a Mormon) in the church that leaving would in fact socially and sometimes economically be disastrous. Especially if someone has grown up in the church and been brainwashed since birth.
It is a cliche to hear of those who have escaped the church saying that they honestly believed they were the only one to have ever done it (especially in the pre internet days.)
The Church isolates it’s members from “Anti-Mormon” literature and media, condemning those who question for polluting their minds with it.
In recent days even the famous “Gospel Topics” essays have been a subject of a caution to members from local Bishops and leaders, for though they are espoused as being an accurate source of information for members, they are really just the anonymous waffling of apologetic aim directly at doubters and anti-Mormons.

So to return to the weak argument, “I don’t need to understand Mormon culture or learn how to speak like a Mormon!” I would say this, if you are an Ex-Mormon, no you don’t, and as such you should not address Mormons on their own terms, you address them as one who knows better and knows it from painful experience.
If you are a Never-mo (what we EX’s tend to call never been a Mormon anti-Mormons) then yes, educate yourself, know your enemy, but DO NOT descend to his level, do not speak to him as if you understand his “plight” because you don’t. If you have never been a Mormon, you don’t know what it is or involves to be a Mormon, emotionally or psychologically.
Telling a man with one arm you understand his situation because you once bruised you wrist is a fair analogy.

To a TBM (true believing Mormon) coming to him kindly, on his level and trying to persuade him that you want with love and tact to lead him out of misbelief, will only convince him that you have been sent to him by God to be shown the true church and the right way, HE WILL try to proselytise you because that is how he is conditioned.
However talk reasonably and straight forwardly on logical straightforward terms, show him the contradictory nature of his church and the teachings of his leadership and he will get angry, because you will have touched his underlying doubts (Believe me ALL Mormons have doubts, constantly fighting them is part of the process of being a TBM), but if he has become cross, he has been forced to think, and thinking is the way out of Mormonism, because it is actively discouraged and so leads to more doubts, great conflicts and eventually either apostasy or hypocrisy.
Some may choose to live a lie for a time, but no one can do that forever, they may worry about losing their family, but nine times out of ten, if family relationships are strong the church despite its teachings will come a poor second, and if it does not, then there was really no relationship there to start with, just an LDS sanctioned breeding programme, and anything has got to be better than that surely?

Comments on: Weak Arguments #9: “I don’t need to understand Mormon culture or learn how to speak like a Mormon…”

By: Len Hazell