Are you Mormon? Sorry, Latter-Day Saint? If so, this book really is not written for you, but this Introduction kinda is. Is not the Introduction the place where readers decide to keep reading or not?
[To everyone else, this is a cautionary tale 56 years in the making. A warning filled with stories and metaphors that will hopefully help you come to learn—or want to learn—the extreme dangers of living in or around perhaps the biggest, stealthiest, richest, and most successful cult of all time: the Mormons.]
If you are Mormon you definitely do not want to read the stuff in this book. Be warned. At the very least it will anger you, but it could also kill you. I’m not exaggerating. The deadly reality of cognitive dissonance is the reason I’ve taken so long to write this, not only for my own psychological safety but for yours, my Mormon friend. I’m sure, like me, you feel you are strong enough to take anything. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. I’ve been around enough destroyed psyches to know that for many never knowing any of this stuff is much healthier.
The Truth is not always useful. (Boyd K. Packer to Institute Instructors)
In my greatest moment of trial after reading Rough Rolling Stone, an honest church history, from an honest church historian and faithful Mormon, my wife begged me through tears on her knees not to “burst their bubbles” when I shared it with her reaching out for sincere help to find the answers that didn’t exist and recover my “testimony.” I knew then doing that research would kill her even though I feared for my own life. That was the day we split. I could feel it at a deep level. She dug deeper into her beliefs and I could no longer accept the lies, alone.
It was the first day I thought about suicide. Of course, I told no one. The thought of the kids kept me alive. I started seeing a psychologist in secret to assess how much damage I had done to my children. I also sought meaning in life by building virtual worlds for education, veterans and becoming a teacher instead of just an IT guy. I volunteered on school boards. I even started a company with a gentle, caring teacher who reached out on Twitter to show me how to get into teaching and later showed me unconditional love and kindness in a way I had never experienced, love without conditions. Soon after, I found myself wanting her as much or more than my wife. It just happened. I hadn’t planned it. I had no one but her in that moment and I was very much near death psychologically. I regret my adultery, but I’m also so very grateful to that woman who was there for me when no one else was, including my Mormon wife.
I’m sure you’ll find your own interpretation of those events that will feel best to you. My ex-wife certainly has. The point is that I am an “adulterer” never to be trusted, Jesus even said so. There, now put the book down and go do something fun.
Neo, I apologize. We have a rule. We never unplug anyone past a certain age. The mind can’t handle it.
What? Still here?
God dammit! It would be simply pointless for any faithful Mormon (like you) to read this book. Let me remind you that all faithful Latter-Day Saints are strongly discouraged from reading any “anti-Mormon” literature or anything that isn’t “faith-promoting.” I promise you. This book is solidly in that category. So, just put it away right now and go eat a big juicy steak with your family. Besides, once you learn the other raunchy details about my fall into sin and excommunication there’s no way you will trust anything I write anyway. I understand. I was you. It’s okay. No harm will come from not knowing. Oh, and wave to the women in the red dress for me on your way out, will you? I never did get her number. I wonder if the operator could look it up.
For 42 years I was a “model” Mormon:
[To the non-Mormons reading that list and scratching their heads, just know that all that stuff definitely means something to Mormons. Like all cults, they have their own language.]
Still here? I would think just my sharing my temple name and that of my ex-wife that surely you would have put the book down already. Don’t worry. I won’t talk about you getting naked in the temple and the old-creepy people touching our naked bodies (same sex, of course) to “wash and anoint” them with “holiness” until later.
I know. I know. I “covenanted” in the temple to commit ritual suicide if I ever said any of this stuff. I even acting it out to be sure to get it right. We don’t want those “sacrets” getting out. I am just so sorry I am still alive. I just couldn’t do it. I swear, I tried but I just couldn’t stop laughing at how stupid it is and you know how hard it is gut myself in a full belly guffaw? [I really didn’t.] I’m sure you will be rewarded for your faithfulness and Lord over all of us in the lower kingdom. I’ll probably be in the lowest degree of the Telestial Kingdom, which is fine by me since y’all can visit anytime. Honestly, I am really trying hard for outer darkness though, but I was taught I was never faithful enough to be actually that bad. “Not even Hitler” as they said in Sunday School.
[I’m sure most Mormons are gone by now, but just in case…]
Hey, did you know God’s “new name” for me (and everyone else’s) cycles around ever year. That royally pissed me off (sorry, language) because I thought I was literally the only one to have the totally cool name “Moroni” even though everyone on that day also got the same name. And, I mean, come on, to a Star Wars geek “Leah” was the coolest “new name” my wife could have. I used to be so afraid to forget it. Even now I’m not completely sure that’s even it. I only heard it once in my entire life and could never hear it again unless they had a special you-done-forgot-and-screwed-up veil ceremony just to tell me again. If a man forgets it, he literally has to leave his wife on the other side of the veil in Heaven. Nope, she can’t get in at all unless the stupid man remembers. And yet God made men forget everything immediately. Ever trust a man to remember even a simple shopping list? And yet God (a man obviously) says no women get into Heaven unless the man remembers the new name of his wives, yes, plural. I’m gonna bet that Brigham Young forgets at least five of his 300+ wives new names. Maybe not, maybe he married them all on the same day to have the same name.
Satan wasn’t done with me after my cheating. As soon as I joined team Satan, a Bishop’s wife (and former girlfriend) fell for my newly bestowed temptation aura and surprised me in the middle of the night by straddling me and kissing me while I was sleeping on their couch after a hiking trip with her and her sister, you know, to help a sinner get back on his feet and all.
A year after that the Bishop who represented me at my excommunication court was picked up in Florida in a sting operation where he attempted to have sex with a 14-year-old boy. Turns out my “advocate” was a gay pedophile. Obviously, Satan had worked through me to corrupt him as well ‘cept I definitely prefer lady-folk, or dems that look like lady-folk at least. (Just got done watching Firefly for probably the 12th time.)
Better? I thought so.
Every Mormon knows that adulterers are nothing but liars who have so completely fallen into Satan’s power and are “past feeling” unable to escape their own lying to themselves. To these Mormons I’m clearly the one filled with cognitive dissonance.
Is it true that Mormons are the “one and only true church on the face of the whole Earth in which [God] is well pleased” (that’s on the front page of the Book of Mormon)? Possibly.
This book has been a long-time in the making. More than a decade has passed since my cataclysmic spiritual and mental collapse and excommunication from the Mormons (which I requested) and yet here I am, still struggling with very real chronic psychological symptoms of a viral cult infection that can never be cured. Faithful Mormons will tell themselves that “Satan has possession of me now.” But quite the opposite is true. Mormon doctrine and cultural practices are pure evil disguised in a pretty van with “free candy” on the outside. By their “candy” ye shall know them. For example, I was forced by court order to take my children to attempt Mormon “services” and shook the hand of a Mormon Bishop arrested in Florida for trying to solicit sex with a 14-year-old boy, the same man who took private confessions from my boys and “provided counsel” to my now-gay and happily married son. One person’s horrific monster is another person’s “repentant latter-day saint.” Horror stories uncovered through the blessing of the Internet are so numerous to site. This story, however, is about my own trauma and how I’ve survived.
Among the many symptoms I continue to discover: I still have tick; night-time anxiety attacks; occasional, unexplainable PTSD-like sobbing; and rage, so much rage. Like so many unfortunate infants, I was born infected. It wasn’t my choice. Now, when I’m not vigilant, the symptoms become overwhelming putting myself—and sometimes those around me—in very real danger. Over time, like so many who have come to accept and manage symptoms of their own chronic diseases, I believe I’m closer to fine more now than ever before, but writing those words still makes me nervous, even now.
This book must be written if for no other reason than to protect the many who are in so much very real peril. People will do literally anything if they think God commanded it, just ask the women and children hacked to death at the Mountain Meadows Massacre (when you get to heaven). Ironically, it was discovering this danger while researching how my children might be affected by Mormonism that brought me to fall, and fall hard. Thankfully, I survived and was able to be there for them in ways I had not even anticipated because of my fall. The Lord works in mysterious ways.