For Wade: My dinner with Mr. D.
Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2006 1:31 pm
Last night I had dinner with my friend at a Vietnamese restaurant. We had coconut chicken, chicken with hot peppers and lemon grass, a bottle of Pinot Grigio, and fried bananas with ice cream for dessert. It was really nice.
Anyway, this is the friend I've told you about whose bishop encouraged his wife to divorce him because he didn't have a temple recommend. Yet he's not angry. So without telling him much about our discussions here, I asked him why he had never become angry with the church. He said, "I'm not really sure. I got hit with a whole barrage of things at once, and I suppose I was too busy trying to keep my life from falling apart that I didn't have time to be angry."
I asked him what he meant, and he said that not only had his wife taken their children back to the UK and filed for divorce, but she had told every one of their extended family and friends that she had left him because he was addicted to pornography. His father showed up for a visit from Utah and shoved a letter into his hand describing the consequences of pornography addiction. He said to me, "I've never looked at pornography, never felt a desire to, but my family believed everything she said."
But, he said, it just wasn't in his nature to get angry. I asked him if he felt he had chosen not to be angry, and he said no, he didn't think it was a conscious choice.
I asked him if he felt the church had acted in good faith in its claims to be the true church. He laughed and said, "Are you kidding?" He used the words "deceptive," "fraud," and "lies" in rather short order. But still no anger.
I asked him in he felt that leaving the church was a grieving process. Again he looked a bit incredulous. "That's exactly what it is," he said. "You lose the entire framework of your life, and that's an incredible loss." He mentioned that his therapist had said the same thing mine had, that he needed to work through the grieving process as with any other major loss.
So, I'm thinking that maybe my friend isn't a Mr. D. after all. No, he's not angry, but he's not exactly the person who walks away from Mormonism feeling like the church did him no wrong.
Anyway, this is the friend I've told you about whose bishop encouraged his wife to divorce him because he didn't have a temple recommend. Yet he's not angry. So without telling him much about our discussions here, I asked him why he had never become angry with the church. He said, "I'm not really sure. I got hit with a whole barrage of things at once, and I suppose I was too busy trying to keep my life from falling apart that I didn't have time to be angry."
I asked him what he meant, and he said that not only had his wife taken their children back to the UK and filed for divorce, but she had told every one of their extended family and friends that she had left him because he was addicted to pornography. His father showed up for a visit from Utah and shoved a letter into his hand describing the consequences of pornography addiction. He said to me, "I've never looked at pornography, never felt a desire to, but my family believed everything she said."
But, he said, it just wasn't in his nature to get angry. I asked him if he felt he had chosen not to be angry, and he said no, he didn't think it was a conscious choice.
I asked him if he felt the church had acted in good faith in its claims to be the true church. He laughed and said, "Are you kidding?" He used the words "deceptive," "fraud," and "lies" in rather short order. But still no anger.
I asked him in he felt that leaving the church was a grieving process. Again he looked a bit incredulous. "That's exactly what it is," he said. "You lose the entire framework of your life, and that's an incredible loss." He mentioned that his therapist had said the same thing mine had, that he needed to work through the grieving process as with any other major loss.
So, I'm thinking that maybe my friend isn't a Mr. D. after all. No, he's not angry, but he's not exactly the person who walks away from Mormonism feeling like the church did him no wrong.