Fangirl Becomes Mormon?

January 13, 2015

My heart beats for ‘The Piano Guys’. They are by far the greatest artists our world can offer. I like to describe their style of music as a modern kind of classical music, or modern music with a classic touch. The Piano Guys are musical geniuses and I really adore them. There is a big Piano Guys Poster in my room, I wear my Fan-Shirt with pride, played one of their songs for my school-leaving exam (Abitur) in music, and I never take off my Piano Guys wristband because I am totally convinced that it brings me good fortune.

But what does all of this have to do with religion? Well, a while ago The Piano Guys posted a picture in a social network. No big deal, I know, but it showed them in front of a large building with the words, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” on it. The picture plus the caption made it obvious that they were members of that church. I think it was in 2013 so it was still during my religion-critical phase.

Of course, being a huge fangirl, I had to google it immediately. I quickly found out that members of this church are also called “Mormons”. That was a shock for me; there were billions of prejudices in my head instantly. Aren’t those the ones with the many wives!?

I told my mother about it and her reaction was similar to mine. “Well, that explains why they’ve got so many kids. They probably have many wives and they aren’t allowed to use contraceptives,” she said. Everyone I told it reacted kinda like that. No one had anything good to say about Mormons.

I had the urge to protest. I wanted to defend The Piano Guys. They were my idols. My heroes. It was impossible for me to believe that they had mistakes! And that’s when I started to do research on Mormons. I found out that most of the prejudices weren’t true…they were absolutely wrong in fact. Mormons weren’t allowed to have many wives nowadays, and they were also no racists - which my father claimed they were. In addition I found out that many people I really looked up to were Mormons or Latter-day Saints, how they preferably call themselves. Even Mitt Romney is one! (whom I don’t like by the way).

I did more research, joked that I wanted to become a Mormon “because the Piano Guys are Mormons”. My friends always laughed about it of course and called me crazy. They thought I was kidding… and I thought I was kidding too. But I somehow couldn’t let go of it. The more I read, the more I got interested in it. Secretly I was hoping that a Mormon would talk to me on the streets, just like Jehovah’s witnesses always did. I didn’t even know if that was something they did, I only knew that we had a Mormon church somewhere close to where I lived.

Someday I came across the website “Mormon.org” and started to read it through. It was a good site with incredibly interesting information. Or at least I found them to be very interesting. I really liked the fact that Latter-day Saints didn’t drink or do drugs because that was something I never did too and never wanted to do. It always made me feel uncomfortable when I went out with friends because I never really knew how to explain myself.

I also watched videos on YouTube about Mormons and what they believe in. Yeah, I found some really weird stuff too and a few comments underneath some videos were absolutely amusing but I tried to choose my sources wisely and mostly used official sites and channels of the church. I even started to listen to the first chapters of “The Book of Mormon” on YouTube.

It was New Year’s Eve when I decided to fill in a form on that website. I talked about it with my parents and sisters first and they said I should just do it already… probably because I was getting on their nerves. But they didn’t think I would actually do it. They had no idea that I had been toying with the idea of maybe becoming a Mormon for quite a while now.

After I had filled in the form and quickly sent it away (so that I couldn’t change my mind) it said that Missionaries would contact me soon. Those Missionaries were usually young men and women around my age, that much I had already read. Still, I thought they would probably be like the Mad Hatter or all the Jehovah’s Witnesses I had met in my life. When I told my parents that I had really sent away the form they made fun of me, saying “I would never ever be able to get rid of them again”.

(To be continued…)

Meet The Mad Hatter

January 12, 2015

A while later I had my first day of University. Medieval Studies is a compulsory module of my study. If you ask me, it’s incredibly boring and extremely unnecessary (I’ve seriously got no idea how I should pass that final!!). Anyway, it’s about – who would have thought it? – Middle Ages. And, as you might or might not know, religion played a very big role during that time. The Professor mentioned religious terms or talked about seemingly important biblical figures, symbols, themes, etc. almost constantly. In the majority of cases, I had no idea what he was talking about, and that really annoyed me. I decided that a good teacher – which I want to be one day – had to know at least a little bit about the events of the Bible. I began to look for a Bible study.

And that’s where my grandma comes into play. My grandma dealt with nearly all religions during her 70+ years of life. Seriously, she met representatives of almost every group of faith! She even met some of them for years. And still, she doesn’t really believe in God and never joined any faith group. Not even when her only son, my dad, became a Jehovah’s Witness.

It was tough for her. From one day to the next he didn’t celebrate Birthdays, Christmas, Eastern, etc. anymore, just to name a few things that changed. And yes, I never celebrated a real Christmas, Birthday or anything else in my life before because that’s something my parents didn’t start doing again, once they weren’t active members anymore. Nevertheless, my sisters and I turned out pretty decent and we had to wish for nothing during our childhood. But let’s go back to our actual topic.

Months ago my grandma met a man who’s a member of a faith group called, “Universal Salvation” (Please note! I’m not sure if that’s the correct English name. The correct German name is “Die Allversöhnung”). She meets up with that man once a week to read and study the Bible.

My grandma really seemed to be taken with him, or better, his religion. She mentioned quite a few times, that she thought, she had finally found the right religion for herself. At first I made fun of her for it, but, as I told you, my attitude had changed…a lot. Anyway, I told her that I wanted to meet that guy so he could sum up the Bible for me and only a few days later I really met him. 

I arrived at my grandma’s place and the man was already waiting for me. To make things easier I’m gonna call him “Mad Hatter”. You will understand why in a moment. When I saw him, my first thought was, “What the heck!? He looks like a serial killer!”. He was about 50 years of age, his expression was way to friendly, his grin a lot to wide. Behind his gigantic glasses with yellowed lenses his eyes looked huge and alien-ish. He quickly introduced himself to me with a fleeting, limp handshake. Of course I played it cool and smiled gently back at him. The true value of a person does not depend on the outer appearance!

Neither he nor I really knew what to say so my grandma tried to liaise. “He once was first violinist in an orchestra,” she said, of course knowing how much I loved music. I pretended to be surprised and impressed. Why I pretended? Because my grandma had already told me that story like a trillion of times.

The Mad Hatter explained that music had been his raison d’être. After a terrible accident though, his arm had been damaged beyond repair and ever since that day ages ago, he couldn’t play the violin anymore. Only just the thought of something similar happening to me, leaving me unable to play the piano, made me shudder. I told him how sorry I was but it was really difficult to be serious because he was still looking at me with that creepy, wide grin. He told me that it was totally okay and that he was more than happy about it because only that way had he been able to realize how important he was in God’s plan. That he could now serve in the name of God was by far the greatest honor. That answer shocked me a little, but I still wore a smile. He was already too fanatic for my taste.

In hindsight I’m pretty sure that this is what the Mad Hatter is trying to convince himself of because otherwise he probably couldn’t live with this hard stroke of fade.

However, the meeting went on as shocking as that. Before we even opened up the Bible, the Mad Hatter started to pray and begged God to take over his body and mouth so that he wouldn’t tell me anything wrong. I’m pretty sure at that point I looked at him open-mouthed.

To be fair, what he told me about the Bible was, mind you, quite interesting. He could answer all of my questions and explained everything pretty well. Not even my partially very disrespectful questions (like e.g.: “Why don’t you just kill yourself if it’s all about what comes after death?”) could disconcert him.  

To sum it up, I indeed had a better overview of the Bible after that meeting, but I was also healed of my thoughts of maybe becoming religious; at least for a while.

‘Interest’ Doesn’t Grow On Trees

January 11, 2015

Who am I? For the most part I’m an ordinary girl from Germany. I turned 19 exactly two days ago, and didn’t believe in God for those 19 years of my life. To be honest, I frowned on (religious) bigotry, or faith in superhuman powers at all… I even mocked religious people. Just to be on the safe side: I’m still totally against bigotry! But in all other cases, my attitude towards religion has changed completely.

How’s that possible? Well, my three sisters and I grew up as children of two Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Yeah right, Ex. My parents were already inactive by the time I was born. However, it’s out of the question that both my parents still believe in God, they just don’t like the compulsion and pressure, which you are to experience as a member of that faith group. If you can’t or don’t want to adapt, if you can’t prove a certain number of hours during which you went from house to house to preach your teachings, you will, in most cases, be expelled and, from then on, won’t be allowed to have contact to any other members. Sounds unreal, doesn’t it? Unfortunately it’s pretty real though.

So this is why my parents aren’t active anymore. They call themselves ‘Christians’ but don’t really belong to any church or faith group. They never forced me to believe, or not to believe in anything. In fact, religion only played a minor role in my childhood, not to say no role at all. I know what a Bible looks like, I also touched one before and as a child I really did admire the pictures in ‘My Book of Bible Stories’ (= a child version of the Bible). But that’s it. I went to school, made my ‘Abitur’ and am now studying to become an elementary school teacher. Like all of my classmates I learned the theory of evolution by heart and accepted it as a fact without questioning it. I attended ethics class, in which you are only given a very, very brief overview about certain religions, and the topic changes, before you even had a chance to think about it.

I had exactly one friend who was slightly religious, but it was never a topic we spoke about. All my other friends were atheists, just like me. If someone asked me, “Do you believe in God?” I answered with a clear “No!” or a simple “I don’t really know”. When people of faith talked to me on the street, I always listened to them – ‘cause I’m a friendly person ;) – but as soon as I got rid of them, in a courteous way of course, I breathed a sigh of relief and forgot everything they had just told me.

When I got older it all changed though. Do you know the musical “Les Miserables”? There is a certain bishop. Yes, Bishop Myriel. His role in the musical always moved me deeply. I’m not sure if that’s the reason for it, but I suddenly started to admire people, who were able to believe in something, of which there was so obviously no proof… I started to admire people, who believe in God.

Then, one day, I watched “Life of Pi” and found myself to be deeply stirred by it. I suddenly longed to know more about religion, and maybe even believe in something. I started to think a lot about it and was suddenly interested in religion, couldn’t change the channel when there was a biblical documentation on TV, …

So how the heck is this possible? I have no idea, but I doubt, that it’s just because of those two movies! 

(to be continued…)

This movie will be the death of me! I cry non stop from the beginning on every single time I watch it! :D

Introduction

You probably already thought about religion before, didn’t you? Maybe just because you were making fun of religious people, or because you actually are religious, or maybe because you’re just interested. Your teacher forced you to think about it in school? Yeah, that counts too. But maybe you also thought about religion because you have the desire to be religious… to believe in something; but you just couldn’t find the right religion for yourself yet. In that case, I know exactly how you feel ‘cause that’s what I feel like too right now.

It’s good to start at the beginning, isn’t it? I wasn’t always interested in religion. Actually the contrary was the case. So how, when and why did I start being interested in religion? That’s what I’m gonna write about in my next post. 

Gonna try to find a fitting song for every post b/c let's be honest…music makes everything so much better! ;)