Introduction and Welcome to the Conference

Wayne Sermon [00:00:00] Sa.

John Dehlin [00:00:30] I get the distinct pleasure of briefly introducing Wayne Sermon a few years back. I'm going to be honest, I'm old. I've always liked Imagine Dragons, but I didn't know a ton about him because, you know, I don't know what I've been doing all this time, but I didn't know a lot about him. So when I got a beautiful email and some, some support from a guy named Wayne Sermon, I kind of, you know, didn't know that name from Adam. But then I read the email and I thought, wow, one of Imagine Dragons supports me and that's pretty powerful.

John Dehlin [00:01:11] But, you know, a couple years went by and, you know, I hear from Wayne once. Once or again. And. And because I got to work with Dan Reynolds and others on that HBO documentary, I became more and more familiar with the band. I got to see him a few times.

John Dehlin [00:01:29] And I think Imagine Dragons is one of the coolest rock bands in the history of rock and roll. I love their music. And when I saw them on that Beatles special celebrating my favorite band and they were invited to play, there was a really proud moment for me, not only as a music lover, but also as a Mormon because there was one of, you know, a band representing some of my own people there reaching the highest heights of the music world.

John Dehlin [00:02:06] For those of you, for the two of you who don't know, Imagine Dragons is an American pop band from Las Vegas, Nevada consisting of lead vocalist Dan Reynolds, lead guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee and drummer Daniel Platzman.

John Dehlin [00:02:22] Just to skip on a tiny bit, MTV called them the year's biggest breakout band. At one point, Billboard named them the breakthrough band of 2013 and the biggest band of 2017 and placed them at the top of their year end rock rankings for 2013, 2017 and 2018. Imagine Dragons top the Billboard year end top artist Duo group category. In 2018, I could go on and list so many of their accomplishments including winning three American Music Awards, nine Billboard Music Awards, one Grammy Award and one MTV Music Video Award, as well as the World Music award. They've sold 35 million RIAA certified singles in the US as of whenever this Wikipedia article was written.

John Dehlin [00:03:11] They have sold 20 million albums worldwide. And get this everybody, they were the most streamed group of 2018 on Spotify. They're also the first rock act to have two songs, Believer in Thunder, to surpass 1 billion streams each, which is phenomenal.

John Dehlin [00:03:37] So what you all know is that Imagine Dragons is amazing. What you don't know and what you will only know, maybe if you had Watched my Mormon Stories interview with Wayne Sermon and his beautiful, brilliant, talented wife Alex is that not only is their most recent album partly, at least in part, about Dan and Wayne's sort of perspectives and views and journeys within Mormonism, but that theme has actually come up in previous albums as well.

John Dehlin [00:04:07] And the thing that you won't know at all unless you listen to that interview is what I got to experience when I visited their beautiful home in Las Vegas. And I learned this as talking to Wayne on the telephone a few times and getting to know him.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] Wayne is an incredibly deep thinker. He's an incredibly intelligent soul. He attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, which is is comparable to Juilliard for anyone who knows about about music today. He's an incredibly talented musician, but more importantly, he's a deep thinker and an incredibly wise soul. And perhaps my biggest, most beautiful discovery was all of all was to get to know his wife, Alex, who in her own right is a professional ballerina, who at various points in her life, but also a sweet, devoted wife and mother who's also brilliant and passionate and stylish and super cool. And if you haven't checked out her Instagram account, it's full of her beautiful children doing cute things.

John Dehlin [00:05:16] So check it out. Anyway, I've gone on and on. I could talk forever about the sermons. But you're about to hear a sermon from one of my favorite people in Mormonism, especially if you adjust for how little time I've got to spend with him. But I don't know exactly where he is. I know he's nursing a flu, but without any further ado, could we please give a huge, overwhelming, rousing applause for our keynote speaker, Wayne Sermon.

Wayne Sermon Speaks to Those Who Have Left Faith

Wayne Sermon [00:05:46] Brothers and sisters, hello, comrades and friends. For those of you who don't know me, I wasn't expecting anything to be said before I went on. So my name is, in fact, Wayne Sermon. I'm a musician and husband and father of three beautiful kids.

Wayne Sermon [00:06:08] We live in Las Vegas. I play the guitar in a band called Imagine Dragons. And for some reason that means I have. You guys have to listen to me. For some reason, I have some kind of authority, like I know I'm talking about.

Wayne Sermon [00:06:20] But you know what? That's the way our society is set up. And so I'm just going to go with it. But I've had a very fortunate career as a musician. I've been very lucky. I've been able to do a lot of cool things.

Wayne Sermon [00:06:36] But I see speeches like this and moments like this with all of you as my most fulfilling and admittedly most anxiety inducing moments maybe of things I've ever done. However, looking around the room and seeing your faces, my anxieties have in large part melted away. I came to the comforting realization, sitting back there, that no one is really here for me at all or anyone else, any of the speakers here today. On the surface, maybe that's what we told ourselves, but not really.

Wayne Sermon [00:07:14] At least I don't think so. No one is here anxiously awaiting a glorious message from a dear leader, or came here expecting to hear the words of a prophet, one who can speak for God, but somehow not only can speak for God, but somehow knows his will concerning us.

Wayne Sermon [00:07:35] Not one of us is expecting a silver bullet, a quick fix that if I can just say just the right thing to you guys in just the most perfect way, it will magically erase all the pain that comes from losing your faith.

Wayne Sermon [00:07:52] One thing you thought was so precious to you and something that our families still think is so precious. No, none of that is what brings us here today. I strongly suspect that the reason we're here today and the reason we all came tonight is for each other.

Wayne Sermon [00:08:10] We came here for each other, to look at each other, to see that we actually exist. We came here because we were tired of feeling isolated, estranged, sidelined, silenced, and some of us even shunned by the very communities we once cherished. We're here to make sure we're not crazy.

Wayne Sermon [00:08:35] So we could look each other in the face and say more in one knowing glance or one empathetic look than I could ever hope to say in all the three hours of my speech tonight. Just kidding. It's not going to be three hours, it's going to be four.

Wayne Sermon [00:08:51] So thank you for being here today and taking part in this event. I know for some of you the wounds have not fully healed since you left your orthodoxy. And these gatherings with speakers and messages and teleprompters, microphones, this all is maybe a little too eerily familiar to you, and we've become sort of a squeamish and skittish bunch. We really have learned to enjoy our newfound independence and our second Saturdays have been awesome, let's be honest.

Wayne Sermon [00:09:28] So thank you for being here and breaking down that initial barrier and actually showing up as I gave up on all of you tonight. Gaze upon all of you tonight. I see my people, true kindred spirits, you might call us a lost tribe of a lost tribe, where those who, as Pascal says in his infamous and rather childish wager are so made that we cannot believe.

Wayne Sermon [00:09:50] Despite my newfound realization that my words really don't matter that much, I still expressed some anxiety to my wife, Alex, the other day about what I could possibly say to you people, all of us with our different backgrounds and experiences, how could I say anything that could reach all of you and be of any help at all? She thought about that a moment and said, well, all I know is that none of these people left their religion so they could party harder.

Wayne Sermon [00:10:16] I didn't know what she meant at first. She said none of them already had one foot out the door looking for a reason to leave. Those people have long since left their time in religion, and they probably had a pretty easy time leaving and letting it go. Probably wouldn't come to an event like this in the first place. She said that those here who left their faith did so thoughtfully and with great care because they are thoughtful and careful people, and for whatever reason, their heart would no longer let them stay in. This rang so true for me that not because of that pain, but despite the pain and heartache that decision would bring, you saw the truth with a capital T, and it has no loyalty except to itself.

Wayne Sermon [00:11:03] And that is what makes it such a beautiful thing to see you here today. Most of us here are glad to be where we are, free thinkers who value truth above all, but are humble enough to admit that maybe there's a small part of us that's still broken and that there was some good religion brought into our lives, not the least of which was its ability to bring people together.

Wayne Sermon [00:11:25] Let me say to you first, I understand you. I feel you, and I also assure you that those things are still available to you in ways that maybe you hadn't previously thought. In the months since committing to being here tonight with you all, I've been writing this speech in my head probably a hundred times.

Wayne Sermon [00:11:41] I would often notice that the tone would vary depending on my current disposition. I wrote for versions full of righteous indignation and holy fury. Why does a church continue to whitewash its true history? Why does the leadership continue to endorse harmful doctrines that hurt so many?

Wayne Sermon [00:11:59] Why is this church always decades behind social progress? Why do people follow prophets who never actually prophesize? Most of all, you don't need to clap. Most of all, how was I deceived for so long? I've written versions in the complete opposite, filled with patience and understanding, even apologizing for my former religion and its leaders. That Mormons are great people, and who am I, who is anybody, to try and tear away the things that are most precious to them.

Wayne Sermon [00:12:30] Even if I think those things might be false, who am I to assume that I know better answers. I tell myself the church is more than any just one person and individuals are good people leading good lives. Why can't I just leave well enough alone? Why not just shut my mouth and leave my own truth and lead my own truth quietly?

Wayne Sermon [00:12:52] Any criticism I give will be just to be seen as anger anyway and only prove to them my own secret guilt and thus feed their endless appetite for persecution. Well, obviously I didn't take much stock in the second position because here I am.

Wayne Sermon [00:13:05] But I don't think either position is really completely right. 98 out of 100 of these versions of the speech tonight and landed somewhere in the middle. Because the truth is, it's complicated. Most things are seldom as simple as we'd like them to be, which is why this speech has to be four hours and I apologize. But you know what? The middle is okay, I'm okay. I'm growing more and more okay with the middle. I mean Jimmy World had that great song about the middle. There's that old Steelers wheel stuck in the middle with you shell crow covered. I think there's that Zed track about the middle.

Wayne Sermon [00:13:41] Obviously this is something we're familiar with as a human species, and it just so happens that that's also where the truth usually lies. I don't mean the middle like an unsatisfactory compromise or some blase mediocrity. I mean those rare moments of clarity, the calm of your mind's storm when you can see past your own biases and find the inner truth that resounds in each of us. So I thought the best I could do is explain my own ever changing middle, which may be extreme to some, too docile for others. I don't pretend to tout anyone's agenda but my own. And as well and as we all should, I have the right to change my mind about any of this.

Wayne Sermon [00:14:19] Because if there's anything I've learned is that we must always be willing to change our minds and follow whatever the evidence may lead us. Thank you. I've put a lot of thought into my time and faith as we all have way too many hours trying to diagnose every little moment in it. One thing I noticed that I found curious, that for so long and I and many other people put far more effort and research into buying a house, a car or even hand towels from Amazon.com than they would their own religion.

Wayne Sermon [00:14:57] This thing that requires so much of us and what I mean, is that when you buy a towel from Amazon, we don't just take the seller's word for it, we look at that hand towel. We don't just trust that this hand towel is going to be everything we ever dreamed of and more. You don't click the reviews and sort by stars, only reading the five star reviews. You want the whole story, unafraid to hear harsh critiques of the towel, the towel's quality, to make sure it's the best possible decision. But for ourselves, we read reviews, is it going to absorb, right? Is it going to leave those white little things all over us? It's annoying. You want to avoid this pain

John Dehlin [00:15:40] and

Wayne Sermon [00:15:40] you don't buy a car or house because it looks nice from the outside and the guy selling it looks kind of nice and friendly. You kick the tires, you hire a professional mechanic to look the car over. You get an inspector to check the foundation of the house and an appraiser before you commit to that mortgage. And yet, for three decades, I myself was paralyzed from thorough investigation based solely on fear.

Wayne Sermon [00:16:05] Never again will I treat any of my life like I treated my religion. There are no special passes, especially when so much is required. Now, I struggled knowing just how much to talk about my background and upbringing and all that. And like John mentioned, I did a podcast with him that I think was about 79. Was it 79 hours long or something like that?

Wayne Sermon [00:16:25] With me and my beautiful wife Alex. We discussed a great deal, covered many topics including my upbringing and life both in and out of Mormonism. If anyone's truly interested in that, feel free to check that out. I don't think this is the time to repeat myself as time is running short anyway. And after all, this speech really isn't about me because you're not going to remember this. Perhaps just a super condensed version for context though. I was raised 30 minutes from here, so hop on the freeway, drive down south and dero. Happy Valley American Fork, Utah A Efforts in the House Cavemen Are you kidding me?

Wayne Sermon's Personal Journey and Story

Wayne Sermon [00:16:58] Get out of here. I was very much a typical Mormon boy from a loving family and very much planning on staying that way my whole life. I came from a musical family who fashioned ourselves the poor man's version of the Osmonds. We had a family band and being surrounded by music eventually led to my obsession with it. I would play guitar for six, eight hours a day, not taking breaks for meals. I would make my parents order college textbooks on classical music theory as a 13 year old kid so I could learn about Plagal Cadences and secondary gut dominant chords. I was obviously a big hit with the ladies even at that young age.

Wayne Sermon [00:17:38] Eventually this obsession led to Berklee College of Music, which where I met the drummer and bass player for my band and upon graduating I came back to Utah and met a tall, lanky, talented guy named Dan Reynolds and eventually we moved to Las Vegas and started the band Imagine Dragons. Meanwhile, I got married to my wife Alex and we started having children of our own and up until about our third album I was happy to be the face of Mormonism in the world.

Wayne Sermon [00:18:08] I detested the cliche of the growing list of famous actors and musicians that were raised Mormon and allowed Hollywood to corrupt them and forsake their values and their heritage. Being a poster boy for Mormonism was something neither Dan nor I really felt completely suited for, to be honest, but it was a mantle I was willing to hold in my own way. After all, I knew what it was like as a kid who in the big scheme of things felt rather like an oddity. In the real world I had strange beliefs like baptizing dead people or getting my own planet. These things can be easily misconstrued.

Wayne Sermon [00:18:48] And somewhat an easy target for laughs and jeering from the world at large. We lived life as to be in the world, but not of the world. I felt the world looked in at us kind of strange, like comical figurines in a giant curio cabinet. So to have prominent or successful Mormons to look up to while growing up really validated me as a young person.

Wayne Sermon [00:19:15] So if I could do that for others, I would in my own small way. And as recently as four years ago, I was a faithful temple goer. Meanwhile, all along the way I encountered what most of you know as shelf items that weighed down on my certainties. We all dealt with these in different ways. Ultimately, the birth of my children became my final call to action.

Wayne Sermon [00:19:37] For my wife and myself, it became crystal clear that it was time to properly investigate our beliefs before carrying them on to the next generation. We had taken the seller's word for it and refused to read anything but the five star reviews our entire life.

Wayne Sermon [00:19:55] Now it's time to read all of them. Even the reviews by Jeremy Grant, Palmer Fawn Brody and Lindsey Hanson park, and so many others. These turn out to be enormously helpful. Although Jeremy, your critique was a little rough.

Wayne Sermon [00:20:15] I'm just kidding. With all the information, we could now click and buy the best life plan we could find as long as they offered free next day delivery. Of course I'm not an animal, so we investigated the history and the truth claims thoroughly for a very long time, and we took it very seriously. And what we soon realized is that we had opened a giant can of worms. In fact, the can itself was also made of worms. The can open was made of worms, and the bowl that you put the worms in was also made of worms.

Wayne Sermon [00:20:51] And we don't need it to wear. We don't need to dissect them here. And we have neither the time nor the need. We all know what we're talking about. Ultimately, for us, Mormonism was revealed to be a farce, a fraud, and the work of a 19th century charlatan.

Wayne Sermon [00:21:05] And I'm truly not here to bash it any more than it deserves, at least at the same time, I mentioned earlier that a common complaint of members is that we can leave, but we cannot leave it alone. But I would contend that the first step of truly moving on and starting to build something new, rather than tear something down, is the act of acknowledging things that you see as harmful and as misguided and as very damaging. So our voices still count, even though no one may not want to hear them.

Wayne Sermon [00:21:34] As anxious as I am to start building, I would be remiss to not state unequivocally a few things so that you know where I stand, that the treatment of LGBTQ community in this church is simply wrong. Prop 8. Thank you.

Wayne Sermon [00:21:55] Prop 8 was wrong. The Orwellian 1984 like climate of the BYU's honor code office is wrong. Any protection of sexual predators is wrong. Inside or out the church, inside the church or out. And the fact that a Mormon woman is always under the umbrella of a man's authority in the church is wrong. And there's others.

Wayne Sermon [00:22:23] And maybe most of all, the unwillingness to admit mistakes and issue apologies is the most damaging of all. And you can mark my words on this, that in the not so far future, all these things I mentioned will one day be seen with as much embarrassment as its relationship to polygamy or his reluctance to accept black people into his temples, only a good 20 years after the Civil Rights movement had already figured it out. Ultimately, these things and the twisting of church history all became too much for me. But quietly resigning seemed like the easy way out. You know, many years ago, before this band had any shred of notoriety at all, we would play these really dingy clubs all around the country.

Wayne Sermon [00:23:11] And it's like these places are any musicians out there know what I'm talking about? They we played them all over and we were playing one in Las Vegas. And it really is a wonder. These things even, like, don't collapse on themselves.

Wayne Sermon [00:23:29] I think this one club we were playing in Las Vegas was called a box office. And believe it or not, we actually opened for Neon Trees at that show. So that was pretty cool. But we were up there playing our set. Everything was fine until I wasn't. Like I mentioned, these nightclubs are dingy, poorly kept, and it's honestly a wonder that they're still standing. The electrical wiring is especially wonky in these venues, which should act as plenty of foreshadowing for all of you. So we're up there playing and playing our songs. Everything's fine.

Wayne Sermon [00:24:07] And out of nowhere, I started getting the sharp volts of 120 volts running through my entire body. I immediately took my hand off my guitar and it stopped. And as soon as I put it back on, it was like I was completing some circuit from hell.

Wayne Sermon [00:24:26] The demons of bands pass. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but as long as I didn't touch the guitar, I was fine. Now I realized that at the same time, this essentially created another problem. I had four band members looking at me, wondering why I stopped playing in the middle of a song for apparently no reason.

Wayne Sermon [00:24:45] So they're sitting there glaring at me to keep playing the music. I'm making a fool of them while I have no way of communicating to them what's actually going on. Well, much like that guitar, that day, the church became something I could no longer hold. And as much as the people around me expected me to keep playing along, the historical facts of Mormonism were, like that bolt of electricity, unavoidable and undeniable. The bottom line is that I feel so much more confident with where I am now than I ever was in the church. So now it's time to start building something new.

What Comes Next and Defining Your World

Wayne Sermon [00:25:20] So what excites me about this conference is that it gives us all the chance to ask the question, what next? In a word, everything. The world is yours to define as you wish. You are free, individual, unique, and you don't need to conform to anyone's agenda or plan for your life. You don't need other people to tell you what to think.

Wayne Sermon [00:25:43] But maybe there's more than that. I suspect that there's a great deal of common ground between all of us here. Maybe the greatest link would we can all share, and it's already been mentioned, is our love of knowledge and truth.

Wayne Sermon [00:25:56] What better cause could we stand for than teaching each other and learning more about the real, tangible, fascinating world we live in since my time out of religion, I must say that my own fascination for this universe in which we live has grown exponentially.

Wayne Sermon [00:26:13] Beyond the false promises of religion lies the real world. And it is endlessly fascinating. For instance, we can stop reading from the maniacal verses of the Bible, especially like books like Revelations, and look up at our own Hubble telescope and see not only the stars, but the very reaches of the beginning of time. Just two years ago, this Hubble telescope pointed a picture in the darkest corner of space they could possibly find.

Wayne Sermon [00:26:40] So they could see where the empty regions of space, the darkest parts in the sky, are really that empty. What Hubble sent back was simply breathtaking. In the space of 1000th of 1 square degree of space, we discovered almost 6000 new galaxies.

Wayne Sermon [00:27:01] Based on this discovery, we discovered. Based on discovery. Sorry. Based on this discovery, our count of estimated galaxies spanning our entire universe jumped from just 170 billion to 2 trillion, each containing an average of 100 billion stars each.

Wayne Sermon [00:27:20] Can the human mind even fathom such things? I invite you all who haven't seen this picture to do so. And as the late great Christopher Hitchens put so well, turn away from these pictures if you wish, and gaze at a burning bush in an illiterate part of the Bronze Age Middle east and say that's where revelation comes from. I dare say you won't be able to.

Wayne Sermon [00:27:44] Perhaps instead of hero worshipping, Perhaps instead of hero worshipping hucksters and philanderers like Joseph Smith, we can learn more about the real heroes of our past that paved the way for all of us. Heroes that remind us that the struggle in which we find ourselves is hardly new and has in fact been going on for thousands of years. I'm sure everyone in this room has heard of Thomas Paine.

Wayne Sermon [00:28:11] Anyone know what's his contribution to America? Common Sense. Very good. Which is still, by the way, is proportionally the best selling book and most well known book ever created on this entire continent. It is in many ways, it has in many ways led the way to the American Revolution. And virtually all historians, every historian admits that without this author there would have been no revolution at all. John Adams even wrote that without the author of Common Sense, quote, Washington's sword would have risen in vain.

Wayne Sermon [00:28:47] But that is always the last thing we're ever taught about him. Curiously, the rest of his story is largely never told. It's as if he vanishes from the public's memory and that little pamphlet is his only contribution. But in truth, he is one of the most interesting characters and personalities in history, for instance, Thomas Paine was seen as a rather radical and uncompromising man, unyielding in his convictions, a man perhaps ahead of his time. He proposed the first welfare system, was the first to propose a minimum income for all citizens, way before Andrew Yang had that idea.

Wayne Sermon [00:29:22] He was vehemently against slavery and was a position not shared by many, even among the enlightened Founding Fathers, this all made him somewhat of a weird duck. But while these positions may have isolated him slightly, it was his writings on religion that completely ruined him. And I do mean completely ruined him. The Age of Reason is Paine's seminal work. In it, he promoted reason and free thought.

Wayne Sermon [00:29:51] And though he did believe in a creator of some kind, he attacked all institutions, all religions, all institutional religions of every kind, even mainstream Christianity, he said they all appeared to him as human inventions, quote, set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit. End quote. This may be a fine thing to say now, you see, while the rest of the enlightened men of the time, oh, sorry. This may be a fine thing to say now, but we must not forget times when religion had a lot more power than it has now, you see, while the rest of the enlightened men of that era, people like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, bandied about similar ideas, they restricted this speech to their elite inner circle in personal correspondence to each other.

Wayne Sermon [00:30:41] Never would they think the common man could hear such utterances. They deemed certain things average Joes like you and me would just not be able to understand that we would need religion in order to behave properly. That was Paine's mistake. He thought all people could think for themselves, regardless of class or creed. And it destroyed him slowly. Throughout his life, all his old friends, his comrades, abandoned him.

Wayne Sermon [00:31:10] And no doubt due to his own personal demons as well, he faded into complete obscurity. To best describe his fallen death, I take from Robert G. Ingersoll, quote, Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one, most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, shunned and abhorred his virtues, denounced his vices, his. His services forgotten, his character blackened. He preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and he still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death.

Wayne Sermon [00:31:52] Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend, the friend of the whole world, with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came. Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral, no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display in a carriage, a woman and her son, who had lived off his generosity on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head. And following on foot, two Negroes filled with gratitude constitute his funeral cordage of Thomas Paine. And if you were counting, that's six people.

Wayne Sermon [00:32:31] Six people attended this man's funeral. His body itself was refused by virtually all religious cemeteries. His body was eventually lost altogether misplaced and thrown out, most likely, like the evening garbage. Surely this man is more worthy of praise, of songs in our hymnals, than men who start religions for their own personal gain.

Wayne Sermon [00:32:54] One can hardly compare the two. It is off the backs of people like Thomas Paine, Spinoza, Galileo and Socrates that we were able to gather like this and criticize, that at one time could not be criticized. They are reminders that the struggle we face today is not a new one.

Wayne Sermon [00:33:11] Let these men and women then be our new prophets and our new doctrine, that of free inquiry and the pursuit of truth and love. Thrive will never be a religion. It's never going to happen. But perhaps we can still have heroes, champions of our cause. Perhaps we should all keep an open mind about what thrive can be, what we can make together could be something special and much greater than we think.

Wayne Sermon [00:33:37] And it can replace the things that religion left behind. In closing, I can't sit here and tell you that you all have lost nothing, because I feel your pain and your frustrations that everything is going to be hunky dory because you left your faith behind and it's all smooth sailing from here?

Wayne Sermon [00:33:54] After all, does an ex Scientologist ever really get past the belief that he brings about his own misfortunes, that if tragedy hits, he didn't somehow bring it upon himself? Can an ex Jehovah's Witness ever really feel normal again when they accept a blood transfusion or dare to celebrate their own birthday or Christmas?

Wayne Sermon [00:34:13] Can a boy or girl raised in Mormonism ever take a drink of alcohol, or worse, coffee, without feeling some measure of shame, as if they're doing something horribly wrong? Can Orthodox Jews or Muslims who leave the church ever get over the fact that their family disowned them?

Wayne Sermon [00:34:32] Like Tolkien so pointedly put it, there are some wounds that never fully heal. But I can tell you this, that our wounds eventually become scars, and we should wear those scars proudly, because the scars are often what define us.

Wayne Sermon [00:34:49] The old adage of Harbors and ship supplies, that ships are safe in harbor, but not what ships are made for. Mormonism is safe in many ways. All the scary and hard questions are already filled out for us. I know that they can be comforting, but the answers aren't real. And I promise you that a quest for real knowledge and navigating the stars of your life on your own will bring you much more joy and freedom than you can possibly imagine. I wish those on the other side of the aisle could see what I see now.

Wayne Sermon [00:35:20] You know, in the church, you're taught that those who leave can never experience the fullness of joy, that a measure of darkness will always stay with us, that they can never be as happy as they could be in the church.

Wayne Sermon [00:35:33] But as I look out at you, vibrant, colorful, kind eyes full of promise, and I see limitless potential, I would go so far as to testify that the goodness in you, it has always been in you, and it never was. And it never has been in your church. It is the biggest trick and the biggest con religion ever played that without Big Brother, our eternal watcher, we would never know how to treat each other. This is absolute nonsense. We are led to believe that religion has a monopoly on morals, that without it, we are lost. It tricks us into believing that we've lost something that they never gave us in the first place and something that was never theirs to give.

Wayne Sermon [00:36:26] Your goodness is yours. It always has been yours. If you remember nothing else I say here tonight, just remember this. Don't go one more day thinking your morality left you when you walked out the doors of your church, your synagogue, or your mosque. You brought the goodness to your communities. You brought your goodness into the pews of your church. You bring it here with you today, and you take that goodness with you when you leave. Thank you.

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