Why I Decided to Become a Mormon - Part Nine: Back to Church (for good)

After making the dreaded promise to attend church, I did. And it wasn’t that bad. It was, of course, the first time in several years that I had actually attended religious services. And to be honest, there was nothing that took me by surprise. In fact, it was almost exactly as I remembered it. I sat as one face among many in the congregation, not really listening as the various ward members shared their prepared sermons. I was reminded all too well of my experiences in Sunday school, as I watched the frustrated teacher trying to capture the imagination of uninterested youth.


The truth was, I really only went to make good on my promise. At this point, I still had no desire to truly learn. I felt I had already gone through that process in seminary and in my previous years of church attendance as a child. That boat had come and gone, and I was no longer interested. Moreover, I was super conscious about giving the false impression to anybody that I was “back for good.” So, I tried to remain as neutral and nonchalant as possible when I was asked what I thought about church.

Attending church this one time inevitably led to attendance on subsequent Sundays. I had been afraid this would happen, but I realized I had brought it upon myself by agreeing to attend in the first place. At first I held strong in my neutrality and successfully maintained my status as an uninterested observer. However, despite these initial feelings, being in church had the inevitable effect of awaking some of those now dormant thoughts I had previously entertained regarding the purpose of life and religion in general. It simply was a topic that I found too fascinating to ignore.

While I still shared little in common with these Mormons regarding beliefs, for the first time, I began to analyze the Church as an institution. It became clear to me that for many the Church was a priceless asset, both in terms of temporal benefits and as a sense of spirituality and purpose in life. I began consider whether I felt the Church might actually offer anything of value to me.

I began to think particularly about the experience of missionaries. Many of my friends were beginning to leave to spend two years on missions throughout the various nations of the world. While I was still utterly opposed to the idea of proselytizing one’s religion, my love for all things international sparked feelings of envy as I watched my friends going off to foreign countries and learning new languages. I began to recognize how much value one could gain from such a trying experience. I even toyed with the idea of using the missionary program as a means of satisfying my personal quest for international adventure for the mere sake of the experience. But of course, these thoughts were not very serious.

As summer came, I prepared to enter my senior year of high school. I had attended church for several weeks in a row, but only as a guest of my friend in her home congregation. I was tremendously conscious of being seen as someone attending church only to impress a girl. Perhaps my paranoia was unfounded, but at the time, it seemed that everybody was viewing my church attendance with a healthy dose of suspicion.

At one point, something happened in our relationship that caused this complex to flare. I realized that I stood at an important turning point in my life. With only one year of high school remaining, my life was about to go through a number of significant changes, whether religion was in the picture or not. I longed to know where I was going. Seeing the next year as an opportunity to “find myself” in this way, I thought I could use it to really search for answers to some of my pressing questions, including those that had arisen regarding the doctrines of Mormonism.

I therefore determined that I would no longer attend church with my friend. I informed her of this decision, though I no longer recall how she reacted. I also made another important decision. I decided that I would continue attending church – on my own, and in a different congregation closer to my home.

I developed a strong desire to learn for myself what I really believed, and to pass a more educated judgment on the gospel believed by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There was something there, and I would find out what it was.

 

Why I Decided to Become a Mormon - Part Eight: Wading in the Water

When I was sixteen years old, to the surprise of everyone (most especially myself), I went to church. It was a big change for me, one I had been absolutely certain I would never make. But, through the serendipity of a series of seemingly unremarkable events, I was led down a path I never expected.


Much of this began when I met a girl on the track team. At this time, I had largely given up on finding a non-Mormon girl in my school, but was surprised when after a few weeks she began to show interest in me. I didn’t know if she was a Mormon or not. Common sense told me that she was, but I held onto hope that perhaps I had been lucky enough to actually find a non-Mormon girl I could date.

I couldn’t just ask her if she was a Mormon. Well, I probably could have, but good form told me that such a question was rude. And, I was probably afraid of what the answer would inevitably be.

Since asking “the question” was out of the picture, I took a more clandestine approach to remedy this lack of vital intelligence. Casual espionage. As registration for new school term took place, I nonchalantly asked if I could see her schedule. I knew this subtle technique would provide me with all the information I needed to know. And sure enough, there it was. Seminary! She was, to my great disappointment, a Mormon after all.

I was frustrated, but not surprised. I wasn’t sure how to react to my heartbreaking discovery. So, I did what any normal, mature sixteen-year-old would do. I began to make fun of her. “Seminary!?” I said. “Why would you want to take that? It’s full of Mormons!”

At first she looked like she was ready to turn around and run. It was clear that she didn’t know what to do, but after a moment of dilemma flashed in her eyes, a sort of calm passed over her. I don’t remember exactly how she responded, but she casually addressed the topic, as if probing to see how serious I was. I don’t know how much she already knew about my lack of religious beliefs.

For whatever reason, her learning of my secular and agnostic beliefs didn’t scare her away. Perhaps she saw me as a missionary opportunity, a chance to influence me to become a church member.

My initial reaction was to drop it. I knew that if I pursued any type of relationship, religion would inevitably become a major sticking point. However, I really did like her, and was impressed by her initial reaction to me. And who knew? Maybe I would ultimately be the successful “missionary,” helping her to see that she didn’t need religion in her life.

As expected, it wasn’t long before the Mormon issue came to a head. We had a number of conversations. They weren’t especially deep, but they were definitely enough to push a panic button or two. On more than one occasion, these conversations were enough to scare her away from me for a few days. But for whatever reason, she kept coming back. Either she really liked me, or the desire to be a positive religious influence on me won out over her fear of me corrupting her.

As her comfort level regarding religious conversations raised, she eventually asked me the dreaded question. Would go to church with her? Her rationale was that if I really wanted to take an objective view on religion, I needed to come and learn for myself what it was all about. I tried to explain that I had already been exposed to the Church, and therefore had already gone through this process. But she insisted otherwise, and continued to press.

Luckily, I was armed with a great excuse, as my father and I were already planning to attend a Sunday afternoon Utah Jazz game that particular weekend. So I informed her that I wouldn’t be able to join her at church. To soften the blow, I loosely agreed to attend church with her another time.

A few weeks later, she mustered the courage to ask again. Without any excuse, and held by my earlier agreement, I reluctantly told her I would go. However, during the week, I was thrilled to learn that my father had again obtained tickets to a Sunday game! I felt I had dodged a major bullet.

When I informed her that I wouldn’t be able to go to church after all, I could easily see the sadness that came over her. Compassion touched me. I may have been a heathen, but I was still human. And so, taking a deep breath, I did something I was sure I would regret. I promised that I would attend church with her the following week.

Why I Decided to Become a Mormon - Part Seven: A Few More Years before Returning

Despite the feelings I felt that day in seminary, I ended up deciding that the feelings were just some strange psychological occurrence within my own mind, and that they could not come from a divine, external source. Clinging to this assumption, I pushed these experiences from my memory as best as I could, and sought to continue my previously-chosen, religionless life.

I didn’t repeat seminary in the 10th grade. By that point there were far more classes to choose from. Though I maintained an interest in religion, I developed even stronger interests in other topics. I particularly enjoyed foreign languages, and chose to study German, which quickly became my favorite course. I didn’t realize at the time how large of a role foreign languages would one day figure into my life.

As an aside, I remember one particular instance, when I was discussing foreign languages with a classmate. She mentioned she had enrolled in a new internet-based Russian course. I remember a distinct thought suddenly penetrating my mind: “You need to learn Russian.” I subsequently forgot about the experience, though years later I, one day, unexpectedly recalled the interchange while I was serving as a missionary in Russia.

It was in high school that many of my classmates were beginning to really uncover their religious identity. I found this process fascinating to observe. Some of them clearly struggled, vacillating back and forth between the spiritual and secular worlds. Many completely shed their attachment to religion during the week, whether or not they continued to attend church on Sundays with their parents.

There were also many others who obtained distinct confidence in their religion. While such students were yet the minority, more and more of them began to demonstrate a clear independence in their personal beliefs. These students seemed happier, and had little difficulty standing apart from the swirling demands of popularity and recognition that often seem so necessary to high school students.

It was among these individuals, those most unfettered by their perception in the eyes of others, that I was most often confronted about my own religious beliefs. One of my friends was a very devout Mormon, and he and I would often spend time together, whether skiing or participating in other activities. To his credit, he was very polite about my own religious beliefs. He never talked directly about religion or preached to me, but I felt that he perhaps wanted to.

Because I had failed to re-enroll in seminary, I began to get frequent calls from seminary teachers and other students inviting me to return. One night, a group of students even came to my door, members of the “Seminary Council,”* who personally challenged me to come back to seminary. I politely declined.

During this period of time, I also began to recognize what living in a heavily Mormon community meant for me. I would, like it or not, be affected by Mormon culture. Like all youth during this stage in life, young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints begin to give significant contemplation toward the issue of dating and romantic relationships. Despite my opposing religious beliefs, I was physically no different than any of my Mormon peers. Naturally, I developed similar interests in members of the opposite sex. I began to realize, however, that Mormon standards for dating and relationships** would most certainly affect my own social life. There was nothing I could do to change that.

There came a point in time when most of my friends began to “date.” I was left desirous to join in, and by age 15, I was eager to begin. Age 16, the age Mormon youth are taught they should wait for before dating, had no special significance in my own moral codes. But as I began to ask girls to go out with me, I was refused on several occasions, and told that such refusal was because of my age.***

I felt like it was discrimination, and used this as fuel to further justify my own reasons for not believing that there was any validity in what church members claimed to believe. I thought that perhaps I would get lucky, and find that one non-Mormon girl who would be perfect for me. But these were nothing more than fantasies. The reality was that the types of girls I had any interest in were almost always devoted Latter-day Saints. I started to look forward to college with great enthusiasm. I could last a few more years, couldn’t I?

* In places where Latter-day Saint students are permitted to take seminary classes through release time, there is often a student leadership council developed among the seniors. These individuals are often chosen by the seminary instructors, and tend to represent those individuals which the instructors feel best represent commitment to the gospel, and who will subsequently set a strong example for their peers.

** Mormon youth are counseled not to date before age 16. They are also counseled not to engage in exclusive romantic relationships while still in high school. For more information, see the brochure, “For the Strength of Youth.”

*** At least this is what I was told. I fully accept the reality that they may have been using this as an excuse.

Changes to Mormon Thinking

Dear Readers,

For the past several months, I have been considering how I can "revive" Mormon Thinking. When I first started, I was in the Peace Corps, had a lot of free time on my hands, and wasn't a father. Now, with a full-time job and family responsibilities, I have found it difficult to make the time necessary to write articles for the blog.

In addition, I've long considered that I would like to have a more clearly defined purpose to my writing. In the early days of writing, I would jump from topic to topic, without much of a sense of organization and order.

Therefore, I've decided to take a closer look at what I am trying to do with Mormon Thinking. I've tried to define this more clearly in the "Objective of Mormon Thinking" tab you can find at the top of this page.

I'd like to look at Mormonism from a more doctrinal point of view. While discussing culture, history, social issues, and the relationship between Mormonism and politics can be fun and interesting, I don't feel I was necessarily adding anything new or of value with these posts. There are plenty of other Mormon blogs out there with that objective.

However, I have been engaged in a number of spiritual conversations lately which have led me to look at Mormon beliefs and doctrines from a slightly different perspective. First of all, I have many of my friends, family members, and acquaintances are non-religious, agnostic, or even avowed atheists. Trying to explain to them what I believe and why I believe in it is often quite difficult, especially when I am not particularly accustomed to explaining it from the context from which they are coming.

Likewise, I have found similar experiences when talking to friends, family members, and acquaintances who are believers from the various Christian denominations and belief systems of the world. This includes what I generally classify as the "traditional Christians" (Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and even many of the more traditional and long-established protestant denominations), as well as some what I call the "Neo-Cultural Christians" which include many of the evangelical or "born-again" branches of Christianity.

I have found these discussions to be fascinating, and it not only has helped me to learn about other people and how they come to their own beliefs, it has helped me take a closer look at my own process of coming to develop faith in the doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Based on these experiences, I’ve developed some ideas of how I might be able to provide something I feel can add value. I plan to systematically write articles explaining my beliefs in the fundamental doctrines and principles of Mormonism, and how I came to believe in these things.

And, in addition to simply talking about what we Mormons believe, I will make an attempt to explain what these beliefs mean to one coming from either a non-religious or a Christian worldview. I will seek to answer some of the common questions and doubts that come up when seeking to understand the doctrines and principles of Mormonism.

I should say from the beginning that I don't expect this to be either an "apologist" blog, or a place to try and debate controversial issues. Therefore, if you are interested in seeing fireworks and arguments, this isn't going to be the place for you. I am not seeking to prove one way of thinking over another. Simply, I will seek to explain why I, and many others like me, have come to believe what we do, and explain it in a way that (hopefully) makes sense to another person coming from a non-Mormon set of views.

So there you have it. These changes are still in the adjustment phase. It may take a few months before I am able to organize myself in such a way that actually will allow me to make regular contributions to the blog. In the meantime, however, I would very interested in receiving your feedback. Please let me know how you feel about this new approach to Mormon Thinking, how I might improve upon it, organize it, etc.

Thank you!!

Why I Decided to Become a Mormon - Part Six: 9th Grade Seminary

For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the religious education of youth is a topic which taken very seriously. For those of high school age, typically consisting of grades 9-12 in the United States, a program called “Seminary” exists.

In most places in the world, seminary classes take place in the wee hours of the morning before school begins, or as part of an after school program. Typically, classes are held daily, though in cases where distance makes daily gatherings excessively burdensome, they are held only once or twice per week.

In Utah and other communities with large Mormon populations, school districts offer what is known as “release time,” in which students are permitted to leave their campus in order to attend these religious education courses during the school day, instead of waking up early or clogging their after-school schedules. Seminary buildings are often built adjacent to high schools in order to preserve the separation of church and state.

Growing up in a Mormon community, seminary was taken by most of my peers. However, as high school approached, I had no inclination to enroll myself. As I sat down with a counselor to register for my 9th grade classes, he, assuming I would be taking seminary like most of my Mormon classmates, asked: “I suppose you will want to take seminary as well?”

“No,” I said curtly, throwing him off guard. I offered no explanation, and he appeared on the verge of asking why. But suddenly, he seemed to realize that he was representing the school and not the Church at the time, and that so asking would be inappropriate.

I began my 9th grade school year with a variety of classes. However, a few weeks into my first term, I decided that I no longer wished to participate in the school band. I don’t really remember the precise reasons behind my decision to quit. Likely, my adolescent cravings for popularity and acceptance, coupled with the reputation band members held of being “dorks,” pushed me to make the change.

Leaving the band left holes in my schedule that needed to be filled. In our school district, 9th grade was separate from the rest of the high school, and in terms of curriculum, our choices were extremely limited. The only way to fill my schedule was to opt for “release time” during this hour, joining seminary for two consecutive terms.

And so I began my adolescent religious education, despite my current disassociation from the Church. My parents were not opposed to my taking seminary, though I remember on several occasions telling them what I had learned. This often led to discussions of whether the content fed to us was true or not. Though unbelievers, my parents had a sound understanding of Mormon doctrine, often surpassing that of most active church members.

These discussions taught me the art of skepticism, in which nothing should be taken literally for face value. As I considered these things more and more, my already active thought process regarding religion greatly expanded, at times leaving me to believe that it would be impossible to actually define and identify “truth.”

As the year went on, seminary involved reading the scriptures, watching videos, and listening to the lectures prepared by the instructors. Some lessons felt profound, while others did not, leaving me with a decidedly neutral opinion as to the value of seminary. But still, my spiritual pondering did not cease. Many a night I would lay in bed, unable to sleep, mind alert, wondering if perhaps there was something that I was missing.

I even made attempts to pray. Sometimes I asked God to show me a sign or send me a vision to know if it was all real, assuring Him that if it was, I would change my life to comply with His laws. I didn’t really believe I would receive an answer, but a few times I actually remember frightening myself, fearing that I actually would receive a response. My lack of belief was coupled with a sincere hope that I was actually right, and that no God heard my prayers.

But, another part of me did want to discover something new, as was demonstrated by my attempts at prayer in the first place. I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was actually looking for, but I carried a deep desire for wisdom, or perhaps, to be seen and numbered among the wise. So I sought for truth, assuming it was somewhere, out there, to be found.

At the time, I received no answers to my prayers. I came to the conclusion that I was searching in the wrong place for wisdom. I made the decision that I would not repeat seminary in the following year, and that my brief foray with religious education would come to an end.

The end of the term came, and I sat in what I had predetermined to be my last day of seminary. The teacher announced that for our final class, we would be hold a “testimony meeting,” that is, all participants were encouraged to stand before their peers and express their belief in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I was curious to see how my classmates dealt with this exercise. Since I had no testimony, I had no intention of sharing my own. The hour was mine to sit and observe ninth graders nervously deal with their public speaking fears. As I sat in the back and listened to other students give fairly standard testimonies, my attention waned. However, at one point, a young acquaintance of mine stood up to bear his testimony.

He was a nice guy, a kind of country type, not incredibly articulate or outspoken. I respected him for his kindness and modesty. To say the least, he was pretty much your average Cache Valley cowboy. He stood up, and at once I noticed that his testimony was very different than those of the others.

He did not give the impression of standing up out of habit or out of some desire to follow the crowd. I could tell at once that he had an unmistakable sincerity about him. There was something that he truly wanted to share. I watched his eyes dart back and forth, perhaps as he searched his mind for the vocabulary necessary to share his feelings.

Suddenly, as soon as he spoke, he began to weep. It wasn’t something completely abnormal. After all, I had witnessed others crying in church meetings when I was a child. But here was a kid my age, at an age where the pressures of ego and popularity were swarming around us, and he could not withhold his own emotion as he expressed his simple feelings concerning his religion.

Ironically I don’t remember anything he said. What I do remember unmistakably, however, was something that concurrently happened to me. During the midst of his simple testimony, I felt something changing within me, like an intrinsic pressure that was stronger than anything I had ever felt before.

It wasn’t a physical sensation. It felt as if I had suddenly and seamlessly become an inhabitant of some unseen spiritual dimension. I felt sensations around me, strong and precise. The world seemed to slow down, and my rapid thoughts cleared away, leaving a pure and clear mental canvas. As the boy continued to speak, I could no longer hear him. At peace, I felt nothing aside from this strong emotional blanket which continued to wrap around me tighter.

It felt good – in fact, it felt wonderful. It was at this moment when I recall very distinctly in my head hearing my own voice repeat this question over and over again: “How can this not be true?” Though in my own voice, it didn’t feel as if it were coming from me. Rather, I distinctly felt as if it were emanating from some external source. For what seemed like several minutes, all I could hear was the echo of these words, repeating again and again.

Suddenly, I was shocked back to reality. The feeling was gone, and it was quickly replaced by a surge of utter panic. I knew that I had touched the wisdom I had long sought, in some unknown and incomprehensible way. And that is precisely what I feared. After all, it seemed to be in direct opposition to the decisions that I had already made.

Within my own mind, I began to argue, right then and there. One side boldly declared that I had indeed discovered a real pearl of wisdom, while the other side insisted that it was nothing more than some strange psychological reaction within me. As the argument raged on, a wave of questions began to inundate my consciousness. Did this mean I had to start going to church again? Did it mean that the gospel of Jesus Christ was true? Did it mean I was just a pubescent kid with my pituitary gland squirting all sorts of crazy ideas in the form of religious chemicals on various parts of my brain?

I truly feared that there was more to these feelings than pious hormones. Such a discovery would mean completely restructuring my entire way of thinking. I didn’t want to do this, since after all, I felt had been perfectly sane and normal up until this point. But I couldn’t stop those words from repeating in my head. I knew that something had occurred, and that something significant had changed within me.

For the remainder of the class, I sat and tried to reason with these feelings. The teacher stood up after all the students who had desired to express their feeling had done so. He then proceeded to share his own testimony, though not of the Church specifically. He shared his feelings concerning us as students, going through each class member one-by-one and saying what he felt he had seen in us as individuals.

My emotional battle still raged as he went through every class member. In the back corner, I was one of the final students to be spiritually analyzed. He looked at me squarely, and feelings of both excitement and dread crushed me in anticipation for what he would say. Inside of me, I could feel what I knew he would say, I just did not know what the words were that could express that feeling.

What he said seemed to confirm exactly what I felt. He claimed that he had personally witnessed my conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I felt myself smiling stupidly, despite the confusion within me. Was his statement just a cliché, or was he referring to something that had truly just happened to me? Could he have possible seen the feelings I had felt? The answers remain unknown to this day.

I believe this to be the first time I recognizably received a witness of truth directly through the Holy Ghost. In the intervening years, this event stands out as one of the key turning points that contributed to my eventual decision to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Why I Decided to Become a Mormon - Part Five: Separation of Church and Nils

Once I decided that I no longer desired to be affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I made an effort to separate myself from the Church. The closest connection I had to the Church was playing for the church basketball team during the winter months.

I wanted others to see me as being “outside” the Church. For whatever reason (likely a narcissistic desire for attention) I have always enjoyed feeling like the minority. Perhaps this is why I have enjoyed living abroad. In a very non-diverse, nearly 100% Mormon community, being the kid who didn’t go to Church and wasn’t afraid to admit it made me different.

Ironically, despite my public separation from Mormonism, it was during this period away from the Church that I sincerely began to really ponder religion in my own life; not simply Mormonism in particular, but the big questions about life. Who am I? Who are we? Why are we here? What does it mean?

Most of my religious knowledge was based in Mormonism, though I began to develop beliefs that such specific dogmas, particularly those based on extraordinary stories recounted in scripture, were largely fantasy, if not altogether ridiculous. Other religions were no different than Mormonism in this regard. I didn’t believe that Joseph Smith had experienced all that he claimed, but I accepted that no less than say, the stories of Noah, Adam and Eve, or the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But thoughts like these didn’t dominate my mental exercises. I spent a lot more time trying to discern and understand the behaviors of others. With my peers beginning to discover their own faith around me, some more so than others, I was faced with the idea of explaining to myself why some believed so fervently, others so latently, and others who went out of their way to counter-act the dominant faith.

I was asked by others on many occasions to come to church. Though I hated confronting the awkwardness of telling them no, I relished the fact that it gave me an opportunity to show how I was different in some way. Beyond just telling them no, I would give them a reason why I chose not to go to church. They weren’t based on sophisticated anti-religious arguments, and they were never blatantly negative or anti-Mormon, but they were enough to kill any assumptions my peers might have had about the way all others ought to view religion, and they would seldom invite me to church again.

Other thoughts concerning religion would frequently cross my mind. While I wasn’t sure I believed in the existence of God, I thought that certainly there had to be something beyond this life. How could a person die and have that energy, which constitutes their life, suddenly cease to exist? I wasn’t sure what I thought, but I believed that something of who we are would continue to exist forever.

Another frequent topic of thought involved making plans for what I thought could eventually be my own “religion” when I got older. In my mind, it consisted of a group of friends getting together once a week or so, and discussing the needs of others in the world or the community, something akin to the philosophical societies we often read about from the youths of great thinkers, such as Ben Franklin and his Junto.

According to imagined rules of my future religion, the group would gather, discuss, and plan in an organized fashion. The plans would be flawless, and implementation would go perfectly. It would not be necessary to add God in the picture, though a belief in a supreme being would be something left to the members of the society to decide. There would be very little theology, even minimal philosophy, but more social interaction, problem solving, and positive personal change to the individual, the group, and the surrounding community. To me, this is what I thought "organized religion" should be.

In subsequent years I have actually had the privilege to attend groups which are similar to what I had imagined in my youth. Unfortunately, I have been largely unimpressed. Most of what I have seen in such groups involve young people who gather, complain about what they see wrong with their society, and then congratulate one another on being smarter than the rest in their community, while never actually getting around to doing anything substantial.

Very little real structure accompanied these imaginations, but they did exist. It was an ongoing battle between idealism and realism with the meaning of life thrown into the mix. Perhaps those very thoughts were some of the first seeds that eventually led to my choice of a career in international development, hoping to work together with others to solve the problems of the world by implementing working solutions. Though I failed to realize even a fraction of the magnitude of what the world really held at the time, all the same, it felt right. To me, it felt “righteous.”

All in all, this was a time in my life where I was left with a complete lack of desire to participate in any existing organized religion. In fact, I honestly believed that the time was coming when organized religion, in the traditional sense, would wholly cease to exist on the earth, and that we would be completely content to rely on our own selves and strengths to answer the questions before us.

I rarely discussed these ideas with others, and when I did, it was very cautiously, more speculative than authoritative. I didn’t realize at the time that there were many out there who also held these same types of views. While subsequent life experiences have obviously altered these views, I feel I understand quite well how many are led to believe that God does not exist and how organized religion should be seen as a negative byproduct of humanity. The arguments are quite convincing, and on the surface, seem completely logical.

Nevertheless, I believe going through this line of thinking eventually helped me approach religion in a much more honest and straightforward way as I went through the experiences which I cumulatively view as my conversion to Mormonism.

Why I Decided to Become a Mormon - Part Four: Family Exodus and Early Thoughts on Missionary Work

It wasn’t long after I turned twelve that my family completely ceased all participation in church activities. No sudden or abrupt change took place, but the transition seemed to occur over a relatively short period of time. However, I recall not being surprised. I don’t remember why I felt this way, but it had seemed to me that our retirement from the Church was an inevitability that was one day bound to occur.

My family didn’t all leave together, but rather, seemed to slip away one at a time. It came to the point where only my mother and I continued to attend meetings. She was a teacher for the young women, which required her presence each Sunday. Why I continued to attend church with her remains a mystery to me. I knew I didn’t have to go, but for reasons unknown, I felt the need to be present.

Eventually, the day came when my mother also stopped attending church. There were no family announcements, nor was any final consensus reached. It happened naturally. In the years since, I have held numerous conversations about this topic with my family members, attempting to better understand the causes of our exodus. I feel I have learned much, but I won’t presume to explain their reasoning here. For many, leaving the Church is a deeply personal decision. At times and for some, this decision can even be as hard as the decision to join the Church is for others. Sharing such personal decisions is an act best left to the actual decision-maker.

Even after my mother stopped attending church, I continued to go alone, though this only lasted a few weeks. While my parents still were willing to drive me to the church house on Sunday mornings, I soon followed suit, and officially became an “inactive”* member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

At the time, I really didn’t understand how profound the decision I was making truly was, and how much it would ultimately affect my life. In subsequent years I have strained my thoughts, trying to recall my feelings and sentiments of the time, curious to be able to better understand my own personal mental and spiritual development. In truth, this time of my life is rather hazy in my memory, though a few scattered recollections remain.

I remember that there was something that I actually did like something about church, even beyond the social benefits. I actually liked learning and thinking about things of a spiritual nature.

I never received what one might call “spiritual insights,” and I still gave my Sunday School instructors a hard time. But, despite my façade of smart-mouthed comments, I really did pay attention to the information we were fed. I would analyze it in my head, accepting what I thought made sense, discarding what I thought was meaningless, and remaining neutral on a number of topics. I began, probably for the first time in my life, to create and form my own personal opinions regarding God, religion, life, the universe, and everything.

It should be noted, however, that just because I enjoyed learning about these things didn’t mean I agreed with them. Pertaining to one topic in particular, I developed a rather strong opinion. This topic was one that was increasingly being put before the young men in church. Missionary service.**

As a younger child, I looked forward with great anticipation to the day when I could go on a mission. At one point I remember telling my grandparents that I wanted to go on five missions – India, Africa, Australia, South America, and one more that I have since forgotten. These choices had nothing to do with any personal desire to share the gospel with the people in these places. Rather, they spawned from my absolute fascination with the tales my grandparents would tell me of their travels to these exotic corners of the world. I really liked animals at the time, and it seemed that going on a mission would be as good an opportunity as any other to see wildlife.

But as I verged on adolescence, my thoughts on missionary work changed drastically. On one occasion, a church instructor asked members of my class to indicate, by raising their hands, who was planning on going on a mission. I was the only one who defiantly did not to raise my hand. When my leader asked why I had not, I told him the truth. “I don’t want to go on a mission.” Seeing that it was an option, a couple other young men lowered their hands to join me.

The truth was, by this time, I considered the idea of representing the Church as a missionary was one of the most ridiculous concepts imaginable. Why would I want to sacrifice two prime years of my life to talk to people about, of all things, religion? Could they not come and find out that information on their own if they were interested? Could it not be possible that they were perfectly happy in their lives, and didn’t need my brand of religion to make them happy? Such were my thoughts of the time.

Perhaps the instructor thought I was just an annoying kid ruining his lesson plan, but I was being honest. It was something I had decided for myself. I would never serve as a missionary. Not a chance.

Oh how things would change. But for the time being, I was separated from the Church, happy to carry on with my new life, void of religion, and void of Mormonism.

*The term “inactive” is typically used in Mormonism to denote someone who does not attend weekly church services or otherwise participate in church-related activities.

**At the age of 19, all Mormon men are taught that they have the responsibility to serve as a full-time missionary for two years.