My parents also encouraged me to investigate and learn about our faith. Mormonism’s foundational story begins with Joseph Smith reading the Bible and questioning his own faith, and honest, inspired inquiry continues to be stated as a core virtue of the Mormon paradigm. After all, as the Church claims, if Mormonism is truly Christ’s restored church and holds all of His truth, honest questioning can only lead to that conclusion.
The gravity of the Church and its message was never lost on me: if this was truly the way and path that would define my ultimate destiny and the fate of the world, nothing could be more important. Recognizing that I would need to take my own journey to realize my faith, I paid close attention to my lessons, talked with and asked questions of my teachers and leaders, and prayed diligently.
In Mormonism, the first Sunday of every month is called “Fast Sunday.” Members are encouraged to fast for 24 hours if they are able, take the money that they would have spent on their meals, and donate it to their church in the form of Fast Offerings, which ostensibly is used to feed the poor. Also, as part of the Sacrament Meeting on that Sunday, members can choose to go to the pulpit and “bear their testimony” before the congregation, publicly declaring their faith. Frequently, children will go to the pulpit as well, wanting to be like the adults. Because they may not know the right words to speak, a parent often accompanies them and whispers in their ears what to say. While adults try to speak about their own experiences, children often say the same thing: “I’d like to bear my testimony. I know the Church is true. I know Joseph Smith is a prophet. I know that the living prophet is a prophet today. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I love my family. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.” Looking back, I find this to be rather disturbing, but growing up, I felt that it was well-intentioned and endearing.
The first time that I recall going to the pulpit on Fast Sunday, I must have been six or seven years old. I didn’t feel it was honest for me to proclaim that I knew the truth of something that I was in the process of investigating, so I declared, “I’d like to bear my testimony. I don’t know that the Church is true, but I’d like to find out.” It was an unusual thing to hear from a child, and I realized that I suddenly had the attention of everyone in the congregation. “I believe in this church,” I continued. “I know that I love my family, and I know that it has brought good things into my life, but I don’t know that the Church is true just yet, and I mean to find out.” After closing in the name of Jesus Christ, I returned to my seat and was commended with smiles and hugs by everyone around me. Because of their faith that the ultimate truth was within Mormonism, my family believed that my honest inquiry could only lead me to the same conclusion. They encouraged me down that path. I was baptized by my father not too long after at the age of eight, still not quite willing to state that I knew the Church to be true but hoping that it was.
Around this time, I began to have recurring nightmares of standing paralyzed at the bottom of long flights of stairs, with various monsters slowly making their way toward me. I hated these nightmares and decided that the only person I knew who could help me was God. I decided to strike a deal with Him: if He would guarantee that I would not have nightmares, then I would pray and read three pages of Scripture every night. That fear of nightmares made me a diligent reader and scholar, having now read the Book of Mormon cover to cover upwards of 15 times and the entire Bible several times. Though I’ve long ceased reading and praying, I have not had a nightmare since.
As a young student of the Church, I found the Book of Mormon to be largely boring and textually dry. There would be times when I would forget to read my Scriptures before bed, and I would feel particularly guilty, so I would make it up the next night by reading six pages, which always felt like a daunting task. Mark Twain once called the Book of Mormon “chloroform in print,” and I would tend to agree — and not solely because one of the books is named “Ether.”
Far from boring, however, were the prophecies regarding the end of the world. As described by the Book of Mormon, the end of the world will feature skeletons thrown out of their graves and entire cities sinking into the sea or being swallowed by the Earth to a soundtrack of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Mormonism frequently focuses on the Apocalypse, and I was often told that my generation might be the very last before Christ returns. Having an active imagination as a child, whenever there would be a particularly violent storm, I would be absolutely terrified, thinking that the end might be near. I would spend hours on my knees crying and praying to God, “Please, don’t let the world end, but if it does, please spare me and my family, and my dog, and my friends.” On several occasions, I found myself waking up in the morning prostrate, having fallen asleep in prayer the night before.
As I got older, I began to notice odd things in the Book of Mormon and would discuss them with my leaders and teachers. At one point, for example, it condemns polygamy and later, in the Doctrine & Covenants, condones it. My teachers explained that polygamy was a policy that God would choose to implement from time to time — and during the times of the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the early saints, it was allowed. In modern times, it was not. Knowing that they loved me and wanted the best for me, I had no reason to doubt the explanations of my leaders. As a result of those discussions, Scripture reading, and my own independent research from other Mormons regarding topics such as the archaeology of Mormon civilizations in Central America, I considered myself a budding apologist.
My freshman year, I attended a Jesuit high school. Being one of few Mormons at the school, I took it upon myself to represent the Church and tried to convert all that I could. I read from the Book of Mormon aloud and volunteered to pray in my required Catholic Scripture course. I wasn’t terribly popular. Later, I attended my local high school, where I began dating a beautiful and brilliant girl who lived nearby. She was Lutheran, but I hoped that through my example and influence, she might ultimately convert. I also attended Mormon seminary classes all four years in high school. All of this led up to my attending Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
At the time, BYU was the perfect fit for me. It has an outstanding Middle Eastern Studies program, many of my friends were also going, my dad was an alumnus, and I had been awarded a full-tuition scholarship due to my grades and test scores. Every student at BYU, Mormon or otherwise, is required to live in Church-approved housing. There are a number of requirements to meet Church approval, such as having segregated genders and well-defined visiting hours during which members of the opposite sex are able to have supervised visits. I decided to live in the dorms with the majority of the other incoming freshmen. Each dorm has a dorm mother and father, an elderly couple that lives in the dorms to oversee the students living there. The residential advisors are highly engaged in the lives of the students on the floor, having mandatory weekly meetings and other activities.
I became close friends with many of the other boys on my floor at BYU and had a wonderful time. It was a great environment to be a young Mormon — the BYU campus is an extraordinarily isolated place, both physically and behind internet firewalls, and thus we didn’t encounter anything from the outside that challenged our faith. Our friends all believed the same things that we did, so any conflicts we did have were often small, simple, and easy to resolve. We had good, clean, Mormon fun, such as playing video games together, going hiking, or watching movies at the local dollar theater. Sometimes we would get a little crazy and watch PG-13 movies, go to Denny’s at 3:00 in the morning, or sneak off campus to get energy drinks, as there is no caffeine sold on the BYU campus.