“Keep on working now, child.”

— B.B. King, Sinner’s Prayer

At age 19, Michael Amini was standing on a highway overpass, seconds away from suicide. He thought about jumping onto an oncoming semi, planning to be splattered on its windshield like a nighttime summer bug. And why not? As a teenager, he had just lost his faith, his girlfriend, his community, and the trust of his family. He was an ex-Mormon with no rudder. Then, B.B. King and Ray Charles’s “Sinner’s Prayer” played on his iPod. He listened to its lyrics and mustered the courage to carry on.

Michael’s story, the original inspiration for this book, is a fascinating tale of a very detailed and very personal religious journey. In the end, it was his insatiable curiosity to find the truth that led him out of his faith and toward a life without religion. His new worldview, perhaps most importantly, has enhanced his empathy, allowing him to both better understand religion and view the status of his relationship with his family without bitterness. This is Michael’s story.

Chapter III: Michael’s Story

Having just returned from a mission for the Mormon Church in Dusseldorf and Frankfurt, Germany, my father was encouraged to find a girl to marry. He wasn’t quite 21, but returning missionaries are commonly taught to seek “their next and last companion.” My grandmother, who worked at an elementary school at the time, brought home a faculty picture and laid it in front of my dad, telling him that she would set him up on a blind date with the girl of his choosing. He looked at the photo, thought for a moment, and put his finger down on a 25-year-old blonde teacher from Spokane, Washington. They were engaged two weeks later.

I was born in Salt Lake City, and my family moved to Spokane not long after. We were a highly active and firmly-believing Mormon family, with the faith an integral part of our lives. We would go to church every Sunday and attend extra meetings throughout the week. Most of our friends and associates were people we met there.

I took my faith seriously from a young age and was excited by the fact that I had the whole of divine truth at my back and a mission before me. Always curious and inquisitive, I took apart anything that I could to see its workings. I could hardly satisfy my desire to learn. My parents encouraged and praised my inquisitive nature and made huge sacrifices to put me in the best and most challenging schools and courses to help me grow — at one point, they even took on some janitorial duties at the private elementary school that I attended in order to offset the cost of tuition. I’ll be forever grateful for that.

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.

Not everything was wonderful at BYU, however. Since Mormon girls were taught that they ought to weigh the spiritual fitness of their potential husbands, boys at BYU tended to try to out-Mormon each other to compete for female affections. One, for example, might decide that it was not righteous to listen to music with foul language, so he would dramatically smash his explicit CDs in the hallway and challenge his floor-mates to do the same. Soon, half the dorm would be putting their similar CDs in pillow cases and smashing them against doors. Public shame and guilt were pervasive, and students didn’t hesitate to report any unbecoming behavior of others to the dorm leaders.

Though I strived to follow the rules and live virtuously, I believed that the spirit of a law was more important than the letter thereof, and I found it grating when I would bump up against some of the more arbitrary ones. I was turned away from the cafeteria several times, for example, for not having shaved recently enough. I would occasionally rebel against interpretations of rules and Scriptures that I deemed to be too strict — I even made fun of those who decided that they couldn’t stay out past midnight on a Saturday, believing that to do so would violate the Sabbath.

I enjoyed having philosophical discussions with friends on how best to adhere to the ordinances and principles of the Gospel. Consequently, I began to question many of the key admonitions and rules that had been given to me. I found it interesting that other Christians saw no problem with the consumption of alcohol in moderation, while Mormonism expressly forbids all consumption. I couldn’t find a moral reason that made total abstention better than controlled and moderate drinking and ultimately determined that the only bad thing about having a single glass of wine was that it would be disobedient to what God had instructed. Being a 19-year-old boy, I also thoroughly questioned sexual morality, particularly regarding masturbation and premarital sex. Everyone wanted to know exactly how far they could go with a girl before it became inappropriate in the eyes of God, and I was no exception. For most questions, I was able to find moral justifications in the rules given to us by the Church — masturbation, I thought, must be immoral because it causes us to have lustful thoughts, which are forbidden by Jesus. I believed that it could also lead to a heightened desire for pornography, which could cause people to objectify women and might transform individuals into sexual predators.

The pinnacle of my freshman year of college was in the spring, when most of us would receive our mission calls. Like most Mormons, I had been raised with a desire to serve a mission in order to bring the Gospel to the world. Mormon men sitting around a campfire on a camping trip tell stories from their mission the way that other men discuss their days in military service or at college, calling it the best two years of their lives. I couldn’t wait for mine. As a child, I liked to spin a globe and push my finger onto the surface until it stopped, imagining that I would serve a mission wherever my finger happened to land. Nothing excited me more than the possibility of traveling to a foreign country. One by one, the other boys in the dorm got their calls. They would hold parties with all of their friends present and with their family members on the phone or connected via the internet, opening and reading the fateful letter to noisemakers and applause. My excitement was overwhelming when I received my call to the Singapore mission, which included Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and other nearby areas as well. I was to report to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah on June 16th, 2006!

I was scheduled to go through the Endowment ceremony on the 10th of June, six days prior to start of my mission. Many Christian sects believe that entrance to heaven requires that the baptismal ordinance is performed, but Mormons believe that baptism is but one of several ordinances that are requisite to enter the highest kingdom of heaven, the Endowment being one of them. Receiving the Endowment is a ceremony that can only take place in a Mormon temple, and most Mormons do so either immediately before leaving for a mission or immediately before marriage.

I had been aware of the existence of the ceremony, and I knew that it was at the time of the Endowment that members begin to wear garments — commonly called “Mormon underwear” by non-members. I knew that the garments were a bit odd from an outsider’s perspective, but I grew up seeing my parents and other family members wearing them, so it didn’t seem particularly strange to me. I had been taught that they are meant to serve as reminders of the covenants that are made in the temple, and that was acceptable enough. Growing up, I had occasionally heard Apocryphal Mormon folk stories about garments providing supernatural protection for, for example, people who had been lit on fire in a horrible accident, having burns everywhere but where their garments touched their bodies. I had been taught that God rewards obedience, and it seemed reasonable that He might cause miracles for those who wore the garments as they had been commanded.

Other than the receiving of garments, I knew nothing of the Endowment. I took a preparatory course from the Church, but the focus of the course was to prepare me to be in the right spiritual state to receive it. The course said nothing about the actual content of the ceremony. As we drove to the temple, my parents and grandmother told me that I needed to keep in mind that what takes place in the temple is highly symbolic and that I may need to go for many years before finally grasping the true meaning of it all. I was excited and intrigued, if a little nervous, as we entered together.

To publicly discuss the ceremony outside of the temple is firmly forbidden. I know many ex-Mormons who still refuse to talk about the ceremony because of how badly it would be seen by their Mormon friends and family. What follows is my account of the ceremony — readers that would be offended by the same ought to skip this section.

Though it was over five years ago now, and the details are a bit fuzzy, I recall most of that day quite clearly. I had always liked the temple. It is built and designed for calmness and serenity — the building itself is remarkably soundproof, and the interior is designed to maintain that. Aged temple workers in white flow through the various rooms, keeping everything in order while speaking only in whispers. One temple worker sits at an elevated white desk at the entrance with a book of names before him, ensuring that only members who have been approved by their bishops — holding a card called a Temple Recommend — enter.

I entered the Spokane, Washington temple with my parents and grandmother. The man at the front desk smiled as he took my Recommend, asking, “First time?” I nodded, and he put his arm around me as we walked toward a small office behind him, where the temple president was waiting. He must have been in his sixties, and I remember him smiling warmly as he shook my hand. He explained that I would first need to go to the locker rooms to change into my temple clothes, which my parents had purchased and brought with them. I was to be washed and anointed, and then, the Endowment would proceed. “At some point in the ceremony,” he told me, “you will be asked for your second name. This second name is your divine name, your true name, and the name that you were known by before this life and will be known as after this life.” He admonished me to never share my second name with anyone, as the Lord had said that anyone who knew your true name would have power over you. He leaned over his desk as my parents turned away and whispered, “Barnabus.” As I mulled over the bitter-tasting realization that I would be known as Barney for the rest of eternity, the president offered to give a prayer before we continued.

My mother and grandmother went to the left while my father and I went to the right, heading to our respective changing rooms. As my dad started pulling the clothes out of the bag he had brought, I noticed a man walking about in what I assumed was the full temple dress. I caught my breath in surprise. The hat looked like a white, puffy beret, listing slightly to one side. He wore a white toga-like garment with a white sash running from one shoulder to the opposite hip. The most striking piece was the bright green apron around his waist. It was tied in the back and ran from his waist to near his knees and was embroidered with fig leaves. Rather surprised, I figured that the man must have been wearing something special to perform a certain ceremony. I then saw my dad pull out a set of the same clothes for each of us. As he put on the temple clothes, I put on a simple toga-like robe for the washing and anointing ceremony. The toga had no sleeves, was cut below the arms to the waist, and I wore nothing beneath it.

We walked to a small room that was subdivided into four sections by tall curtains. My dad waited near the entrance of the room, and an elderly temple worker entered with some consecrated oil. He said nothing to me but poured a little bit on my head and said a blessing. We then proceeded through the other three sections of the room. In each room, he would put a little bit of oil on different parts of my body and say a blessing. I was a bit concerned that one of the blessed parts would be my genitals and was relieved when the ceremony ended without anything of the sort.

We entered a central room, which looked like a small movie theater with a single aisle in the middle. Facing the screen, all of the men were seated on the right, and the women were seated on the left, where I saw my mother and grandmother. Their clothes were similar to the men, but where the men wore hats, the women wore white veils that covered their faces. Temple workers stood at the corners and one, who directed the members to their seats and conducted the ceremony, stood in front.

I was utterly confused and dismayed. I had been raised in a church that eschewed silly costumes and rituals; my Mormon friends and I made fun of Catholics for all of their odd pomp and Latin. Mormonism had always seemed to me to be predicated upon the more logical Protestant notion that God really doesn’t care what costumes you wear or what motions you go through, but rather that He cares more about the substance of your heart. I believed that I knew Mormonism inside and out. Yet, here I was, sitting amidst a room full of people in bizarre costumes with secret names in a ritual that I couldn’t connect to anything familiar, no matter how I tried. As I looked at the screen before me, I hoped that the film that would be played would show that the whole thing had been an elaborate Candid-Camera-esque prank on my behalf. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

The film appeared to have been made in the 80s, judging from the production quality and haircuts of the actors. It began in the heavens, showing the story of the preexistence, in which our spirits dwelt prior to deciding to come to Earth. It went on to show God and Jesus creating Adam and teaching him that there are names, signs, and tokens that he needed to know in order to return to heaven, narrating something to the effect of “and then Elohim — the name of God according to Mormon belief — taught Adam the signs and tokens of the first order of the Aaronic Priesthood.”

The film then paused, the lights raised, and the temple worker who conducted the ceremony demonstrated the signs and tokens that God was referring to. The people participating in the ceremony turned to one another and performed the signs and tokens, and the film resumed. This occurred several more times. I don’t recall all of the various names, signs, and tokens, but I recall that the signs looked like something a football referee would signal when making a call. The tokens took the form of various handshakes — placing a thumb in between the first two knuckles of the other hand, for example. I did my best to remember all of the names, signs, and tokens but was too overwhelmed to do so very effectively.

My mind was racing. How had I managed nearly 20 years in the Church without knowing about the odd costumes and secret handshakes? I knew the Scripture and the doctrine, and this wasn’t in it. Where had it all come from? I felt that I had been deceived.

The film ended, and the participants proceeded to the next room. The three rooms of the Endowment correspond with the Mormon idea that heaven is divided into three major kingdoms: the celestial, the terrestrial, and the telestial, associated with the sun, the Earth, and the stars, respectively, in degrees of glory. The room with the film is the telestial room, the second is the terrestrial, and the third and final, the celestial.

I later discovered that prior to 1991, the ceremony in the first room contained an explanation of the penalties for anyone who would break their covenants and tell someone else what happens there. The participants in the ceremony would pantomime disemboweling themselves and slitting their own throats from ear to ear. This tradition was removed in 1991, but since it is not permitted to discuss the ceremony outside of the temple, no reason was ever given as to why.

I entered the terrestrial room and saw an altar in the middle that resembled a short Greek pillar, about waist high, with a small closed box on top. My father whispered to me that this was where the names were submitted by members of the Church for special prayers. After entering the room, the participants stood in a circle, alternating genders. Each put their left hand on the shoulder of the person next to them and held their right hand up as if swearing at court. The temple worker leading the ceremony then said a blessing one sentence at a time, which was then repeated by the participants. I recall this being the most unsettling part of the ceremony. The women had lowered their veils, and repeating the prayer sounded very much like a chant.

After the prayer circle had concluded, we turned to face a large curtain that walled off one end of the room. The curtain, representing the veil that bars the entrance to heaven, had symbols sewn and cut into it, and I recognized the symbols as the same symbols that were sewn into the garments — the compass, resembling a V; the square, resembling an L; and a flat line below. I watched as one by one, participants approached the curtain. They would reach to the side of the curtain and hit a small bell with a mallet, as if ringing a doorbell. A temple worker standing on the other side, representing God, would ask who was there. The participant would whisper their second name and then proceed to give the various names and handshakes to the worker through the curtain. I didn’t remember all of the names, signs, and tokens, but a temple worker was standing nearby to whisper reminders to me when I needed them.

The celestial room is the most beautiful room in the temple. Everything from the carpets to the tissue boxes is in white or gold, and a huge crystal chandelier sits above the center of the room. No ceremony takes places within it, but members are free to sit within and contemplate and pray as long as they like. It’s also the only place where the Endowment can be discussed.

I passed through the veil to the smiles of my parents and grandmother. They were beaming with pride and happiness as my grandma asked, “Wasn’t that amazing? Wasn’t that just wonderful?” Feeling completely overwhelmed and wanting nothing more than to get away from the temple, I couldn’t think of anything to say. “I think that all of the men look like celestial chefs,” I blurted out. They laughed quietly, and we went back to the changing rooms and left the temple. The car ride back home was mercifully silent, and I didn’t speak to anyone for several hours after that. I kept replaying the ceremony through in my mind, trying to find any connection to the Church I had grown up in, believed in, and loved. I barely slept that night, lying in bed in the garments for the first time, cycling through various emotions. I felt angry at the Church for deceiving me — it felt as if my entire upbringing had been a bait-and-switch con. Realizing that there were huge portions of Church doctrine that I had obviously been completely ignorant about was terrifying, especially combined with the fact that I was due to sacrifice two years of my life, time, and independence to serve a mission to preach in its name.

The next few days went by in a haze. I couldn’t stop trying to find ways to square the ceremony with the culture and doctrine that I had been raised with. Not long after, I was walking through a Barnes & Noble and saw a book on display on the edge of an aisle. On the cover, I saw the compass, the square, and the very same green fig apron that I had seen in the temple. I snatched the book, found a corner of the room, and furiously tore through its pages. The book was an exploration of Masonic rituals, and as I flipped through page after page of the same symbols and handshakes I had seen in the temple, a narrative formed in my mind.

I sat on the floor staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, the Church no longer looked like a divine restoration of an eternal organization but a patchwork faith cobbled together from anything that Joseph Smith had encountered and found mystical. All the challenges, struggles, questions, and dilemmas I had suddenly made sense. I leaned forward, afraid I might vomit. In a world-shattering 15 minutes, I had decided that the Church was man-made.

Should I still go on a mission? I had wanted nothing more in my life than to travel abroad, and I had purchased a ticket to Singapore. My whole life had been building to this climax, and there were more than 300 people at my church who were all proud that I would fulfill my destiny and serve a mission. I still felt like a Mormon. I determined that even if the Church wasn’t perfectly inspired, it could still be of God and good for people. I decided that I would go, despite my new conclusion. However, having determined that some of the Church rules had no moral justification short of the virtue of obedience to God, I decided that I might not need to follow all of them.

I was in a relationship with a girl in high school, and we continued to date long-distance while I was at BYU and she was at her college several states away. She was Protestant but open to discussing faith, and I had hoped that she would wait for me to return from my mission, after which she might convert, and we could get married.

I was set to fly to the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, on the 16th of June, and she would be arriving home from college on the night of June 15th. I called her not long after going to Barnes & Noble, and I told her all about the ceremony, how I felt confused and dismayed, and what I had concluded. Feeling suddenly freed from the moral constraints of the Church, we decided that before I flew out, we would lose our virginity together.

The 15th came, and my parents allowed us half an hour in the living room to say goodbye. We did so, and everyone went to bed not long after. Being a resourceful Eagle Scout, I had procured some climbing rope, created hand-holds, and had tied it to my bed frame. Near midnight, I opened the window and rappelled from the second floor to the ground.

Realizing that the garments would probably not be the most mood-appropriate attire for the occasion, I had stashed a pair of boxers in the backyard. I changed into them in the backyard, stashed the garments in the wheel well of my car, and snuck over to her house and into her window. I flew out to the MTC at 6:00 AM the next morning.

The MTC is where missionaries go prior to entering “the field.” There, they spend every waking hour studying Scripture, learning the lessons that they will be teaching, praying, singing hymns, and learning the appropriate language for their mission. Missionaries in the MTC also regularly attend the temple and often take shifts responding to phone calls and online chats from Mormon.org.

Each missionary is assigned a companion, a fellow missionary, to accompany them everywhere — even standing outside the bathroom when the other needs to go. Mission rules are quite strict, and every missionary has a little white book affectionately dubbed the “white Bible” that contains most of them. Rules include a blanket restriction on personal communication, with the exception of one letter sent to family once per week and one short phone call each Christmas and Mother’s Day. There’s also a restriction on all music and entertainment except for hymns and other Church-approved materials. Exercise, laundry, and household chores are all to be done on a single day of the week. Somewhat ironically, missionaries are given the title of “Elder” while on their mission.

I was incredibly apprehensive coming to the MTC, which felt simultaneously familiar and foreign, comfortable and bizarre. I believed the Church to be good and had such strong faith in it for most of my life that I was eventually able to immerse myself in the experience and set aside my misgivings. The brotherhood that I experienced with my fellow missionary companions was incredible, and our sense of purpose was crystal clear. I have heard Mormon war veterans compare the MTC to boot camp, with the kicker of a divine destiny in addition to the collegial camaraderie. We knew without question what was good and what was evil, and we were setting out as soldiers in the army of God to save the world.

I loved being at the MTC. I was praying at every opportunity and studying Scripture 10 hours a day. The longer I was there, the more I felt my shaken faith begin to heal. I began to realize that I had been in the faith for my whole life, my parents had been in the Church for decades, and most of the people who I knew and respected were members. I asked myself, “If they all had made sense of it and stayed faithful, how could I be so arrogant and rash as to throw it all away in the course of 15 minutes at Barnes & Noble?” I began to feel reaffirmed in my divine cause and was so excited to leave Utah and get to Singapore that I soon became known as “Elder Can’t-Sit-Still.”

It’s a running joke in Mormonism to refer to the MTC as the Missionary Torture Chamber, since the missionaries are put through an emotional wringer. If you had ever done anything wrong, guilt compounded every day; we saw missionaries having emotional breakdowns on a regular basis. I began to feel incredibly guilty for having premarital sex. Every morning, every class, every prayer, the thought of my horrible transgression ate at my conscience.

Three days before my group was to fly to Singapore, I felt the need to make a decision: if this was the true faith, if my parents and everyone I loved and respected were right, then the only honest thing that I could do would be to confess my sin and bear the consequences, hoping that I would still be permitted to go. Gathering all of the courage that I had, I confided in my companion, and we walked together to the mission president’s office. I sat down in front of the president, I immediately began to cry, and I confessed what I had done. I told him how sincere my desire to be righteous was and begged him to allow me to continue to serve. He gave me a hug and asked me to wait outside while he consulted the other mission leaders. After what felt like years, he stepped out of the office and told me that I would need to return home and repent before I could continue on my mission. He handed me a phone, instructed me to call my family to let them know what was happening, and left the room.

To this day, I have never done anything as difficult as dialing that number to reach my parents. Remembering the heartbreak and disappointment in my father’s voice brings tears to my eyes even now, years later.

I walked as slowly as I could back to my room to pack my things. I wanted to remember it all — how it all looked, how it all felt, even the smells. Despite the utter confusion of the events prior to my arrival, I had found simplicity and peace in the MTC, and I knew that I would be returning to turmoil and shame. When I got to my room, I took a small piece of paper and wrote a promise to myself that I would return to the MTC and not let anything get in the way of fulfilling my divine mission. I signed it, sealed it with a prayer, unscrewed the faceplate of a power socket, and slipped it into the wall. I then said a tearful goodbye to my companions and flew home, completely broken. My parents met me at the airport and hardly said a word as they tearfully hugged me. If we spoke at all on the car ride home, I don’t remember it.

The weeks that followed are now a blur to me. I lived in my own personal hell. My little brother, in middle school at the time, had been vocally proud of me and my mission to his peers. Upon my return, he had to explain to his friends why I was back home. My little sister wasn’t quite old enough to understand the gravity of the situation, but she provided the kind of unconditional comfort and love that only a little girl can. My parents didn’t know what to do with me other than to make sure that I was fed and going to church. I met with all of my local church leaders and begged them to let me return, assuring them that I had repented and was ready to serve God. They had known and loved me for years. Believing my sin to be an uncharacteristic mistake, they told me that if I continued to repent, they could consider sending me back in as soon as three months.

Three months. It seemed an age away, but at the same time, I had been warned that it could take up to a year. If I could last for three months, then I could get away from the shame. Soon, I realized that if I truly wanted to be able to return and serve in earnest, I needed to be able to accept the Endowment ceremony as part of my spirituality and faith. I began carefully investigating the temple, asking leaders and friends for Church books and other material on the subject. There wasn’t much — members are prohibited from talking about the ceremony outside of the temple. I was also quite hesitant to turn to the internet for information since I knew that I would be bombarded with anti-Mormon propaganda.

Mormons actively revile materials that are critical of the Church. Labeled “anti-Mormon,” simply “anti,” or “spiritual pornography,” they’re believed to be the tools of Satan as he attempts to destroy the faith of the members. Since the Church is of God, anything that attacks, criticizes, or otherwise discourages it must be from Satan. It is entirely inconceivable to most Mormons that someone could have a legitimate concern or grievance with the Church or its doctrines.

Mormons believe that because their faith is the fullness of truth, if people leave, it is because there is something wrong with them — perhaps they were too prideful or too weak to abstain from sin, for example. It’s fairly common that Mormons who had painful experiences within it leave the Church and become disdainful of it, thereafter saying or publishing negative things. These attacks are taken as proof that they actually know in their soul that the Church is true and have to constantly and stubbornly reinforce their rebellion against their God-given nature: “They can leave the Church, but they can’t leave it alone” is an oft-repeated phrase.

I had always imagined “anti” to be metaphorically covered in a black tar that would crawl up my arm and taint my soul if I were to ever touch it, so my research on the internet began only by browsing official Church websites. Turning up nothing, I began to look at the blogs and websites of Mormon apologists. They had some interesting content, particularly on the connection between Mormonism and Freemasonry, but that only served to pique my interest rather than satiate it. At some point in my investigation, I got an e-mail from a cousin in California. I knew that he was in a questioning phase with the Church, and he had heard that I had had difficulty with the Endowment ceremony. He referred me to a particular website run by an active member called MormonStories.org and told me that he would love to talk to me if I had any questions or if I just wanted to talk. It was comforting to know that someone in my family might understand what I was going through. I went to the site cautiously and found a video called “Why People Leave the Church.” I plugged in some headphones and hit play.

It began with John Dehlin, the man behind the website, introducing himself, his background, and his intentions. He said that he was an active LDS member and wanted to help bring understanding and compassion to those who were struggling with the faith. As the presentation continued, he brought up a number of things that I had never heard before. I had known that, at some point, black people had not been allowed to hold the position of priesthood or go to the temple, but I did not know that the ban hadn’t been lifted until 1979. I had known that polygamy had been common for a phase in early Church history, but I didn’t know all of the facts about Joseph Smith: he had 33 wives in total, some of whom already had husbands, the youngest being a 14-year-old. The room began to spin, and I felt dizzy and weak. I paused the presentation and walked away. It was the same feeling I had had in the temple — the feeling that there was a completely different side to the Church that I hadn’t known about, a dark side that had been hidden from me for nearly 20 years. After taking a brief walk around the block, I returned and finished the presentation. I don’t think I read a single thing for days afterward.

After I finally resumed investigating online, I began to discover an entire segment of the Mormon population that I hadn’t known about before — the “fringe” Mormons. Their stories were usually similar to mine — faithful members who chanced upon something that shocked them about the history of the Church, began researching, and found a hoard of facts that didn’t match the official teachings. Some left, but some stayed active in the Church, though their beliefs morphed into very non-traditional forms. Prior to the internet, they stayed connected through two key magazines/discussion groups known as Dialogue and Sunstone. Afterward frequently known as “Sunstone Mormons,” they supported each other, often in secret to avoid repercussions, as they struggled to cope with life within the Church. The internet has allowed them to connect more directly through sites such as MormonStories.org, the Further Light & Knowledge forum, and NewOrderMormon.org.

The Church, especially in the past 50 years, has worked hard to establish a firm doctrine. The Correlation Committee, a group of Apostles, decides the message and works to keep the Church consistent on that message. For example, this Sunday, every Mormon 10-year-old in the U.S. will hear the same Sunday school lesson. Faithful Mormons will only teach and learn about their faith from correlated materials. Thus, mainstream Mormons are commonly known in “fringe” circles as “Correlated Mormons,” “Chapel Mormons,” or “TBMs” — True Blue or Believing Mormons.

Compelled as I was to fully unearth the hidden trove of knowledge I had chanced upon, I was finding it difficult to study online. With the computer quite intentionally placed in a highly trafficked area of the house, I was afraid that my parents might find out what I was reading. I decided to try the local library. They had several non-correlated histories of the Church, which I checked out immediately. I poured through the pages as fast as I could in the remaining daylight in the library parking lot and drove home, leaving the books in the car.

A day or two later, my parents spotted the books — one of them being The God Makers by the infamous anti-Mormon Ed Decker. “I will not have that sort of material in my home,” my dad told me. “It brings a spirit of blackness with it. I don’t want it anywhere near here. I won’t allow it on my property — including the car.”

I was furious. So alien and disruptive were the facts I was discovering about my faith, I might as well have discovered secret documents proving that the Founding Fathers were actually lizard-people in disguise — and here was my dad, seizing the classified documents and placing me in an information quarantine. I immediately began drawing up an escape plan from my perceived intellectual prison.

I can’t imagine what these weeks must have felt like to my parents. At first, they were filled with such pride at the great undertaking of their oldest son, only to be utterly heartbroken by my early and shameful return. Then, just when it looked like I might be redeemed, they saw me starting to take steps away from the Church entirely. Knowing that my curiosity wouldn’t remain at bay for long, they sought out help.

Not long after my parents saw the books, I received a call from a man in my ward whom I loved and respected a great deal, inviting me over to talk. I knew that my parents must have arranged it, but I could see no harm in talking to him — any new knowledge would be worthwhile. As it turned out, much to my surprise, he was a Sunstone Mormon! He took me up to the library in his office and showed me a whole wall filled with books on Mormonism. Over the course of several meetings, he invited me to borrow and read several books that he deemed accurate yet fair and shared his personal philosophy regarding the truthfulness and value of the Church. Though I was far from a decision on the truthfulness of the Church, I was certain that in order to truly make an informed decision, I had to hear from all sides, which was something I couldn’t do at home.

Most of my friends interacted with me sparingly at this point, but there were two who stayed close — one, a lifelong atheist (despite all my best efforts to convert him), and a Mormon who had recently come out to me as gay. Together, the three of us found an apartment only a few miles away and moved in shortly thereafter.

I spent the better part of the next year pouring over every book on Mormonism that I could get my hands on. I studied, I prayed, I fasted, I visited the temple grounds, and I fervently read the Scriptures. Before me were two paths: one to Singapore, the other into the unknown. My life could not progress until I took a firm step in one direction.

I continued to be shocked by the things that I read about Mormonism. I discovered that most fringe Mormons had long abandoned maintaining the Book of Mormon as a historical document. The archaeology didn’t fit the stories. Linguistic analysis showed no trace of Semitic speech patterns in the Americas, the geography didn’t line up, DNA analysis of Native Americans had shown no trace of Middle Eastern ancestry. The more I studied, the more it became clear to me that not only was the history of the Church far from faith-promoting, but the Book of Mormon, the very keystone of our religion, was, at best, a piece of divine fiction.

Having moved beyond reasonable doubt of the truthfulness of the claims of Mormonism, I began to investigate the path of the fringe Mormons. I wanted to determine if could I stay in Mormonism even if I didn’t believe it. I was young and in a unique position to reinvent myself, so there was no social reason, beyond my family, compelling me to stay. As I contemplated what it would be like to raise a family outside the Church, I realized that I had to decide whether or not I believed the Church to be beneficial to people in all circumstances. Living with a homosexual Mormon answered that question for me rather quickly.

Ever since my friend had come out to me, I had felt uncomfortable with the options that the Church presented to homosexuals — to either be celibate or to pretend to be straight. My only justification of the position of the Church had been through its divine mandate. Without that, and by being able to witness what it put my friend through on a daily basis, I realized that I could not accept the Church on that alone.

As my faith was slipping away, so were the remnants of the life I had led. My relationship with my family at that time was strained and painful — my parents wouldn’t even allow me to be around my younger siblings without supervision, for fear that I might share what I had been reading. My grandmother wouldn’t even talk to me; years later, we’re just now almost to the point of speaking again. Beyond the two I was living with, most of my childhood friends would hardly communicate with me, and several had been prohibited by their parents from visiting me. I was nearly financially ruined from the expenses of moving into a new apartment when I received a letter from BYU informing me that my attendance was under suspension pending Ecclesiastical Endorsement from my bishop. Former members of the Church, I knew, could not get an Endorsement from the leader of another faith — if I didn’t repent and return to good standing with the Church, I wouldn’t be able to continue college. I was desperately clinging to everything that I could grasp in my life and losing the pieces one by one.

Though my girlfriend was Lutheran, her parents were furious at us for what we had done and had asked her not to continue to see me. At first, we found ways to see each other, but the guilt began to wear on her deeply — it didn’t help that I became increasingly needy and desperate as my situation became more difficult. One day in late November of 2005, I received an e-mail from her informing me that we would no longer speak. Feeling as if my life was without meaning, purpose, the foundation of support from the people I loved, or the potential for a rewarding future, I considered that I was simply beyond repair. I finally felt that I had lost it all. I grabbed my iPod, put it on shuffle, grabbed a coat, and left my apartment.

I walked and cried for hours in the nearby woods. I felt like I had nothing left — that my family reviled me, that most of the people I loved and respected wouldn’t even associate with me, that I wouldn’t be able to finish college, and, now, that my girlfriend of several years wouldn’t even speak to me. Broken, angry, and without hope, I sent her a message that I was going to kill myself. I proceeded to walk to a nearby freeway overpass.

As I stood atop the highway, looking down on the cars rushing by, fully intending to jump, my iPod shuffled to a track I hadn’t heard before. The piano begins simply, followed by the beautiful tones of a crystal clear electric guitar, with a Wurlitzer organ finishing the wind-up. The song was “Sinner’s Prayer” by Ray Charles and B.B. King. No hymn had ever struck me as powerfully as B.B. King’s slow-hand blues did on the Pines overpass in Spokane. I sat down on the sidewalk, barely able to breathe. Instantly, I no longer felt alone. The blues communicated to me that billions of people had been through horrible things, had hit the bottom, and yet, they somehow had discovered the strength to carry on — and God damn it all, if they could make it, so could I. I stood up, walked home, and, utterly emotionally exhausted, slept deeply.

I woke up to my phone ringing and the strained voices of my parents on the other end. I suddenly realized that my girlfriend must have called them. I felt terrible. Of all of the choices I made in my exodus from Mormonism, sending that message saying that I was going to commit suicide is the choice that I regret the most. I can’t imagine how much pain that caused.

My dad asked me to meet him at a local sandwich shop, and I told him everything that had happened and everything that I was feeling. He told me that he wanted me to know that he loved me no matter what and asked what he could do to help. He encouraged me to apply to a different college. Though I believe the Church to be a force of division between families and friends, and though it still feels as though there is a very real wall between my family and me, I’ll be forever grateful for my truly remarkable parents.

At this time, I was still regularly visiting with my local bishop. I was still in trouble with the Church for having premarital sex, and it had not yet been decided that I had repented. My bishop reminded me that if I did not begin to repent soon, he would have no choice but to hold a disciplinary council. A month or two later, he did.

I don’t recall all of the details of the council, since it was an altogether harrowing experience. I was as honest as I could be, telling them that I wanted with all my heart for the Church to be true. I wanted so badly to believe, to return, and to repent, and to go back out on a mission, but I was having such a difficult time with the truth claims of the Church that I couldn’t yet do it. I also assured them that I was fervently praying, fasting, and reading Scriptures and was always seeking an answer from God. They asked me to wait outside so they could reach a verdict. It was all I could do to keep myself from placing my ear against the door.

They let me back in after what seemed like an eternity and asked me to sit. They told me that they believed that my desire to have faith was sincere and that they would suspend any disciplinary action pending a further probationary period. If I attended church regularly, continued to seek after the faith, and did not break any other serious commandments, then the probation would end. If not, they would reconvene, and I could face excommunication.

About a month later, in the spring of 2006, I realized, finally, that I could no longer believe in the Church. It had become clear to me that the Church was not only not based on fact, but that it also did more harm than good. Being excommunicated would feel as if my decision had been made by others for me, and I couldn’t accept that. Thus, I decided that I would ask to have my records removed from the Church. I wrote a long, bulleted list of the problems that I had with the Church and brought it with me to the next meeting with the bishop.

I told him that I had come to the conclusion that the Church wasn’t true, and I just couldn’t will myself to believe it anymore. I showed him my list. As a courtesy to him and my parents, I told him that if he could at least give me reasonable doubt on any two of the issues that I had listed by the next monthly meeting, I would continue to stay and study for another year.

When I returned the next month, he told me that he hadn’t been able to help with the list. He said that whether or not I stayed in the faith shouldn’t be based upon his ability to answer the questions. I told him that I was certain enough. I then took the list, flipped it over, borrowed his pen, and wrote my resignation letter on the back. My affiliation with the Church was officially over.

I received wonderful pieces of mail in the following few weeks — an acceptance letter to the University of Washington and confirmation that my records had been removed from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My life was moving forward.

No longer a Mormon, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know who I was or what to believe. My studies of Mormonism had included a great deal of study of the Bible, so it wasn’t long before I realized that I couldn’t believe in Christianity either. Islam held my attention for awhile, and I liked many of its core beliefs and tenets, but it still shared many of the same moral dilemmas as Mormonism. I began to drift east philosophically, studying Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Each faith I studied had elements that I loved, but none of them truly spoke to me, and they all had moral stances that I couldn’t fully agree with. I ended up deciding that I was generically theistic, perhaps agnostic or deistic. I still prayed and still felt that there must be a presence above us or at least something more to this life.

Without Scripture and rules, though, I no longer had the moral rudder of Mormonism. I still had a strong desire to be a moral person; I didn’t want to make choices that I would regret, that would harm other people, or would otherwise leave my heart unsettled. I sat down with a pen and paper and began listing all of the rules, prohibitions, and virtues that I had been taught in Mormonism, leaving nothing spared. Some moral questions, such as masturbation, I had already reasoned through and was able to categorize quickly. What about alcohol, though? Drugs? Cigarettes? Coffee? Giving to the poor? Obedience? Tithing? One issue at a time, I built a personal code based on empathy, love, and reason.

I also began reading about atheism as a philosophy, new and old, famous and obscure. The more I read, the more I realized that it fit the patterns that I had seen in my life. I slowly began to realize that a small part of me had always doubted, had always known that I didn’t fully believe. It was the only philosophy I had read that I didn’t have to do mental gymnastics in order to accept. It felt right.

Very similar to Julia Sweeney’s description in her hilarious and wonderful monologue, “Letting Go of God,” I remember the very moment when I let go. It felt as if I said goodbye and watched this little old man fade off into nothingness. It wasn’t sad or mournful, but it did feel nostalgic, not unlike the feeling of putting your childhood teddy bear in a box as you packed your things to move away to college.

I had to let go. I let go of the afterlife, and with it, all of the loved ones I had lost. Letting go of my grandfather was, for me, much, much harder than letting go of God.

It took a very long time for guilt to fade any time I did something I had previously thought of as immoral, such as having a glass of wine. Every time I was struck with guilt, I would bring out my list and reason through the morality of what I was doing, just to be sure.

The most difficult thing to move beyond was the idea that everything that occurred in my mind was observed and that I would be judged for it. I recall being at the mall and seeing an attractive girl walking by in a skimpy outfit. My imagination immediately ran wild before I caught myself thinking, “No, that’s a horrible thing to think. I’m filled with lust, and that’s evil. I have to stop!” I paused for a moment, smiled, and thought, “Wait — there is nothing immoral about thoughts. There’s no rational reason to judge a thought as immoral.” Feeling liberated, I lusted the hell out of that girl and enjoyed every damned minute of it. Honestly, I didn’t even feel that much sexual desire toward her. I was just thriving in the knowledge that I could have sexual thoughts without shame and guilt!

It hit me as I was walking home — I could think anything! I could have any opinion on any subject, and it would be my own! No longer would I have to check against Scripture and other doctrine to make sure that my opinions were in line with God; I could decide my opinions with my own reason! I could believe that humans evolved from apes; I could believe that homosexuality isn’t a choice. Hell, I could believe that we’re living in the Matrix, and no one could tell me I couldn’t. That moment was one of the most liberating, beautiful, and happy experiences of my life.

The next fall, I enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle. Mormons hold approachability and niceness as a virtue, making it easy to enter a new area and make friends. But without being surrounded by people who exuded that layer of artificial niceness, I simply didn’t know how to act. Thus, for most of my first year there, I was very much alone and fell into a dark and numb state of depression. Believing my pain and isolation to be a result of having been raised Mormon, I became bitter and venomous toward faith in general and Mormonism in particular. If only everyone could know what I knew, I reasoned, then they all would believe what I believe, and they could all escape their religions before they caused any more pain. Using tactics taught to me as a Mormon, I would bring up religion in totally unrelated conversations in order to share what I knew. This didn’t exactly help me make friends.

I then joined a group on campus called the Secular Student Union. There, I met with other students who were going through something similar, just as estranged from the world as I was. The group held weekly meetings, where we discussed current events, shared stories, and debated moral questions. I was particularly excited to explore questions of ethics and morality from a nonreligious standpoint, and the meetings quickly became the highlight of my week — and sometimes, the extent of my social interaction.

After my first year at the UW, I became president of the Secular Student Union. Feeling once again that I had a mission and calling, I dedicated myself to its growth and establishment. I connected our group with larger, national organizations such as the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry. I debated with a local megachurch pastor for a video podcast series and organized Richard Dawkins’s visit to UW, which was the most attended atheistic event in the history of the Pacific Northwest.

Feeling empowered and connected, I also began dating girls and developing myself socially. It didn’t take long, however, for me to realize that the same approach that had brought me success within the non-theistic movement was not nearly as effective outside of it. My venomous anti-theism was usually met with indifference at best and revulsion at worst.

I began to grow in my beliefs and worldview. Atheism started to feel less and less new, exciting, and definitional, becoming merely a part of who I was. I no longer felt like a freed prisoner from a Mormon mental gulag but more as if I had been free all along.

When I was at BYU, my parents weren’t expecting to have to pay much for my college education. Because I had earned a full-tuition scholarship there and lived in tithe-subsidized housing on campus, my costs were about as low as possible for a college education in the United States. Unfortunately, I had no such scholarship at UW. My parents informed me that they were willing to pay as much as they had been paying for BYU, but no more. I maxed out the amount of public student loans available to me — an amount determined by my parents’ income — but it still wasn’t quite enough. I started putting tuition on credit cards, worked as much as I could, and ate all the Top Ramen I could stomach. Despite my efforts, nearing my degree, my credit limit was maxed out, and I was broke. My only option was to get a private student loan. Most private school loans require a cosigner, and mine was no exception. I asked my parents, but they told me that they were opposed to cosigning for loans as a rule. With my tuition deadline coming up fast, I began to panic.

After I did some initial planning for an interfaith project with a student Christian group, their pastor, a man named Greg, asked me how I was doing. Since I could barely think about much else, I told him about my financial situation and how I wasn’t sure what to do. He nodded, paused, and said, “Let me talk to my wife. We might be able to help you with that.” I was taken aback — I had barely met this man, and he seemed to be willing to consider helping me in such a meaningful way.

I fully expected him to reconsider his offer later, so I continued to search for a solution. Valerie Tarico, a local psychologist and secular activist I met through the Secular Student Union — she has written a wonderful book called Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light — was generous enough to cosign my loan. Not long after, I was studying when I received a Facebook chat message from Greg. “Hello there! I know that the tuition deadline is coming up soon,” he wrote. “And I wanted to let you know that I talked to my wife, and we would be able to cosign that loan for you.” I sat back in my chair, tears welling up in my eyes. Having been treated like a pariah and with utter distrust by Mormons I had known my whole life, it was utterly overwhelming to me that this man who barely knew me was willing to trust me so sincerely. Before I could respond, he said, “We’ll talk later. I have to go. I’m at the hospital right now — my daughter was just born.” Greg took the time to step away from his newborn baby girl to help a near stranger in a time of need, to help me. When I think about the best parts of Christianity, I think of Greg.

Over time, my interactions with wonderful people of all faiths began to quell my anger and frustration. I began to realize that I care a great deal more about who a person is than what a person believes in, that I care more about being a good person than being right.

That’s not to say I never get upset with religion in general or Mormonism in particular. Due to the involvement of the Church in fighting against same-sex marriage, for example, I’ve seen people I love actively seek to take away the rights of other people I love. I also get upset at the deceit of the Church — when they teach whitewashed versions of history, deceptively represent homosexuals, atheists, and other groups, and subjugate and oppress women, among other things. Being upset, however, does not lead me to confront individual Mormons on their beliefs and try to change their minds.

My relationship with my family will never be the same, but I believe it is as good as it can be given the circumstances. Mormon women are taught from a very young age that their primary responsibility and greatest calling is to help ensure that their families end up together in the next life. Since I am no longer Mormon, my family believes that I will be separated from them after death, and that thought is something that my mother will never be able to overlook. From a Mormon perspective, it would have actually been better if I had died prior to leaving the Church. There may always be an unspoken wall between myself and my family, and while that makes me sad, I am pleased that we’ve come as far as we have.

Looking back, there are very few things that I would change about what I’ve been through. In the moments of darkness that accompanied my transition, I wasn’t sure that I would ever enjoy life. The only advice I would give to my past self would be to know that I will find a way to survive and that some day I will be happy.

Leaving Mormonism stripped me of my pride, put all of my secrets on display, and left me with nothing but my own will. I’ve gotten the chance to choose what kind of man I want to be and how I want to live my life. I’ve been able to do so in my youth, before I had, relatively speaking, all that much to lose. Not long ago, I was staying at a hostel in Washington, DC. It had a communal bathroom. I saw a man brushing his teeth at the sink, wearing the Mormon garment top. I asked, “Are you LDS?” “Yes,” he replied. “Are you?” “I used to be, actually,” I responded. He sighed and looked at the floor. Then, he spoke. “I envy you. I have been in Mormonism my whole life, but recently I’ve stopped believing. You have the fortune of being young — I have a wife, children, and grandchildren, and I work for the Church. I can’t leave because I would lose everything.” Meeting him reminded me of how fortunate I should feel for leaving Mormonism when I did.

I used to see the world in binary. If something wasn’t of God, it was of Satan. If someone wasn’t Mormon, it was because they were, at best, ignorant. I believed that I had access to absolute truth and knowledge, while the rest of the world had only pieces. I thought that I knew the right way to live and freely judged anyone who lived otherwise. I perceived anything that challenged my faith or choices as a threat to be ignored, avoided, or destroyed. If you weren’t us, then you were them, and they aren’t as good, righteous, intelligent, or blessed as we are.

I like to think that I now see the world as it truly is — messy, human, nuanced, and beautiful. No person, philosophy, or idea is without flaws, and I think that’s wonderful. I have yet to hear a moral or philosophical absolute that is completely logically sound. I have found that I favor virtue-based ethics, such as the four Aristotelian ethics of justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom — so long as each of the virtues is rooted in empathy and not considered an absolute. I find that, by distancing myself from moral absolutism, I’ve been able to find a deep peace.

Moving away from those absolutes has also caused me to move away from atheist activism. While I do consider myself an atheist, I’ve come to find that many of the loudest voices in the movement are also tone-deaf regarding how their messages will be received by the faithful. Having been raised religious, I know firsthand that people who are perceived to be hostile or aggressive toward faith are immediately shut out, marginalized, and ignored. Not only is it ineffective, but it can further entrench someone in their beliefs and reinforce the “us vs. them” mentality.

Despite shrill voices on either side of the theistic line, I believe that the world is slowly changing for the better. Civil rights for racial and sexual minorities are better now than they ever have been. Violent crimes are at an all-time low. As far as I can tell, each generation in the last 200 years has generally been more progressive, more accepting, and more tolerant than the last. In addition, morally absolutist religions have seen their numbers steadily declining, the Mormon Church included. I have hope for the future and hope for humanity. The more interconnected we are, the more we will develop our empathy and the less we will see the world as a matter of us vs. them.