Growing Up

I was born into a family that has a long heritage of faith in Jesus Christ and membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Several of my ancestors joined the Church in its early days and some knew Joseph Smith personally.

I grew up participating actively in the Church. Each evening, my family knelt together to pray, and many mornings we would study the scriptures while we ate breakfast together. Each Sunday my parents took us to church, and I attended weekly youth activities organized by the church. I also lived in an area where most of my neighbors and schoolmates were also members of the Church. Because of this background, living the restored gospel of Jesus Christ has always been a defining part of who I am.

In the Church, individuals can be baptized starting at age 8, and most children who are raised in the Church are baptized soon after their 8th birthday. This was the case for me as well. I don’t remember much from the day of my baptism, although I do remember it being a happy experience. What stands out to me about my baptism was what led up to it. I remember as my 8th birthday approached, my parents discussed with me the upcoming opportunity to be baptized and expressed their desire for me to be baptized. But my father made it very clear to me the the decision to get baptized was my decision and not theirs, and that I could choose whether to go forward with it or not. Even as an eight-year-old, I was impressed by this notion of choice and agency. Later during the school year, a friend of mine asked me whether I thought she should be baptized, and my response was that what I thought didn’t really matter since getting baptized was a choice that she needed to make (although I did give it as my personal opinion that she should get baptized).

As an 8-year-old, my faith in Jesus Christ was still largely based on the innoccent acceptance of what my parents and Sunday School teachers taught me. It wasn’t until later that I came to develop my own, independent belief in Jesus Christ. But the choice to be baptized was my own, and I made that choice with what knowledge and experience I had at the time. I am grateful to my parents for the way they approached my baptism, because it set a precedent in my life of having the freedom to make my own decisions with regard to my spirituality. Later in my life this notion of freedom would be a crucial element in my journey of faith.

As I got older, I had a number of significant spiritual experiences. Through these experiences, I came to know God for myself and began developing my own, independent belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Spiritual experiences are difficult to describe to people who haven’t had them (or at least haven’t recognized them as such). Its a lot like trying to describe the flavor of salt to someone who hasn’t tasted it before. When I share my spiritual experiences, I don’t expect you to necessarily understand them, because understanding might require having a similar experience. But I do ask you to acknowledge that, for me, these experiences were very real, even if I can’t recreate them for you. I have no scientific proof that these experiences happened or that they were truly from God, but in the moment of these experiences, there was no doubt in my mind that I was connecting with God. These experiences brought me profound joy and comfort, and I have chosen to continue to believe in these experiences now that I am older. The experience I am about to share is very sacred to me, and I hope that you will read it with an open mind and an open heart.

The first time I had a major spiritual experience was when I was about 12 or 13. Many congregations of the Church hold weekly activities for teenagers, and during one month the activities for my local congregation were all themed around missionary work. We called it Missionary Month, and the purpose was to help us prepare to be volunteer missionaries for the Church when we got older. For one of the activites, we got into groups of three and visited the homes of various families who were in our congregation. We ate dinner with them and listened to their experiences of being volunteer missionaries when they were younger (in my case, this included teaching us how to drink hot chocolate through a Tim Tam, which is delicious). Afterward, we practiced teaching them a missionary lesson.

The lesson that we had prepared to share with this family was on the Restoration and Joseph Smith’s First Vision. As we got to the end of the lesson, the thought came to me that I should share my testimony of the First Vision with this family, because I knew that bearing personal testimony is an important part of teaching spiritual truths. But I had a problem: I didn’t have a testimony of the First Vision. I believed in it, because I trusted my family and my church leaders, but I didn’t have a personal conviction that it was true. However, despite this, I felt that I still needed to share my testimony of the First Vision. And so I opened my mouth and began to tell the family we were with that I knew that Joseph Smith had seen Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. As I spoke, a marvelous feeling came over me. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before. It wasn’t an emotion, in that it didn’t seem to come from within; rather, it felt like it came down from above me and enveloped the whole room. It made me feel wonderful, and in that moment I knew that I was having an experience with God; I knew that the Holy Spirit was testifying to me that Joseph Smith had seen God and Jesus Christ.

That experience was the beginning of my personal testimony. Numerous experiences, both large and small, have contributed to my belief in God and Jesus Christ’s Restored Church since then, but I look back to that experience as my first major experience with God. That experience taught me that to experience God, we must act in faith despite our uncertainty.

Teenage Years

Since I was young, I have had a great interest in science and math. My favorite show as a kid was Nova Science Now, and one of the best Christmas gifts I ever received was The Idiot’s Guide to String Theory.

My love of science began in elementary school. In 4th grade science class, we learned about the water cycle, how water evaporates and rises from the earth, and then later rains back down. The water cycle was all fine and good, but I had a question that was not being addressed in that class’s curriculum: why does water evaporate? The answer came a year later when we learned about atoms. We learned how all things are made of atoms, and in liquids those atoms move around close to each other, but when they heat up, they spread apart, and the liquid becomes a gas. That was my first “aha!” moment regarding science, and it had a profound impact on me. From then on, I always had a deep interest in understanding why things worked the way they did, in learning the mechanics happening underneath the things we observe. Science also appealed to me because the scientific method allowed us to learn truth in a way that was logical and consistent. Science felt reliable to me, and I liked that. Math appealed to me for similar reasons. It was logical, and not only was it logical, but it was also absolute. Things could be proven with total certainty in math, which again felt reliable to me, and I liked that. What’s more, I believed strongly in the ability of the scientific method to discover truth.

However, in my teenage years, my love of science, logic and math posed a challenge to my faith. The first major experience that I remember dealing with this challenge came after reading a book about physics. It was a wonderful book, but in the appendix, there was a section containing the author’s thoughts on science and the existence of God. In this appendix, he listed several things that people had previously offered as evidence for God’s existence, and then refuted each one, explaining why those evidences weren’t logically sound, were unscientific, etc

This was the first time that I can remember where I had to face the fact that logic and scientific reasoning didn’t necessarily point to God. This was difficult for me to come to terms with, since I sincerely believed in God, and I sincerely believed in logic and science. In the moment, it was truly a crisis. My belief in God was such an integral part of who I was, and suddenly I felt like I had a responsibility to question or disregard that in order to be true to my belief in logic and reason. Two central parts of my identity were suddenly at odds with each other, and I didn’t know how to cope.

I remember lying on my bed that afternoon, filled with dread, not knowing what to do. I desperately turned on some religious music in the hope that it would make me have a spiritual experience to cast away my doubt. But that didn’t happen, and I just lay there with my anxiety. But the worst part was that I felt like a coward. Because even as I lay there, doubting God, I knew deep down that I wasn’t about leave the church or give up my religion. I felt like even if I knew that God did not exist, I did not have the courage to change my life and challenge the traditions I grew up with.

Eventually, the dread and immediate anxiety went away, and I continued forward with life. But from then on, there were always questions in the back of my mind that I knew needed to be addressed: How do I reconcile my belief in God and my belief in science? How do I know with certainty that God is real? What do I do if I decide that God isn’t real?

But these questions and doubts did not stop me from acting in faith and living the gospel. For one thing, living the gospel was the default in my family and community, so when I was unsure of what to do, I would simply keep on going. But beyond that, throughout my teenage years I continued to have wonderful spiritual experiences that reaffirmed my belief in God.

Some of these were small and simple experiences, like the feeling of warmth and happiness I had while studying the scriptures or attending church or seminary. Others were more major experiences, where I felt that God was communicating with me. Through these experiences, I learned that God loved me, that He was watching over me, that He listened to my prayers, and that I could be forgiven of my sins by the grace of Jesus Christ. Collectively, these experiences constituted my testimony, the reason I believed in God.

A final thing that helped me was a line from the Book of Mormon that was my favorite scripture quote during much of my teenage years: “faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith” (Ether 12:6). When I read this scripture, I would understand it as, “dispute not because ye have no scientific evidence yet.” This line of scripture reminded me that having my faith challenged was part of the process. I could look back on past spiritual experiences as witnesses I had received, and that gave me the hope to keep believing until the next witness came.

And so I continued to live with two parts of myself: the agnostic, who resolutely held to the fact that I still didn’t have proof of my beliefs; and the believer, who had devout faith in and love for God. Throughout all of this, I chose to live according to my faith, not my doubts. I continued to pray, study the scriptures, and attend church services. I tried, although imperfectly, to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Church.

And I waited for a day when I would know with certainty whether the gospel of Jesus Christ was true.

The Mission

When I entered my senior year of high school, the time came for me to start the application process to be a missioinary. I always knew I would serve a mission; I had been taught since a young age that God expected me to serve a mission if I was able to, and I always intended on doing what God expected of me. Of course, there was also never really any question about it; I lived in a culture where it was simply assumed that I would serve a mission.

As part of the application process, I met with my bishop for an interview. As I sat waiting in the hallway outside his office, I began to feel very scared at the prospect of going on a mission. And so I said a prayer, asking the Lord for help. Then, during the interview itself, I had a profound feeling of peace that I recognized as coming from God, and I knew that going on a mission was what God wanted me to do.

However, knowing it was what God wanted didn’t make it any less scary. When I got my call to serve in Hong Kong, I was really excited to learn Chinese and see the world, but I was terrified to actually go talk to strangers about the gospel. This fear continued during my nine weeks in the Missionary Training Center (MTC). Part of the problem was that, despite the many uplifting spiritual experiences I had in the MTC, I still had doubts hanging in the back of my mind. I loved and believed in the gospel, but I wasn’t absolutely sure it was all real, and that bothered me. Growing up, I had heard many people bear their testimony in church, and I often heard many people say that they knew “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the Church was true. I just didn’t have that level of confidence, and that made the prospect of convincing other people to join the Church intimidating.

But I had hope. I had heard many stories of people who really found their testimony of the gospel while on their missions, as they experienced miracles and saw the gospel change people’s lives. So I had faith that my mission would give me the experiences I needed to make my testimony rock solid, and that faith gave me the courage to go into the mission field despite my immense fears.

In the mission field, I had many experiences that built up my faith in God, Jesus Christ, and my beliefs. I saw the faith of many members of the church who had to sacrifice much more than I had in order to live the gospel. I saw the faith of people investigating the Church as they overcame their doubts and were baptized. I felt God comfort, guide and testify to me. None of these experiences were logic-defying miracles, but they were meaningful affirmations that what I believed was true.

However, in the mission field I also encountererd a new challenge to my faith, in the form of conversations about my religion with other Christians. Prior to this point, my internal debate had centered around whether the spiritual experiences I had had in my life were truly from God or just a phenomenon of my psychology. My discussions with other Christians made me realize there was a third option: my spiritual experiences could have been some kind of deception by Satan. For the first time in my life I considered the possibility that God was real but my religion was false, and this was a struggle of faith that I had no idea how to handle. I was well practiced dealing with my atheistic doubts; I had no experience dealing with Christian doubts.

Eventually these doubts led to a total crisis of faith. For two days my mind was a whirlwind of circular reasoning and endless debate on the merits of what I had felt and experienced with God my whole life. For two days I was sick to my stomach with dread as I considered my options: spend the rest of my mission teaching something I didn’t believe, or leave my mission early and disappoint my family and everyone I cared about. For two days I was truly miserable.

But then I had an important realization: I was mentally spiriling out of control, I was overreacting. Sure, it was possible everything I believed was a lie manufactured by Satan. I knew now that this was a real possibility. But it was still just a possibility. It was also a possibility that everything I believed was true. Scientifically, I had no more evidence that my spiritual experiences had come from Satan than I had that they came from God. And it was not rational to abandon everything I had believed in and lived for just because I might be wrong. Hadn’t I already been living my life in faith, even though I knew what I belived might be wrong?

And so I decided it was time to excersize faith again. I chose to trust the many experiences I had had before and during my mission that strengthened my faith, and I continued forward to finish my mission. But the doubts still lived in the back of my mind, and I knew in my heart that there would come a day when I would need to face them again head on.

College Years

Three days after returning home from Hong Kong, I began my first semester at Brigham Young University (BYU). My faith was tender and fragile after having gone through a crisis only a few months before. But on my first day of class I found a spiritual lifeline in the form of a religion class (because BYU is owned and run by the Church, classes on religion are among the required courses). My professor was a historian, and, like myself, he had a very intellectual way of viewing the world. It was refreshing for me to see an example of someone who was highly intellectual and also deeply religious.

On the first day of class, we were assigned a reading from a book that discussed the difference between “seekers” and “assumers.” It explained that many people are unable to find spiritual truth because they are blinded by their assumptions. This happens to religious skeptics, who approach religion with the assumption that it cannot be true, but it also happens to believers. When a believer is an assumer, they assume that their current understanding of religion is the whole truth, and when faced with evidence of additional spiritual truth that contradicts some of what they believed, they either lose their faith or reject the new truth they have encountered. In contrast, a seeker is someone is always seeking additional truth and is willing to part with their preconceived notions in the pursuit of greater or more accurate truth.

This new paradigm came to me as an epiphany. I realized that, although the challenge to my faith on my mission had been traumatizing, it had also been necessary. Having my beliefs challenged forced me to let go of some of my false assumptions, and freed me up to pursue a more mature understanding of God and the gospel. This new paradigm also gave me hope that I could think about the gospel intellectually and critically without abandoning my faith.

And so I continued to believe in God and participate actively in church as I went through college. I did not have any profound spiritual experiences at this time, but I did feel like God was guiding me as I prayed for His help in picking a major and a career that would allow me to do good in the world. This guidance hstrengthened my faith and helped me feel at peace with my spirituality.

At the start of my fourth semester, I began dating Jolyn, the woman who is now my wife. We had already known each other and been friends for about six years, and our relationship progressed quickly. It wasn’t long before we were thinking seriously about getting married. However, the prospect of getting married began raising some spiritual issues for myself. In the Church, getting married involves making a solemn promise that one will be forever faithful to one’s spouse and to God, and I honestly did not feel comfortable making such a serious commitment. I still had doubts about my religion in the back of my mind (both “atheist doubts” and “Christian doubts”), and I wasn’t convinced that I wouldn’t one day leave the Church. But I knew that if I married Jolyn, I would be essentially committing to lifelong participation in the gospel, both because I would be making a solemn vow, but also because I knew it would break Jolyn’s heart if we got married and I one day lost my faith.

I felt that I could not get married until I had first resolved my doubts. But I didn’t know how to resolve my doubts any time soon, and I didn’t want to wait forever to get married. So I decided to go visit that professor from my first semester religion class for some advice.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .