My name is Jon Knecht. I am a pharmacy student at the University of Montana. Three years ago when I became aware, I was 29 years-old and after a couple weeks of intense research, I was ready to completely rewire my brain. I am temple-married to a beautiful, half-Chinese, and still very Mormon woman and we have 4 children. I’ve noticed 3 distinct phases in my life thus far. The phase as a blissful believing Mormon was when I felt good yet in some ways enclosed. The phase as a doubting Mormon was when my world suddenly darkened. And then there is the phase I’m passing through now as an ex-Mormon. I look at how things are beginning to open up again, slowly, and I’m seeing the world (and the Mormon Church) through a new lens.
I come from a very strict, devout Mormon family. By no means do I want to give the impression that these things were all insane or problematic, but by “strict and devout”, I mean:
- My parents were having as many kids as the Lord could bless them with (9 to be exact and I was #5)
- We held Family Home Evening every week
- At church 1 hour early every Sunday
- Always wearing white-shirt and tie
- Always sitting on the 2nd pew from the front
- Attending all activities, meetings and socials
- Eagle Scout every one of us 6 boys
- BYU graduates every one of us
- Served as full-time missionaries every one of us boys and even one girl
- No dating before age 16 and then only double-dates
- No football watching or sports of any kind on the Sabbath, fully aware that keeping the Sabbath-day holy was the “simplest commandment and easiest to obey”
- No television at all except occasionally Little House, Andy Griffith or a Walt Disney movie
- No playing video games (we had an ATARI for 1 week then my mom threw it away because it brought “too much contention in the home”)
- Performing service at the drop of a hat
- Driving 2 hours away while at our vacation spot every year to attend an LDS church
- Holding family prayer every morning and evening
- Reading from the Book of Mormon as a family every morning starting from age 5
- Receiving father’s blessings every year before school
- Rarely seeing my dad because he was always busy with his work and many church callings
- Not drinking caffeinated products and rarely even soda in general
- Caring for a huge garden full of everything from broccoli to zucchini and canning everything under the sun which of course was part of our hoard of food storage
- Going to Nauvoo several times as a child (being in Indiana made it only a 6 hour drive)
- Making the rounds in Palmyra while attending the pageant
- Playing violin and piano and becoming proficient at the piano so we could play the hymns at church and while on our missions (the ultimate goal)
- Dinner at 6:00 every night as a family
- Taking notes during conference and no dozing off
- Feeling pressure to bear testimony every fast Sunday - making sure to mention the big five (I know the church is true, I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, I know Jesus Christ lives, I know he died for me, I know [current prophet] is called of God as Joseph Smith was)
Yes, we were that type of family. My mom was Wonder-Woman. My dad was Super-Man. No, really, we never missed a beat.
My parents were converted to the church a few years after their marriage. They had been earnestly searching for the best church in which to raise a family, and were fellowshipped into the LDS faith by a friend of theirs. Soon after, my mother’s parents were baptized, then my mother’s siblings, their spouses, and also my father’s mother. Today, since my mom’s siblings had six to nine kids each, and each of those kids have had several kids among them, there are more than 70 Mormons in the church because of my parents (the family reunions are a blast). Mom and Dad have always strictly observed the church’s teachings and have raised their kids accordingly. I love them dearly and have always felt that they raised me the best way they knew how. My father, who was lucky enough to have the same name as me, was a bishop then stake president from 1985 to 2001. He baptized me, confirmed me, gave me the Aaronic Priesthood with all its offices, the Melchizedek Priesthood as an Elder, set me apart as a missionary, and released me from missionary service. Growing up, my life’s purpose and meaning consisted of two things - family and church. The two were hopelessly intertwined, which was just fine until I decided I wanted to remove the church (as if it were a real decision). Before I knew it, I had sunk into a hole of depression and anger more powerful than anything I have ever experienced.
My wife is also a convert to the church. Her parents divorced when she was 6. Her mother then became sick and died from viral hepatitis when my wife was barely 18. After her mother passed, her father refused to take care of her and her sister, so she was forced to take over management of the house, raising her 14-year-old sister, while putting herself through college. Seven years went by and true love and acceptance still eluded her. Her wanderings eventually led her to Ephraim, a short-term fling and an inactive returned missionary. Soon her search for something better ended and she had found the church. As you might guess, her life instantly transformed from the moment she met the missionaries. Never had she been so happy, accepted, and loved. Since that moment, she has always been so grateful for her church-family, so full of hope. We met nine years ago as co-teachers in Gospel Principles class. Being of the “I can’t be a menace to society - must get married” mental state, I immediately began seriously dating her. Three weeks later, we were engaged, and three months after that we were sealed. Since she was the anti-hormone-birth-control type, she became pregnant on the honeymoon. Soon our first child was born, a daughter, on the 1-year anniversary of our engagement. Ever active in the church, we moved from ward to ward, taking on several different callings as I continued my studies at the University of Texas and later, BYU-Provo.
As I became more and more immersed in my studies, I became increasingly skeptical of church claims and how they related to the Book of Mormon. The period of doubting had begun, but I did not care to do much research at that time to appease my curiosity. I still believed that most things that put the church in a bad light were simply anti-Mormon and deviously placed by henchmen of Satan (as most true-believers certainly do). I began doing poorly in my classes as well, which added to my mental state of depression. I planned and nearly carried out my first suicide attempt, but later, being reminded of the great blessings in my life, pulled myself out of the gutter and got on with my life. There were many ups and downs but overall, things were stable until, into my first year of pharmacy school, I decided to pick up a book called Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. I had already read Collapse and The Third Chimpanzee and wanted to see what this Pulitzer-prize winning book of his was all about. I was shocked by a few things I found.
My doubts concerning the Book of Mormon resurfaced, but this time, I pushed through them to really try and understand what was going on. Diamond suggested things that simply could not be true if the Book of Mormon was true. Specifically, he makes it clear that in addition to European diseases such as smallpox, was the fact that the conquistadors had metal swords/armor as well as horses that made it possible for a couple hundred to overpower tens of thousands of Indian warriors. For the first time, I questioned myself – “What? The Lamanites didn’t have metal swords or armor and they didn’t have horses?” Being quite familiar with the contents of the Book of Mormon, I wanted to see who was right. I read some of Diamond’s cited material. I read through paper upon paper from FARMS, emailing John Tvedtnes several times, with never the clinching argument that I desperately wanted. Even though I had already graduated from BYU, I called up my BYU evolutionary biology professor so I could get his take on the book, since he had recommended Diamond’s books to me in the first place. Again, his explanation was helpful, but all he really said was that it’s alright and healthy to live life with some degree of uncertainty. The problem was I no longer felt uncertain about the Book of Mormon – it had to be fabricated because it was the only thing that made sense. It truly was a frustrating time for me, and eventually I did turn to some ex-Mormon sites, and found that much of the information presented to me was surprisingly well-written and in agreement with what I had found. I was amazed at how basic and reasonable things seemed on the ex-Mormon sites, while so unconvincing and convoluted on the FARMS site. Eventually, I ran across the story of an ex-Mormon named Simon Southerton. Some of you may have heard of him. I really identified with this man - his home life, his feelings, his doubts, his genetic understanding of DNA. At that moment I said to myself, “If he can do it, so can I”. In early January of 2008, the crap hit the fan. I feel terrible now for what I did as I hit her with all the information all at once. I realize now that I should have spread it out over several months, if not years. My pregnant wife was in tears. Both of us were defensive and argumentative. I told her, “I know the church is not true more than I ever knew it was”. Things quickly spiraled out of control. A few days later, I ripped up my temple recommend and threw it in the trash when she was out of the house. I ordered some anti-Mormon books which incensed my wife. I emailed my dad to let him know what I had discovered, and the first line of his reply was, “My God, who do you think you are!” My new found dis-belief caused my wife and parents such anxiety, that my dad made a special trip to Montana to see me and to help me work through my issues. No matter how much talk was exchanged I still just wanted to be done with the church. At the same time, my wife had made it clear that if I left the church, she would leave me, and I did not want a family life for my kids like that. We eventually came to a compromise that I could believe whatever I wanted as long as I didn’t pass it on to our kids and as long as I continued to attend my church meetings. Our fights (the shouting! ugh) became less frequent but I could tell it was all having an effect on the kids. I really just wanted to talk to someone, anyone about how I felt. I couldn’t talk to a church-member because I’d be seen as an apostate, and besides, they wouldn’t understand (or want to understand) either. I couldn’t talk to a never-member because they would have no clue what being a devout Mormon was about. So my outlet was the computer - I began to write. I wrote almost nonstop for weeks. Unfortunately, my performance at school began to suffer dramatically (again), and I was forced to put aside my cathartic ambitions for a time. But I had missed a quiz here, an exam there, and the possibility of passing my classes was almost outside my reach. These three factors - the intense loneliness, endless fighting with my wife, and imminent failure in school - set me in a tailspin of depression like I’d never felt before. The kids would be better off, I reasoned, to be in a home without the bickering. They’d be better off without a faithless loser father. They’d be better off not having to deal with the effects of divorce like who gets custody and how often I can visit and how long and trying to be a part of my kids lives when my wife would want nothing to do with me. One night, just two months after first talking to my wife about what I’d found, after she and kids had fallen asleep, I drove across town, parked my car on a quiet street, and took enough sedatives to put me out for about a week.
Twelve hours later, a police officer found my car, and a day later I regained some level of consciousness in the ICU. They put me in a psych-ward for a week. They taught me ways to deal with depression, put me on an anti-depressant med (which I took for about 6 weeks and then discontinued), gave me a counselor to meet with, watched my eating habits and showed me what to look out for if an attack hit again, and so on. Much of this was helpful to some extent, and would be helpful for anyone, but it did nothing to solve the root problem. The one thing causing the pain, anxiety, and depression (i.e. mine and my wife’s membership in the church) was the one thing I felt powerless to change.
One valuable pearl I took away from my time in the loony bin was that Spirituality can be anything that brings your life meaning and purpose. It does NOT have to include a church or religion at all. Until that moment, I had always linked church life with spiritual life. They were one and the same. It was liberating to finally realize that if I wanted to pursue a spiritual life, it was possible outside organized religion. While I don’t not call it Spirituality per se, what I’ve turned to instead are all those things that I’d like to make the focus of my life - such as my family, friends, work, nature, service, and the hobbies that I enjoy.
About 6 months after my ordeal, I left the church and have not been back. Will I ever leave the church permanently with a resignation letter? If my wife decides to leave with me, yes. Until then, the church is there and it’s not going away. The only thing I’ve found that works is placing less emphasis on the church in my personal life, and focusing instead on all those things which give me a sense of purpose and meaning. One day I may once again develop a thread of spirituality, who knows? But for now, I have to stand by and watch as my wife takes the kiddies to their meetings and get-togethers. For the sake of family harmony, that seems like the logical decision until they’re old enough to start thinking on their own about religious issues. If they have questions I’ll be sure to answer them in the way I see fit.
Of course, there is so much more to this story, more than you may care to read. I think a synopsis is better for all of us though.