(piano music) - I grew up Mormon. (speaks foreign language) I was Mormon most of my life,
up until a few years ago. - Hi. - I then left the Mormon Church,
and that is a whole story that I want to talk about
today with all of you. My purpose in doing this
is to share my perspective so that anyone who is in
a situation like I was a couple of years ago, who
is questioning and wondering can have another perspective to lean on. I'm not looking to get into debates or to talk about the history
or the theology of the church. I'll do that in future videos. Today, all I want to do
is tell you the story of how and why I left the Mormon Church. 23rd of May, 2000, 2009. What are we even doing out here, man? I grew up Mormon. Both my parents were Mormon
or LDS, Latter-day Saints. I grew up going to Mormon youth camp. I then eventually served
a two-year mission in Tijuana, Mexico, where
for two years, I went around and spoke to people in
Spanish about the church and learned a lot, learned
to speak Spanish fluently. (man speaks foreign language) - [Man] How you feel? (speaks foreign language) (man laughs) (speaks Spanish) I then went to the Mormon university called Brigham Young
University in Provo, Utah, where I graduated. I went through all Mormon
rituals in the church and temple. I worked in the temple as
a volunteer for a time. I was very, very Mormon,
and I believed it. I believed deeply in the unique doctrine of the church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is a Christian organization unlike any other Christian
organization in its doctrine. (heartfelt music) The story of how I decided to leave this really begins with the birth of my son. Isabelle, who also grew up Mormon, and I got married in the temple, which is a huge Mormon ritual. It's a huge part of being in the church. We got married in the temple. We went back to BYU together, and a few weeks before
we graduated from BYU, we had a baby, or Ize had a baby. I didn't have a baby. She had a baby. Then we took finals and graduated, like, literally two weeks later. Here we are literally in our cap and gown with Henry, who is, like, two weeks old. After we graduated, we
moved out to Washington, DC, and that's when my wheels
really started to turn. I started to think, you
know, I have a child now. I have to decide how I raise this child and what I teach him about the world. (rolls tongue) Da, da, da, da, da. I think having Henry really made me wonder and think about how I should
teach him about the world. I'd grown up with this firm
conviction of the LDS doctrine and its beliefs about the world, which are very specific and very peculiar. And I really started to question, is this what I want to teach my son? And the answer initially was yes. I want to teach him everything
that I know about this faith because I really believed it. So, we're moving out to Washington, DC, and I realized that if I'm
gonna teach this to my son, I need to double down on my faith. I need to go deeper than I ever have and really, really establish
a strong foundation and conviction around this doctrine. I had one, but I knew
it needed to be stronger if I was gonna teach my son this. One of the things I loved about
Mormon doctrine at the time was that there was always a
push to ask God if it was true. Not to trust any people
or any organization, but to, like, get on your knees
and say, God, is this true? Is this church actually real? Is all of the things that they
say actually the real deal? I had kind of taken advantage
of that promise before, but never really. I'd always been in a setting of pressure, whether it was my home as
a kid or my mission or BYU. In other words, there was
always an incentive to believe. So I'd never really been in a situation where I could truly ask this question and not feel like there
was some price to pay if I decided I didn't believe. Being in Washington DC
with my child out on my own in the workforce was my opportunity, so I spent an entire year reading the "Book of
Mormon", going to church. I had a responsibility at church that I was putting a lot of work into, and praying every morning and every night for some sort of conviction. I said, I am more earnest and sincere than I've ever been about this. I'm willing to listen to any answer. I just need an answer. I spent a year doing this. A year. That's a long time. And then I remember this day, I was biking into Washington, DC, on a sunny, like, spring day, and it just hit me in
some really strong way that no, this isn't working. I've put in the years of asking and the effort towards
(sighs) making this work, and it wasn't working. This isn't true for me. And like a switch, it just
so much came out of me, and I quickly decided that I was done. I don't think it was all at once. I think I had been slowly
moving in this direction for a long time, but
in a moment of clarity, it clicked for me in a
very satisfying and, like, very true way. So Iz, who, Ize, Isabelle, whatever you want to call her, my wife, it didn't click for her. She was not on this journey that I was on. And I came back and I told her. I said, I think I am done being Mormon. And I had always been the sort of more devout, convicted Mormon. And she was just like, "What? "Like, you just, like, have decided "to be out of this church?"
And she full on said, like, "This is gonna end our marriage. "Like, you can't just leave the church." And I just told her. I said, "This is where I stand
and this is what I feel," and I felt very strongly about it. Luckily, soon enough,
Ize was on her own path of reconciling her
thoughts about the church, her qualms with the church, and soon she would join me in this path towards leaving the church. Now, I call it a path because
that's exactly what it is. Leaving any Orthodox religion is not easy. There are layers and
layers of psychological and cultural conditioning
that you don't even realize is there until you start to peel it back. So, even though we started
to leave the church, we were still going to
church every Sunday, which I don't really
understand in retrospect. All I can say is that, like, we were just, that's what we did every Sunday. We went to church, and there was some guilt
if we didn't go to church, and so we went to church. But we slowly started to
feel an emptiness towards it, and over the course of six months, we finally decided to
stop going to church. My behavior didn't change all of a sudden. Like, I didn't leave the church so I could start drinking
alcohol or coffee or smoking. Like, that was not a part
of the agenda for me. I kind of just carried on
exactly how I'd always been, except for now I looked
around in the world and I didn't have a doctrinal
theological framework to understand it, which
was at once exhilarating and horrifying at the same time. My existential view had
been so neatly packaged by the plan of salvation, which is at the key doctrinal framework within the Mormon Church,
and that was now gone. I had no plan. I had no framework to
make sense of the world. Exhilarating, but horrifying. There was also a deep fear of the cultural and social
repercussions of my decision. Most of my friends were
still LDS or Mormon, and, of course, my family was, too. So was Ize's. And let me just
try to give you a perspective on why this is such a big deal. A quick primmer on Mormon theology is that our whole purpose in life is to come down here to
Earth to learn and to grow and to progress and to attain knowledge, and to fulfill certain we call
them covenants or rituals. There are four of them
that are really important to do while you're on Earth,
baptism, confirmation, this hour-long ritual inside the temple, and then, called the endowment, and then the ceiling or marriage. If you can do those four things, then you're in really good shape. You have the knowledge necessary to go back and live in
the top tier of heaven. And yes, in Mormon theology, there are multiple tiers of heaven. If you're not able to
get these rituals done while you're on Earth, no worries. When you're in the next
life, people on Earth can do all of the rituals
for you when you're dead, and then you can have those, the chance to accept those
rituals or those covenants when you're on the other side. It's a huge deal. I had gone through all of the rituals. I had accepted all of those covenants, which are very serious covenants. You wear undergarments that are symbolic of those covenants that you've made. People call them, like,
secret underwear or whatever, but it was just religious clothing that symbolizes your
commitment to these doctrines. And the beauty of all of
this within Mormon doctrine is if you do this and everyone
in your family does this, then all of you are sealed together in this never ending
chain of eternal family that is at the epicenter
of Mormon doctrine. If you know Mormons and you know that they
are family-centered, it's because of this. The whole doctrine is based
on creating family units that are all tied into this covenant, these promises that bind
you, that seal you together for time and all eternity. If you've accepted those
covenants, and then you leave, you break away, you
reject those covenants, you take off your garments,
you say I'm done with this, that's a pretty big deal
within the LDS framework. You are no longer able
to be with your family in the celestial glory of
the top tier of heaven. So if you believe that,
and you're a parent, and you see your child
rejecting those covenants, rejecting that eternal
ceiling to the family, you're basically seeing
your child go away, and you feel like you're losing them. So unsurprisingly, people
leaving the Mormon Church creates huge upset within families, like many other religions. It's not just an insular
cultural experience. It is a deeply held
doctrinal theological belief that if you leave the church,
there are major consequences. Luckily, I had parents who,
by the time I told them that I was leaving the church,
were very open and loving and accepting of my decision. Certainly, it was hurtful for them, but they did not project that onto me in any way that made me feel ostracized. Unfortunately, that is not the
case for a lot of my friends and a lot of other people
who have left the church. But even still, with
parents who were accepting and loving despite my decision,
I still had years of purging and processing to do,
something that continues to this day now four or five years later. What I didn't realize is
that I had internalized a lot of assumptions of shame and guilt and fear and judgment that
I didn't even realize I had. And for the years following
leaving the church, it was a process of slowly purging and peeling back and
processing those things. I went through the Mister Nice Guy phase, which is a very common thing for people who leave the LDS church, which is like, I'm just leaving the
church nice and peaceful. I'm gonna not be mean. I'm not gonna be spiteful
towards the church because in the church, when you're in it, there's sort of this, like, archetype of the spiteful, angry
anti-Mormon who goes out and spreads lies about the church, and they're just offended and angry. And I didn't want to be that person. I don't want to be that archetype. And so I tried to maintain very cordial relationships with everybody. I tried to be super nice. Like, you know, the church
was really great for me and yet I just, you
know, disagreed with it, so I walked away. I went through that phase
for a couple of years. But through therapy and through a lot of thinking about this, I came to understand that I actually had some deep problems and
anger towards the church and what it instilled in me. I had anger and resentment towards a lot of the authority structures that made me feel unclean or dirty. I had anger towards the
systems that made me feel like obedience was the
most important thing, that submission to a law from
God was much more important than self-expression
and self-actualization. I developed a resentment
towards the church structure that has very homophobic
and heteronormative and misogynistic structures that taught me to think in those terms. A church that purports to love everybody, but deeply condemns certain
people because of who they love. I had to rewire so much
of that upon leaving, and perhaps most frustratingly, and maybe this is gonna be hard
to communicate the nuance to to someone who's not LDS, but I felt deep frustration
at the church's claim to have a monopoly over
the fullness of truth, that the few million
members are the only keepers of the real truth of what
God wants today for us, and that everyone else has truth, too, but through prophets and apostles
and modern day revelation, the Mormons are actually the
ones who have the full picture. They know what's going on. I believed that they had the truth that was going to deliver me and my family to eternal bliss in celestial glory. I believed that, and I
modeled my life around it deep into my adulthood. And I feel resentment that I did that, and that the stakes were
so high for leaving, for expressing myself and
my qualms for this doctrine. Because after all, if you question it, you're questioning prophets,
people who are talking to God. You can't do that. It all left me very confused and required a lot of
healing and processing, and that is still going on. And let me just be clear about something. This isn't my millennial brain trying to reject authority structures and subvert old institutions
like is happening in a lot of religious contexts right now. A lot of people are leaving religion. I wasn't trying to get away
from some disciplined structure. My life is still a disciplined structure. I still have a lot of the artifacts from my Mormon upbringing. What I was fleeing when
I left the Mormon Church was a structure that I feel
like put down who I really was, made me cover it up in the
name of a broader vision of what righteousness is and
what Jesus wants me to do. It wasn't me. It was harmful towards me, and it was harmful towards others. And the consequences were
severe if you spoke up and you challenged the status quo. The culture is not one
of discourse and debate. It's one of obedience, obedience, obedience, obedience. Obedience is a hallmark belief and tenet of the LDS experience, and as a member, you feel it. Leaving the church is
painful socially, mentally. You experience a cost for doing so. And if you're in that situation now, which I know some of those watching are, where you know that your
family and your peers will think differently of
you if you decide to leave, just know that it's a lot
better on the other side, if you choose yourself and you choose your personal experience and your personal expression,
and you honor that, as opposed to honoring
the fear of obedience. There's some years of pain and adjustment, but there is a sense of
freedom on the other side. This is uncomfortable for me to say. Even right now, I'm imagining whether it's family or friends who are still active believers
in the church watching this. I can feel that discomfort,
even now, years later, of what are they thinking
of me making this video and effectively talking to
others who might be in the church and telling them to leave. That old archetype of the bitter ex-Mormon who's polarizing and extremist
is ringing in my ears. And yet, day by day, those
voices and those old models, they dissolve more and more,
and they become less loud and they become less part of my identity. I, for many years, did identify as someone who used to be Mormon and now I'm not, but yet, with time I'm slowly developing my own new identity that isn't pinned to my reactionary
experience with the church, but is just pinned to
who I am, what I love. I'm a father who loves my children. I love to learn about the world and explore and explain things. I love film, I love animation. I love moss, I love cooking. I love reading stories to my boys and teaching them about the world. I love traveling. I love trains. I love science. I love the beauty of our world
and the mystery that it is and the mystery of life and cultures. That appreciation is enough for me. I don't have a spiritual
framework to fill the vacuum. I haven't joined some religion. Maybe someday I will. Maybe I will develop that, but for now, the wonder of the world,
outside of the plan of salvation and God looking out over his children for this big plan of obedience, outside of that, I feel
like there is plenty to stand in awe of and love without a God and a savior
to create meaning for me. And yet, there's a strange
paradox within all of this that I have to talk about, which is the Mormon experience
also gave me so much. My mission, while I feel
conflicted about what I was doing and how I was doing it,
I learned to work hard. I learned to speak Spanish. I learned to navigate
in cultural experiences outside of my own. I was in Tijuana for two years next to a giant international border, one of the most violent and
intense borders on Earth, and that instilled a love for the stories of people who live near borders, which helped create my career. My parents raising me in that environment gave me beautiful
experiences and community, taught me how to be industrious and hardworking and disciplined. It taught me how to care
and love and serve others. Those are all good things. So how do I reconcile the pain and the psychological confusion that this organization brought to my life, packaged tightly with the reality of all of the beautiful things
that it brought to my life? The good, the community, the memories, the values of honesty
and service and love? That's a paradox that will
probably be with me forever. It's impossible to summarize
this experience as one thing. good or bad, and that's okay. That dissonance is okay. So, that's a little bit of
my story and my thoughts around why I left the Mormon Church. I wanna hear from you, especially those who
have experience with this and can speak about the complexities. I also wanna hear from
those who have questions and are worried or scared. This isn't an easy decision. I also want to hear from those who have experience with this, whether it's from the Mormon Church or any other Orthodox
insular religion or culture. Breaking out of those systems is hard and sometimes not worth
it, but sometimes it is. Sometimes it's worth it. And sometimes on the other
side of that hard journey, there is a much brighter future. Hey, thanks for listening, everybody. Before you go, I want to thank
today's sponsor, Audible, which is something I've
been using for it feels like eight years of my life. Audible is a giant repository of amazing audiobooks
and other audio content. I learn so much on Audible, and I am really grateful that it exists. The way it works is you
subscribe as a member. You get one credit every month, and you can choose any
audiobook in the entire library. There are tens of thousands
of titles to choose from. I listen to Audible books
when I'm researching a story to make me feel more informed about the story that I'm working on, as well as just for fun. Like, I'm listening to this book right now called "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. I's like an accessible sci-fi audiobook, and it's just so delightful. And the reader is so
good, the performance, he does all these accents, and, like, it's just such a joy to listen to. And it's not just one audiobook
a month that you can get, which has been plenty for me, but now they give you
access to this Plus catalog, which is filled with thousands
and thousands of audiobooks, original entertainment,
guided fitness and meditation, sleep tracks, and
podcasts that are ad free and some that are totally
exclusive to Audible, so you can be going
through the Plus catalog. All of this is included
with your membership, and in addition to the credit that you get to get an audiobook. For me this has been a no brainer. For literally almost a
decade I've been a member because Audible just makes a lot of sense. It's how I learn about the world. You can try all of this
for 30 days for free, without paying any money. So go to audible.com/johnnyharris or text johnnyharris to the number 500500 to get in on this giant
repository of audio content. Thank you, Audible for
sponsoring this video, and thank you all for watching
this more personal video. I hope it was helpful to some of you, and I will see you all in the next video, which is going to be an
explainer, so buckle up for that. See ya.
Wow, I’ve watched this guy on YouTube for ages. His work on why the ice cream machines at McDonalds are so regularly broken was groundbreaking. Now I like him even more.
1.5 million subscribers.
The church is going to waste billions on SEO over the next 5 years.
How long until they outright ban social media?
This guy does really entertaining videos that I've always enjoyed watching. I was surprised to see this reveal of him leaving the Mormon Church but totally glad to see it.
I'm waiting for the Mark Rober exmo story. It probably won't happen, but that dude has almost 19M subscribers.
Johnny is massive within the YT community. Get ready for this one. This is going to be one of the most impactful stories to hit the Mormon and non-Mormon communities.
"I want to bear testimony that no apostate who ever left this Church ever prospered as an influence in his community thereafter."
-Harold B. Lee | Conference Report, October 1947, p. 67
u/johnnywharris - so very well spoken. Thank you for sharing your story, Johnny! In my story, I am the mother who left the Church and disappointed my family six years ago (was married 33 years.) I've gone through the stages of grief and deconstruction, and my reconstruction continues today. I am so grateful for the peace, self-confidence, self-love and joy on the other side of my life as a Mormon. I'm no longer religious, yet I am far more spiritual than ever before. I'm loving this life, and it is so refreshing to not know (or not claim "I know . . .") what the next life will be. Peace to each of us, as we work the miracle that is our precious life!
How come so many Youtubers are Mormon? Is it just that Utah is pretty close to LA? It is something about Mormon culture or upbringing that makes it more likely? Does the church encourage this? Anybody know?
The calm, sensitive way this was shared will have a great impact on it's reach. I'm not familiar with the guy or his normal content but I appreciate this video. Hopefully it will trickle into Mormon feeds.