With stark clarity I understood that whether the church was wrong or right, I was a monster. If we were wrong, then I had spent every day of my life industriously sowing doom, discord, and rage to so many—not at the behest of God, but of my grandfather. I had wasted my life only to fill others’ with pain and misery. And if the church was right? Then asking those questions and even beginning to consider their implications was an unforgivable betrayal of everyone I had ever loved and the ideals I’d dedicated my life to defending.
