convinced that Armageddon was imminent and that Satan had been loosed upon the earth in October of 1914, running amok throughout the world ever since? It made no sense. This was not the life her parents had wanted for her.
Laura’s predicament sounded uncannily like my father’s, and I was surprised by how many similarities there were between the doctrines of Westboro and the Witnesses—but right then, staring out the window at the sixty-foot-high carvings of George Washington and company, what held my attention were the differences between the two groups. In contrast to Westboro’s version of Hell—eternal torment, an idea that had become detestable to me—Witnesses believe that Hell is simply death. When I quoted Bible verses that seemed to contradict this, Dustin and Laura brought forth other verses to support their position. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all … there is no work nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom in the Grave, where you are going. Their understanding of the verses I presented was fundamentally different from the one I had been raised with, and I was slack-jawed to realize that there was more than one way to read the text—that from one passage, multiple meanings could be deduced without contradicting the language in the original.
That interpretation was a phenomenon with real implications for believers.
At Westboro, we had denied that interpretation allowed for any disagreements on doctrines. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For any question or issue, there was a single correct understanding, and it was ours. Legitimate disagreement with Westboro’s theology could not exist within this framework, and though I had come to reject some of the church’s precepts, I immediately fell back into that paradigm—that there was only one way—because I hadn’t yet seen another that made sense to me. I was still assuming that anyone contradicting “the clear meaning of Scripture” was either deliberately mangling the truth or deluded by God into believing a lie.
And yet, here were two people whose kindness, intelligence, generosity, and good intentions were all self-evident. They weren’t evil, stupid, or delusional. They just saw things differently than I had been taught to, and they could articulate the logic and reasoning behind their thinking.
My head was spinning as the four of us fought the cold wind and made our way back to the Floyds’ car. Grace and I looked across the backseat at each other, amazement on both of our faces, my thoughts reflected in her features: How was this possible? If there truly was more than one legitimate way to understand the world, then there was nothing inherently wrong with people who believed differently than we did. We could cease presuming most people were evil and ill-intentioned.
The hope that sprang from this realization would become the new foundation of my life, but along with that hope came still more confusion:
If there was more than one possible answer, how did anyone manage to decide between them?
* * *
Dec. 30, 2012—Day 13
THE GOD DELUSION
The journalist Andrew Mueller is of the opinion that pledging yourself to any particular religion “is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith.”
CHAD: I can tell you that I already know you’ll talk too fast. You did leave a pretty long YouTube fast-talking trail.
I did think the screen liked your face. That’s a fact.
The shit you said was crazy. You think I discount that because of the screen liking your face. I don’t.
I need to know that it wasn’t necessarily you. You know?
MEGAN: Where to begin?
CHAD: I don’t believe Obama is the literal antichrist.
I don’t believe gays marrying will trigger the end of days.
Etc. etc.
MEGAN: I don’t believe either of those things, either. I didn’t think there was even enough biblical evidence to support them.
Start with: I believed the Bible was It. That it was right no matter what I would have come up with myself, even if I thought something it said was Wrong, even if it made me Angry, even if it hurt other people.
CHAD: Okay. Not tonight. And know that I think in spite of all of that, your family has so many great qualities … and obviously did such a great job of raising, educating you, etc.
Learning about the Floyds’ belief system was eye-opening to me. In many ways, it seemed to be exactly