believe how our love within the church had been warped beyond recognition by the elders’ unscriptural will to punish. By their implacable demands for unquestioning obedience. By their pernicious need for superiority and control. They had developed a toxic sense of certainty in their own righteousness, seizing for themselves the role of the ultimate arbiter of divine truth—and they now seemed willing to lay waste to anyone who disagreed with them. It was a heinous arrogance and sinfulness that could not be denied.
And in a moment of horrifying clarity, I finally saw what had eluded me for so long:
We had all been behaving in the exact same way toward outsiders.
It was as if we were finally doing to ourselves what we had been doing to others—for over twenty years.
My eyes widened and my face flushed hot, overtaken by panic and shame and regret and humiliation in the split second it took my mind to find a way to make sense of the chaos that the church had become:
What if we’re wrong? What if this isn’t The Place led by God Himself? What if we’re just people?
And I felt sure that it was all true.
I crossed a chasm in that split second, pursuing a thought my mind had never truly imagined and now could never take back. 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. In my mind, I was a betrayer already. I thought of my mother, and the guilt was crippling. I didn’t deserve to be part of this body of believers. The Lord was done with me—an Esau, after all. Already condemned. Overwhelmed by a sudden pressing need to leave that instant, every part of my body hummed with a single vicious accusation: You don’t belong.
My eyes squeezed shut, my whole face twisting instantly into desperate sobs that I tried to suffocate by cutting off the air to my lungs. In the span of a few seconds, my world had disintegrated, slipping through my fingers like so much sand. I turned to put the paintbrush down and go home to pack—there was nothing beyond packing—but I stopped short at the sight of my sister. Her back was to me as she worked the paint, shoulders hunched and limbs moving as if through quicksand—a visible reminder that she had been trudging through the same quagmire of depression, confusion, and despair that I had.
How could I leave without explaining to her?
How could I ever explain this to her?
Still sobbing, I turned back to the wall, and dipped my brush in the paint again. I was dizzy. Needed to calm down. Needed to think this through. My mind reached for solid ground, a way to explain to myself and my sister why I was suddenly doubting the church itself—the only truth we’d ever known. What did I know for sure?
The lying and Photoshopping were clearly wrong. Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.
The prolonged isolation and lack of grace toward perceived offenders were clearly wrong. Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness. Justin. Lindsey. Grace. My mother. My cousin. These situations were egregious, ongoing, and the list kept growing.
The endless proliferation of extra-biblical rules. Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it.
The exclusion of most church members from the decision-making process, and the inability to speak freely with non-elders. Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
My heart hammered, full of terror at the seditious thoughts taking hold in my mind—would God snuff me out this very moment?—but I was growing bolder. I fought to stop myself from reverting to the mindset that