I just don't belong here

Then I allowed myself to ask the one most forbidden question of them all: What if it's not true?

It was hard for me to ask myself this because I had been trained that doubting the truthfulness of the gospel is itself a sin. Yet I couldn't escape seeing this as the only possible conclusion.

Once I allowed myself to ask this question, the answer became painfully clear. All my life I "knew the church was true" because I had been trained to know it was true. I had no evidence. A "burning in the bosom" on the part of a few million people out of the billions on the planet did not constitute evidence for such an elaborate and nonsensical story.

I felt like I needed to get out and walk around to think. I had been so lost in my own thoughts that I had hardly noticed Janie at her own desk reading her own copy of the Book of Mormon, although perhaps not gaining quite the same insights from it as I was. I told Janie I was going for a walk. She admonished me to be careful out walking in the dark like that, and to be sure to be back before curfew. I promised to be careful, and I set off along the long and curving path back under the bridge and back up to campus. It was starting to get dark out, but the path was lit. Read the rest of the story ->