One of the things that really opened up the possibility of leaving as a serious option, was Henry Kreite's open letter, because here was someone who had been in the top leadership of the church, decisively stating that the church could be wrong. That's what really impacted me, because I had been taught and had accepted the belief that the church is always right. If there's a problem, it's with me. So, I had defined all the issues - and there were many - in that way. There was something wrong with me and the ones that were going to help me were the church.
What I took from Henry Kreite's letter was different from the meaning he intended and a lot of people took from his letter - that the church had started out perfectly and, over time, had gone astray. I read his letter as an identification of a flaw in the church that was central to its nature. It wasn't some mistake that had creeped in over time.
A big part of it, as I already mentioned, was the claim to infallibility. The letter opened up the possibility that, actually, I could be right. My issues could be real and valid and the reason why the church had never been able to help me with those issues could be because of their blindness to those issues rather than my own spiritual blindness.
That's the problem with making absolute claims like, I am always right. You only have to be wrong once in one small way, for the whole edifice to come crashing down.
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