What finally changed Dylan’s mind wasn’t an argument over ideas or beliefs. It was his loss of faith in one person, and the depth of his faith in another.

As Missy and Dylan rolled into their sixth year of life in the sect, there was an elder who became a close friend: Matthew, a kindly older man whose family developed a fondness for Missy’s pink lemonade and cupcakes.

One day, when Matthew was onstage giving a talk, Missy saw what her expertise told her were signs of an impending heart attack, she recalled. “So I went to his wife after the meeting and I said, ‘Has Matthew been feeling okay? It just seems like there’s something going on with his heart.’”

Missy was right. Matthew just missed having a heart attack, his doctor said, and seeking treatment when he did had saved his life.

But months later, Dylan got an unexpected phone call from Matthew: “He said, ‘What’s Missy’s disconnect? Why won’t she get baptized?’ He said she was a danger to the congregation. I asked if she’d done anything wrong, and he said that because she was so nice, and so well-liked, that made her a danger to the congregation. He said that his family wasn’t allowed to have contact with us anymore, because she wouldn’t start studying scripture again.”

Missy interjects: “He said, ‘You have to choose between your wife and God.’”

“She had been so nice, throughout the years,” Dylan explained. “She went out of her way, like if someone was sick, she would cook for them. She was always — with nothing in return, too, that’s just not how we operate. So with him talking about her like that — ”

It’s clear that Dylan sees this as the big turning point, so I wanted to be sure I understand his indignation.

“This is someone who owed Missy his life?”

“I don’t look at it as saving his life,” Missy demurs, but Dylan won’t have it.

“I did,” he says. “I looked at it as at the very least preventing a heart attack. And so for him to be the one to call me and say these things… That conversation totally changed every viewpoint that I held.”

The evening, after he spoke to Matthew, Dylan Googled the name of his sect for the first time in his life.

“I found, like, all apostasy YouTubers and the ex-members’ communities online. I’d just always been taught that these people are out to hurt current believers. But I couldn’t have been further from the truth about them. They genuinely wanted to help me and other people who were trapped.”

“He started spending a really long time in the bathroom, where he would read on his phone,” Missy remembered. “And I was like: Uh-huh. And so it begins.”

Over the next 48 hours, Dylan read everything he could find and started giving himself permission to wonder: What did explain all that apocalypse date shifting? Why were elders allowed to own stocks and bonds when it was considered idolatry for other believers to do the same thing? What did all that punitive shunning do to people psychologically? Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had just investigated the sect, finding it has not adequately dealt with members accused of pedophilia. That didn’t exactly halt Dylan’s cascading loss of confidence.

If we have chosen the right people to think of as wise, they will be excited to see us develop our own ability to think independently.

Two days after speaking to Matthew, Dylan went to worship for the last time.

“Missy always told me they always speak in the same monotone, but I was seeing it for the first time. I was just sitting there looking around, and I started realizing I was there with a bunch of robots. It was like being in a movie.”

“So it wasn’t gradual?” I asked him.

“No, no. It was like turning off a faucet. Just — gone.”