Mark sat in a coffee shop, nodding along to Fox and Pastor Jim. The nodding was easy. It felt like home.
Then a woman wiping the counter said, “Funny how leaders tell you who they are long before we notice.”
She did not argue. She did not lecture. She just left a small door open.
I think about that door a lot, because of a question I hear from people who are slowly waking up: “Why does it feel so wrong to even ask?”
Psychology has a plain answer. It is called terror management theory. Ernest Becker wrote about the idea, and three researchers, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, spent years testing it. Put simply: human beings know life is fragile, and that knowledge is frightening. To keep the fear quiet, we lean on two things: a story about how the world works, and a group that shares it. When either one is threatened, the fear comes up fast.
That means doubt rarely feels like thinking. It feels like danger. A question about a leader you trusted is not just a question. It touches the story, the group, and the safe feeling both give you. So you stop asking. Not because you are weak or dishonest, but because a very old part of you is trying to keep you safe.
I was fourteen when President Kennedy was assassinated, and I watched the adults around me struggle to make sense of it. People reach for solid ground when the ground shakes. I understand that better now than I did then.
Later in my work, I counseled young people who had been part of a cult. What I came to understand there still holds. People stay in a group for belonging and for answers, and leaving can feel like losing everything. The hardest part was rarely the facts. It was the fear of standing alone on the other side of the question.
In Reversing the Drift, I describe the drift as a slow lowering of standards, each step making the next one easier. Each step also makes questioning feel more like betrayal.
Here is what I would offer. A question is not disloyalty. You can keep your love for your people, your faith, and your community, and still ask whether a leader deserves the trust you gave. Asking does not take your home away. It may be how you find out what you were truly loyal to.
If it happened to you, you’re not stupid. You’re human. Curiosity is a quiet act of courage.
So start small. Pick one thing. Ask it quietly, where no one is watching. Notice what you feel. That’s all.
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