“You can believe the Bible or you can believe evolution,” a favorite professor told the student body in chapel one morning, “but you can’t believe both. You have to choose.”That recurring choice- between faith and science, Christianity and feminism, the Bible and historical criticism, doctrine and compassion- kept tripping me up like roots on a forest trail. I wanted to believe, of course, but I wanted to believe with my intellectual integrity and intuition intact, with both my head and my heart fully engaged. The more I was asked to choose, the more fragmented and frayed my faith became, the more it stretched the gossamer of belief that held my world view together. And that’s when the real doubt crept in, like an invasive species, like kudzu trellising the brain: What if none of this is true? What if it’s all one big lie?”

− Rachel Held Evans −