Faith Deconstruction: Encouragements and Cautions

If you've paid any attention to the conversations happening within the church these days, particularly among the younger generations, you've consistently heard the language of deconstruction.

Depending on the circles you swim in the word deconstruction is either glorified or demonized.

Within large swaths of conservative evangelicalism the concept of deconstructing ones faith is typically viewed in a negative light. In fact, I've been in many conversations with evangelical pastors where the word deconstruction is used synonymously with leaving the faith. If someone is deconstructing they are on a journey that, barring some miraculous intervention, is sure to end in a rejection of Jesus.

Conversely, when the word deconstruction is used in progressive Christian circles it has a celebratory tone. If someone hasn't deconstructed their faith and barely made it out the other side they can't be trusted. They must be scared, inauthentic or completely naïve. Doubt is seen as a desirable spiritual good that we ought to proactively pursue.

I believe both postures towards deconstruction are flawed. Like most conversations these days the healthy approach is found in the middle. I don't mean a wishy-washy posture that lacks conviction. The middle I'm referring to is a space where you resist the binary, take what is good and true from both sides, and recognize that each extreme has it's problems.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, what do I mean when I say deconstruction in the context of Christian faith?

Deconstruction describes a process of thoroughly investigating the framework of Christianity that one has inherited (both the theological framework and behavioral expectations) in a quest to discover how one actually wants to believe and behave. Because theology is so interconnected, reconsidering one aspect of faith often opens up several other areas to deconstruct.

I see deconstruction as a more reactive process. Christians don't feel the need to deconstruct their faith when everything is going smoothly. This reactive process of deconstruction typically begins during a season of disillusionment with the church or as a necessary follow up to a new discovery.

It's critical to put deconstruction is a larger context. The process of deconstruction, as I've alluded to earlier, doesn't happen in a vacuum. It emerges from a particular context and hopefully is leading us somewhere constructive. I've found these different frameworks helpful:

• Order, disorder, reorder

• Orientiation, disorientation, reorientation

• construction, deconstruction, reconstruction

Regardless of the terminology you prefer, the categories mean essentially the same thing:

• Order - We are raised as children in order. Faith is talked about in black and white. There are good guys and bad guys. This first stage of order is actually necessary. Children need boundaries. You don't push existential crisis onto an 8 year old. The problem occurs when we are expected to think the same way about God when we are 38 as we did when we were 8.

• Disorder - Something changes. Maybe we've taken a peek under the hood and discovered corruption within a Christian ministry. Maybe a certain theological position doesn't satisfy us anymore as we have experienced more of life. Whatever it may be, the safe box of order doesn't resonate like it used to. We begin to miss the days of black and white thinking but it feels as if we can't go back. The framework of order doesn't work anymore. What do I actually believe now?

• Reorder - As we sift through the questions, doubt, or disillusionment we identify things we no longer believe. We discard bad ideas and behaviors. We then start putting our worldview back together, brick by brick. We are often more content with not having all the answers and faith feels more like trust than it does certainty.

Conservatives often get stuck in the first box of order. They look at those in the second and third boxes with skepticism or disdain. On the flip side, progressives can get stuck in the second box living a life of perpetual deconstruction where a worldview is based more on what isn't believed rather than what is. Unfortunately there isn't a journey towards reorder that doesn't include disorder. As Rohr puts it, "there is no non-stop flight from the first box to the third".

Which brings me back to the focus of this post, the deconstruction/disorder stage. If you find yourself wrestling with doubt and deconstruction I have several encouragements and cautions that come from my own story and pastoring many others. When we remember the good and necessary elements of deconstruction while simultaneously paying attention to the pitfalls we can resist both glorifying and demonizing this impactful season of faith.

Encouragements

• Deconstruction is a necessary stage towards spiritual maturity. We ought to interrogate our belief systems to see if there is truth. Christians would encourage deconstruction for anyone born into a Muslim or atheist home. Why would we not, for those who feel it necessary, also be open to ensuring that what was handed to us is true and beautiful? For some Christians intense periods of deconstruction are less necessary because the framework they were handed works for them. They feel satisfied and that is fine. It's a pastoral mistake to proactively push others into deconstruction. But if you are like me, you need to pull up your worldview by the roots and investigate, replant and see if it survives. This is okay. I'd rather my children honestly explore their faith than slide in and out of church every Sunday for the rest of their lives regurgitating what others have told them they have to believe. This type of faith doesn't lead to real life with God.

• It's okay to wrestle with even the most core doctrines. Let me tell you a story. My brother once courageously entered a church during a phase of his own deconstruction. He was wrecked with doubt about the very fundamentals of Christianity. Did Jesus actually rise from the dead? Can the bible be trusted at all? For whatever reason he felt a nudge to go up to a pastor after the service for prayer. He asked the pastor to pray for him amidst overwhelming doubt. The pastor responded, "It's okay experience doubt in your faith. That's welcome here as long as you are not doubting the core beliefs like the reliability of the scripture or Jesus' resurrection". Daniel responded, "those are actually the very things I am doubting". He left with the spiritual wind knocked right out of him. He was so turned off by this kind of church that he struggled to return. We do this all the time. We put time tables on people's deconstruction and have a list of off-limits areas. It's okay to deconstruct a theology on hell but it's not safe to wrestle with the trustworthiness of scripture. This kind of reaction, often emerging from fear, must end. The church ought to be the safest place in the world to have these conversations yet it often feels like the last place on earth people want to bring their real struggles into.

• It takes courage and honesty to deconstruct. This ought to be valued, not penalized. Many Christians don't realize what a difficult thing it is to courageously press into some of their doubt and deconstruction. The impact on their spiritual and relational lives is immense and overwhelming. Rachel Held Evans, in her book Searching for Sunday said something that stopped me in my tracks:

"A lot of people think the hardest part about religious doubt is feeling isolated from God. It's not. At least in my experience, the hardest part about doubt is feeling isolated from your community. There's nothing quite like going through the motions of Christian life - attending church, leading bible study, singing hymns, bringing your famous lemon bars to potlucks - wile internally questioning the very beliefs that hold the entire culture together. It's like you've got this ticker scrolling across ever scene of your life, feeding you questions and commentary and doubts, and yet you carry on as though you can't see it, as if everything's fine. Say something and you risk losing friendships and becoming the subject of gossip. Keep your doubts to yourself and you risk faking it for the rest of your life. I know a lot of people, including some pastors, who are faking it"

I sent this passage to my brother (who I referenced earlier) and he responded "I can't put into words how much I resonate".

Sure, there are some people deconstructing who just want to arrogantly burn the whole thing down. But a majority of Christians wish their faith struggles would magically disappear and long for safe and loving spaces in the church.

• Deconstruction cannot be rushed. It's okay if deconstruction takes time. It is also not a linear journey. We will likely find ourselves in multiple periods of deconstruction throughout our spiritual lives. This is to be expected. Because it's not normalized we feel we have something wrong with us if we get serious about our deconstruction. We must be the only ones. These thoughts push us towards isolation. For most of us, reading one book isn't going to put a nice bow around our deconstruction.

• Jesus deconstructed. Anytime Jesus said, "You have heard it said, but I tell you", He is deconstructing a burdensome form of religion or expression of the faith that misses the love being at the center. Jesus models a deconstruction that moves us towards a life-giving faith that centers communion with Christ and a life of love.

For those of us who navigate protestant church circles let not forget that the protestant reformers deconstructed. They looked at the corruption within the catholic church and the lifeless forms of legalism it perpetuated and deconstructed towards an understanding of the gospel that is about grace through faith and an understanding of communion with God that is not dependant upon church hierarchies.

The radical reformers (Anabaptists) deconstructed the protestant reformation. Early anabaptists resonated with the concerns of the protestants related to certain corruptions in the catholic church but also noticed that protestants were dragging over into their movement the same violent and institutionalized ways of doing church. Ironically, anabaptists were tortured and killed as a result.

We ought to be ecstatic about the times in the church where courageous Christians challenged the church to look more like Jesus and confronted harmful ideas and practices. I'm thankful Christians have deconstructed historic ways of thinking related to slavery and patriarchy. All that to say, Jesus himself, and church history, gives us plenty of permission to see the necessity and importance of deconstructing misguided expressions of the faith.

• Bring your doubts with you to church. Don't go through the intensity of deconstruction on your own. We must allow others to gather around our doubts and questions in order to find challenge and support. As A.J. Swoboda says in his book on deconstruction called After Doubt, "There's literally no expression of covenant faith in the bible - in Israel or the church - that disconnects faith formation from the community of God's people". Especially amidst questions and doubt we need the faith and wisdom of others to keep us level-headed and hopeful. We need to find safe people who are willing to listen while leaving at home cliché platitudes and simple answers. This may take time and require vulnerability and risk but we must work to find it.

• Have the courage to believe again. One of the hardest parts about moving out of deconstruction and towards reconstruction is having the courage to believe again. When we have been disillusioned or hurt by certain expressions of church it feels safer to just avoid beliefs altogether. . But building a worldview primarily constructed from what we stand against is no way to live. Have the courage to believe something again. A life devoid of beliefs regarding what is true and beautiful can suck the life out of us and others and prohibit us from engaging the one life we have with vison, passion and conviction.

• Deconstruction can lead towards a more Jesus- centered faith. What many people are deconstructing is a corrupted expression of Christianity they have been handed, not the basics of Christianity itself. Deconstruction leads many folks to stay in the story they inherited while getting rid of all the add-ons that have leeched their way onto the church like nationalism, partisanship, individualism, tribalism, and overly confining theological . For example we must deconstruct.

Cautions

• Critique, not contempt. Many people going through deconstruction are dealing with significant disillusionment, concern or pain caused by particular expressions of Christianity. For example, a narrow gospel (theological framework) that exists in many white evangelical circles leads to a marginalization of justice (discipleship framework) which has generated tremendous skepticism and concern in my faith journey. In many, many cases this disillusionment is legitimate! We must notice emotions like frustration and anger in order to be honest about where we are and how to heal. But we must be careful. Legitimate and necessary critique of corrupted expressions of Jesus can quickly curve towards contempt. Healthy critique flows from positive energy like love, humility and courage. Contempt grows within negative and destructive energy like hatred, bitterness and desiring the demise of others. Jesus followers bring about change through the fruits of the spirit, not the rules of the game on twitter.

• Make faith your own, not your own faith. If we claim to follow Jesus as Lord we are part of story in which we play a very small part. This story has been preserved and passed down at great cost to those who have gone before us. Deconstruction is not an a-la- carte form of abstract spirituality detached from historic Christianity. We don't get to remake the faith with every generation. Don't get me wrong, it's imperative we make faith our own. Merely riding the spiritual coattails of our parents doesn't lead to an authentic and sustainably transformative faith. Deconstruction for some of us is a necessary stage in moving from an inherited faith to a chosen faith. But those of us who choose faith in Jesus enter into a larger story in which we discern how to follow Jesus in our time and place without creating something fundamentally different altogether. N.T. Wright compares the different stages of the biblical narrative to acts in a play. The church, this fifth act in the Christian story in which we find ourselves, includes some improvisation. How else do we discern how to faithfully follow Jesus in a completely different context than first century Palestine? But this improvisation flows out of the larger play in which the defining and most important act has already been performed by Jesus. In other words, our faith grows and evolves while being tethered to Jesus

• Our core human temptation is to define good and evil in our own terms. We must be honest about this impulse in each of us as we deconstruct. This truth is at the heart of the creation story. Adam and Eve chose to define good and evil themselves and consequently lost their trust in God's categories. Certain forms of deconstruction can collapse into a process of defining what's good ourselves: there is no way Jesus is actually that serious about materialism, Jesus' couldn't have intended for any boundaries related to our sexual desire and enemy love can't be intended for the other side of the political isle. We strip Jesus of His life and teachings until He sounds like a well-liked white upper class American. How do we keep this impulse in check? We must deconstruct our own deconstruction. Am I engaged in a process that leads towards trust that Jesus has the best version of the good life? Or is God beginning to look just like me with some super powers sprinkled on top? As Voltaire once said, "In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to return the favor ever since".

• Deconstruction ought to be a holistic, not merely intellectual, endeavor. Much of the current deconstruction landscape is focused on the intellectual and theological. We focus on certain beliefs about God that we no longer hold. This is necessary. Our ideas about God really do matter because they impact our desire to trust and follow Him. Many of us have inherited incomplete (or even toxic) ideas about God and these must be deconstructed. But faith in Jesus isn't merely an intellectual exercise focused on checking the right doctrinal boxes. In fact, this approach to faith is something many of us are deconstructing! Jesus-following involves our whole life, body, mind and soul. It's really easy to deconstruct conservative evangelical theology that is devoid of justice while sipping a flat white in Starbucks. We must also ensure our habits and practices are congruent with our reconstructed theology. In other words, we must deconstruct our own habits and patterns (not just ideas) to ensure we reflect the kind of God we are moving towards.

• Don't forget that we need boundaries to flourish. I fundamentally reject a prevailing secular myth that freedom is found in the absence of all boundaries. Instead, freedom is about choosing the right ones. Sadly, some of the most trapped people are this planet (think sex, materialism, power) have rejected any form of restraint on personal desire. To be Christian means we trust Jesus leads to a flourishing life, not as an angry deity but a caring physician. Certain forms of deconstruction pridefully burn everything down. Any restraint on our personal desire is viewed as inherently oppressive. Yet, when we look to the gospels and the rest of the new testament, discipleship to Jesus is fundamentally about dying to ourselves and trusting that communion with God leads to real life.

• Humility, humility, humility. Who are we to think we can understand the mysteries of the universe? Planet earth is a blip on the radar within our galaxy. Oh yeah...and scientists estimate that there are over 100 billion galaxies! I think we should remind ourselves of this fact each time we enter into new theological territory. Theology is our insanely feeble attempts to understand the God who put these galaxies into motion. As A.J Swoboda asserts in After Doubt, "all earthly theology is essentially preparing for embarrassment". Eugene Peterson, in a letter to his son said that the calling of being a pastor means "giving witness to what we don't know much about, living into the mystery of salvation and providence". How beautiful the church could be if our leaders had this posture. If we consider our theology totally accurate with the exception of a few small tweaks we ought to think again. Our deconstruction journeys must be saturated in humility. Too often they can be soaked with self-righteousness and pride. We begin to the mirror the very thing that turned us off from certain expressions of Christianity in the first place.

My own deconstruction and reconstruction story

First, an important caveat. My deconstruction journey is different than many others in that what pushed me into deconstruction was not harm within my family or origin. I've been blessed with incredibly supportive, humble and loving parents who are quick to lend a listening ear. Instead, deconstruction began as a young adult as I paid closer attention to the theological and cultural framework that surrounded me. Until my early 20s it was just the water that I swam in. But as an adult I began to notice invasive species that took up residence in my community.

I've described my own deconstruction like the game of Jenga. In this game dozens of sticks are stacked up together to form a tower (see picture at beginning of this post). Each stick is removed carefully, one at a time. Eventually the tower in it's original form cannot stand.

The tower of sticks are symbolic of a theological framework I was handed from conservative evangelicalism. Some of these sticks are good and beautiful. Some, I've come to learn, are incomplete or even idolatrous. Once upon a time the whole thing felt so solid, so stable. All the pieces were held together perfectly with no contradiction or incompleteness. Other Christians whose theological towers were constructed from other materials were misguided at best and flat out heretics at worst. Especially Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans, Greg Boyd and anyone who was catholic.

Then I started reading other Christians outside of my tribe, experienced the global church in El Salvador and Liberia, encountered pain and suffering and befriended thoughtful people who weren't Christians ....even some progressive ones!. Over time the infrastructure of ideas that seemed certain began to feel less satisfying and true. Certain pieces still felt solid. But many others seemed unnecessary (do we have to be dogmatic about what hell is?), incomplete (wait...the gospel is just about individual spiritual transformation and social justice is a distraction?) or flat out wrong (God primarily cares about what is on the republican political platform?). Why was the tower so big? Why were there so many non-negotiable pieces? The taller the tower the more susceptible it was to falling down altogether. I began to pull one piece out a a time. Wait, is America really the hope of the world? Do women have to be sidelined from key leadership roles within the church? Does all of scripture need to be taken literally? Is the pursuit of racial justice not worth the cost? Etc, etc, etc.

Since theological frameworks are so interconnected it becomes impossible to deconstruct one concept without consequently rethinking three others. Eventually most of the tower began to collapse.

This type of deconstruction is scary and overwhelming. I longed for the days when faith felt so easy, so certain. Why did so many people at church seem like they were having one epic moment of certainty after another? I began to resent those people. Or was it jealousy as I remembered how simple everything used to feel?

As the pieces fell to the floor I reexamined each one. I began to notice that my tower centered on the sovereignty of God (in a hyper controlling kind of way) over and above the love of God. I learned that what we give emphasis too really does matter. Trusting in the existence of God has always been there for me. However, real faith in Jesus requires trusting in the existence of God as revealed in Jesus AND a beleif that God is good (Hebrews 11:6). The ideological framework I existed inside of caused me to struggle greatly with trust in the goodness of God.

I also noticed some ugly fruit within the white evangelical tradition in America. The individualism, materialism, nationalism, partisanship and narrow gospel devoid of justice deeply concerned me. Interestingly, the theological framework had actually given space for these things to grow unchallenged. Yikes. The tower kept crumbling.

My tower is not as high as it used to be. Ironically, this makes it all feel so much more solid. The more Jesus-centered my faith and the more I steer clear of petty dogmatism, the more resilient my faith becomes.

I could go on and on about certain theological positions that have shifted. Many positions I once held remain the same but with far more nuance, humility and compassion. My convictions have shifted in other areas. One of the largest pieces I've added to my tower is this: the way we hold a theological position is just as important (probably more) than the position itself.

My story illustrates that intense deconstruction doesn't have to end in unbelief. For some it does. For many others like me it's the death before the resurrection. Many of the deaths that occur are good and necessary to shed off arrogant (or ignorant) theology and harmful approaches to loving our neighbor.

There is tremendous hope to be found. Periods of disorder, like a tree bending in extremely windy conditions whose root system grows stronger, force us to dig deeper for truth and come out the other side with a more thoughtful, chosen and resilient faith.