Deconstructing my Christian faith
Deconstruction.
Deconstruction.
It's such a dirty word in evangelical circles, yet it seems like everyone is deconstructing these days. Famous Youtubers, lead singers of Christian bands, and even renowned Christian authors have been deconstructing for years.
The word deconstruction, in this context, has only been around since the 20th century. The kind of deconstruction we're talking about here is distinctly applied to faith, but formal philosophical deconstruction is often compared with the Christian process because they are similar - modern Christian deconstruction is informed by philosophical deconstruction, so understanding the formal idea of deconstruction can be useful if your interest is purely clinical.
I'm not going to cover the philosophical meaning of deconstruction here because I'm not writing for a philosophical audience. These are my letters from war, and they're going to be personal.
What is deconstruction?
Deconstruction is the process of picking up the pieces after your faith has been shattered. It's what people do when their faith is shaken to its very core. It's what happens when you face existential dread after yet another sleepless night spent wrestling with deep, forbidden questions that you can't share with anyone else because you know how that conversation will end.
In short, deconstruction is not something people choose to do. When evangelical fundamentalism drags you to the precipice and threatens to throw you over the edge if you don't repent, some people grab hold of their faith and leap. They know they're going to hit the bottom. But their faith will either grow enough to save them from the plunge, or it will shatter on impact. Either way, they were backed into a corner and had no choice but to take a fatal chance.
No one chooses to deconstruct. It's forced upon us by a culture that will brook no debate on questions of theology.
What is deconstruction not?
Virtually everyone involved in the ongoing discussion surrounding deconstruction has an opinion. Unfortunately, some of the people who talk the loudest about deconstruction are also the people who have the most misconceptions about the idea in the first place. (Are you seeing a pattern yet? Are you forming an inkling of why people might be leaving evangelical Christianity?)
Liberalism
Deconstruction is not liberalizing Christianity. Some people leave deconstruction with their faith renewed and unchanged. For many people, deconstruction does lead to a liberalized Christianity. Absolutely. But if you really think that's such a huge problem, then you're probably part of the reason why someone is staring down the barrel of their own deconstruction in the first place.
Apostasy
Deconstruction does not mean a person is leaving the faith. Some people leave deconstruction with faith restored, as on fire for God as the day they prayed the prayer. But others do end up leaving their faith behind them for good. Evangelicalism is not a welcoming belief system, and when faced with a choice, some people will walk away and never look back.
(To be continued)
There are many misconceptions about deconstruction. However, at this time, I'm just trying to get my thoughts down on paper. I'm not trying to do an exhaustive study on critiques of deconstruction. I will add to this list as I find more misconceptions "in the wild", but for now, this should get us started.
What does deconstruction look like?
There are many reasons that people may end up deconstructing, but for most people I've talked to, deconstruction is what happens when you can no longer cling to the faith you had before. Deconstruction may come because of questions you have about God, or religion, or science, or social ethics. Deconstruction is the process of answering those questions to your satisfaction. There are two main outcomes of deconstruction: apostasy and radical conversion.
Deconstruction as a vehicle for leaving the faith
For many people, such as comedy duo Rhett and Link, deconstruction leads to apostasy. Sometimes, holding firm to a deeply-rooted faith can lead to questions without comfortable answers, and for some people, the simplest (or most logical) solution is to leave that faith behind, for better or worse.
A dear friend of mine recently shared with me parts of their own story of deconstruction, and while they didn't tell me the whole story, they told me enough to put together the pieces. Christianity has a long history of disenfranchising anyone who asks the simplest question. Anything less than "childlike faith" is a damnable, unforgivable sin, after all, and the modern church has interpreted "childlike faith" to mean "absolute, unwavering loyalty without question or doubt". As a result, many questioning Christians who would otherwise have continued on in the faith are pushed away to the point of apostasy. In our current hyper-evangelical environment, what choice did they have? Admitting doubt is as bad as leaving anyway, so if the environment we come up in as Christians doesn't allow us to express uncertainty, many people find it easier to leave altogether.
Deconstruction as a change in faith alignment
For other people, deconstruction means changing long-held beliefs to align with a less rigid version of their faith. Christian author Beth Moore doesn't even believe she has deconstructed, but I think that comes down to a semantic argument. Twitter and Instagram, in particular, are chock-full of professing Christians who go through a process of analyzing and changing their belief system, only to come out of the process still considering themselves a Christian, and this certainly sums up the journey that Beth Moore has traveled over the last several years. She may not think of herself as "deconstructed", and that's her right, but I think her story is a strong model of what it means to deconstruct and come out stronger.
Is deconstruction new?
In short, no.
What the church believes has changed over time. On an individual level, this is a less dramatic form of deconstruction. We can think back to times before those changes and see that the church used to have strange or incorrect beliefs, but if instead we think back to the times during those changes, we may see that deconstruction has been going on for quite a long time. And it has often been just as contentious as it is today.
I'll offer a single example from the church of the past. Prior to the Copernican Revolution, most people believed that Earth was the center of the universe, known as geocentrism. Many scientists held this view. The Bible itself was used to defend geocentrism. It was, as some people like to say, "settled science".
Then Nicolaus Copernicus came along and offered the idea that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the center of the universe. This idea was known as heliocentrism. Others had proposed the idea of heliocentrism in the past, but Copernicus was able to prove that it actually worked in practice. (We know today that the Sun is not the center of the universe, either; in fact, the universe has no center as such. The Sun is roughly the center of our solar system, however, so such early pioneers of astronomy can be forgiven for not realizing how vast the universe truly is.)
The church, however, was unconvinced of the heliocentric model. In fact, for hundreds of years following, both Catholic and Protestant traditions rejected the idea of heliocentrism as heresy. Galileo famously spent the last several years of his life under house arrest for promoting heliocentrism. It wasn't until well after the scientific world had accepted and adopted heliocentrism that the Catholic church finally embraced the idea, in the early 1800s. The Protestant tradition was slower to embrace heliocentrism. In fact, there is a disturbingly large number of Protestants who still think the Earth is flat, and by extension, the center of the universe.
The Bible was previously interpreted as teaching about a flat Earth. Most of Christendom has moved away from that interpretation today, although it was a slow process. That process of analyzing and redefining beliefs is what deconstruction is all about. Most people agree that the church was right to accept that the Earth is not the center of the universe, but at the time, it was bitterly contentious. Deconstructing Christians who stay in the church are taking controversial stances today that will most likely be mainstream in the future.
Why does this feel so wrong?
Deconstruction goes against the very nature of evangelicalism. Evangelical fundamentalism doesn't allow questions. It doesn't allow nuance. Sometimes it doesn't allow differences of opinion at all, even for questions that have zero meaning in the context of the faith.
I distinctly recall a debate between two Christians I knew personally, almost 15 years ago: Was Christ's punishment on the cross sufficient for all humanity, or was Christ only punished enough to satisfy the requirements of all people who would become Christians? I've never personally heard a more pointless argument in the context of a religion that rejects universal reconciliation, and yet it's an argument I've seen multiple times since. If a sinner repents and is saved, then Christ's blood covers them, and if they do not, then Christ's blood does not. The only question, essentially, is whether Christ's blood would have been sufficient if God somehow didn't anticipate their conversion - or, put another way, if Christ's blood was sufficient to cover them if somehow God messed up and didn't punish Jesus enough. I reiterate, there could not be a more pointless argument. But at the time, I was fully engrossed. I was even concerned that if I had the wrong opinion on the matter, I would risk eternal hellfire. I was 15.
The too-long, didn't-read summary is this: deconstruction feels wrong because many evangelical fundamentalists suffer from Stockholm syndrome. We have grown so accustomed to not asking questions about so-called "settled doctrine" that we suppress them when they arise. Doubt leads to fear, and fear leads people away from the faith.
The evangelical response to doubt is to have faith. This works in context of someone having doubts about something external to themselves, such as a pending job search, a natural disaster, or other forces related to the unknowability of the future. But faith is not the answer to doubt that comes from within faith itself. It's similar to overusing Tylenol for headaches, which can actually cause rebound headaches. People question Christianity. These questions need to be addressed in the open because these questions aren't coming from some random face on the internet - they're coming from Judy and Mark in the third pew on the left. This is happening in your church. People are deconstructing on your turf. Are you going to support them with love and grace? or are you going to seal their apostasy in stone?
What next?
I'm deconstructing.
This is probably the single hardest thing I've ever had to say out loud. The phrase feels foreign in my mouth, like the words don't quite make any sense to me. I'm deconstructing.
What does this mean? Am I leaving God? The thought terrifies me. What if I leave, and leaving seals me to an eternity in hell? What if I don't leave, and it's all a fantasy? What if I change my beliefs and I choose the wrong ones? I'm deconstructing.
These feelings are not normal. If God is there, and if He loves me, why do I feel like this? Why am I so afraid to question what fallible man has told me about an infallible God? Why am I afraid that choosing to believe the wrong thing about a loving God will send me to hell? Because I have evangelical Stockholm syndrome, and I'm deconstructing.