My Faith Is a Hot Mess (Part 4)

We're continuing my faith is a hot mess, and this week we begin talking about something that scares a lot of people in the evangelical world: deconstruction.

I think the fear around that word comes from two very different places. The first kind of fear comes from love - a worry that people might walk away from Jesus, his teachings, and the gifts he offers. That fear wants the best for people, and we can talk about whether it's well-founded. But there's a second kind of fear that doesn't come from love at all. It's the fear that surfaces when an individual or institution is afraid of losing control, power, or money - the fear that if people examine certain traditions and doctrines too closely, they'll discover those things were never really part and parcel of following Jesus to begin with, and they'll stop listening to the voices that taught them. Deconstruction can pose a real threat to certain power structures.

So why talk about it? Because a desire to deconstruct often arises when parts of our faith have already become a hot mess - and because, done the wrong way, deconstruction can slide into destruction of faith, which is a hot mess of a different kind. So let's play fair and define our terms.

What deconstruction actually is

Despite how it sounds, "deconstruction" doesn't mean demolition. Merriam-Webster defines it, in this sense, as analytic examination - breaking something down to discover its true significance. It isn't limited to religion; you've probably enjoyed deconstruction in other forms without realizing it. Films like Unforgiven and Tombstone take a harder, more honest look at the Western mythos. Comics like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns do the same with superheroes. Each pulls a familiar genre apart, examines its ingredients, and asks the audience to reconsider what they thought they knew.

Applied to faith, deconstruction is an honest, intellectually serious examination of what we believe - pulling back the pieces to ask: What's the purpose here? What's true and what isn't? What's essential and what's not? People usually take this on precisely because their faith matters deeply to them. And a faith that has value ought to be able to stand up to questioning. If something is true, we shouldn't be afraid to examine how people arrived at it.

Two clarifications, because words matter: completely abandoning the faith is not deconstruction (that's a misuse of the term), and neither is weaponizing scrutiny to destroy something. As I'll use the word, deconstruction means honestly examining beliefs, doctrines, and practices in order to discover the truth and experience a truer, deeper faith. Frankly, I think we should all be doing some of this from time to time.

My own story

Hi, my name is Josh, and I'm a serial deconstructionist. I was raised about as thoroughly in the church as a kid can be - Bible stories at night, Sunday school, Christian school, vacation Bible school, the works. Then I got to college and was struck for the first time by just how many different beliefs there were. I had friends who were Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist, and everything in between, and it started to eat at me: How do I know what's actually true?

So I told myself: if what I believe isn't true, I'll jettison it and find what is - no matter what my parents, friends, or peers think. That wasn't rebellion; it was a statement about how much my convictions meant to me. I spent a year and a half reading everything I could get my hands on - comparative religion, evolution, apologetics, biblical history, archaeology, atheist arguments, all of it. And I came out the other side with my faith strengthened: I believe in a real Jesus who walked the earth, who is the Son of God, who died and rose again, and in a God who created the heavens and the earth.

I'm not unusual. Lee Strobel, an atheist journalist, set out to disprove Christianity and ended up convinced of it. J. Warner Wallace, a cold-case homicide detective, investigated the Gospels as eyewitness accounts and came to faith. These men are heroes in the evangelical community - and they got there by asking tough questions. So here's my question: why do they become apologetics heroes while others who ask hard questions become "deconstructing villains"?

The questions we're allowed to ask - and the ones we aren't

I know plenty of people who have deconstructed and still believe there's a God, that he made the world, that Jesus was real and the Son of God who paid the price for our sins - which is the main point of Scripture in the first place. The trouble starts when they begin questioning the bonus beliefs: not Jesus' divinity, salvation, or resurrection, but secondary matters of doctrine and interpretation. The evangelical church will encourage you to ask about the existence and nature of God all day long. But start asking about disputed doctrines - and, by implication, about the systems, institutions, and leaders promoting them - and suddenly those questions are unwelcome.

And you know who experienced religion weaponized against him? Jesus. In some ways, you could call Jesus the most influential deconstructionist who ever lived. He asked an enormous number of questions - 307 of them are recorded in the Gospels - and many of them were designed to make the religious experts (and everyone else) look deeper:

Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly. - John 7:24

He challenged the Pharisees' understanding of the Messiah, of divorce law, of discipline. He pulled back ideas in Scripture, exposed their ingredients, and asked people to examine them: What's the purpose? What's essential? What's not? That sounds an awful lot like encouraging people to deconstruct - not for the sake of destruction, but for reconstruction, so they'd find God through him. He boiled it all down to this:

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart... and love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments. - Matthew 22:37-40

If we miss that purpose, we've missed the whole point. Jesus wanted people to make him - and loving God and people - the foundation, rather than man-made rules built on interpretations of religious writings.

Worship in spirit and truth

Sometimes Scripture suggests Jesus isn't nearly as preoccupied with our disputes as we are. Take the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. Jews and Samaritans despised each other, partly over religious differences. When she realizes Jesus is no ordinary man, she puts a hot-button, disputed-doctrine question to him: which mountain is the right place to worship? It's the same kind of question we ask today - with 45,000-plus Christian denominations, none agreeing on everything, who's got it right? Watch how Jesus answers:

The time is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for those who will worship him that way. - John 4:23

In other words: the thing you're anxious about isn't the point. The Father isn't looking for people who meticulously keep every rule and parse every detail to avoid making a mistake - that's exactly what the Pharisees were doing, and Jesus wasn't impressed. To worship in spirit and truth makes worship a matter of the heart - truly loving God and loving people - not a matter of getting all the ceremony right.

And ultimately, it all points back to Jesus himself:

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6

Any conclusion we reach, any interpretation we hold, has to be submissive to the teachings, actions, and attitude of Jesus. If a "truth" we've landed on causes us to act in a way that isn't christlike - if it doesn't lead us to love God and love people the way we see Jesus do - then it's probably not the truth.

A church where it's safe to ask

If we're honest, many aspects of our faith are matters of interpretation we'll never get all forty-thousand-plus denominations to agree on. Some questions just don't have neat, simple answers - only a variety of human ideas to sort through. And if every big question has a tidy answer that discourages you from ever looking deeper, that might actually be a sign of an immature faith.

So can we be comfortable not always knowing for certain - while knowing for certain that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? Can we make room for different perspectives without lashing out at those who land somewhere different? Seacoast should be a place where people feel safe to be open, to be at different points on their journey, and to ask hard questions - a place where we can honestly say to one another, "I love you, even if I disagree with your conclusion." If our mission is helping people find and follow Jesus, then sometimes part of finding and following him is asking difficult questions in an effort to worship in spirit and in truth.

Over the coming weeks we'll examine some of those difficult questions. I'm not promising pat answers - just an honest acknowledgment that things may not be as simple as we've made them, and a commitment to receive those who land differently with love. We may not all reach the same answers, but as long as we understand that following Jesus is the answer, I believe God will bless this church in ways we've never seen.

The one answer that matters most

Jesus, God's own Son, came to earth as a man to pay the price for our sins and teach us how to live. Fully God and fully man, he never sinned, which made him the perfect sacrifice. On the cross he took the sins of the world - past, present, and future - upon himself, so we wouldn't have to be separated from a holy God. Now, when God looks at us, he sees the gift of his Son rather than our sin. Three days later Jesus rose again, and he offers eternal life in the place he's preparing for us, and abundant life full of meaning and purpose here.

If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life and you'd like to do that today, you can pray a prayer like this one:

Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I'm a sinner. I know I've done wrong things. Please forgive me of my sins. Right now I ask you to be the Lord of my life. Help me to turn from my sins and follow you. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins, for rising again on the third day and taking those sins away, for saving me, and for preparing a place for me. In Jesus' name, amen.

If you prayed that prayer, you've probably got questions - and that's okay. We don't have all the answers, but we'll point you to Jesus and look at his answers together. Come see me after a service, or email me at josh@seacoastredondo.com.

Next week things get challenging, so don't freak out on me. I hope you'll come with open ears, an open mind, and an open heart toward everyone - myself included. Until then, may Jesus be the answer to all the questions you seek.