Deconstructing the Faith: What Exactly Does It Mean?

What Does Deconstruction Mean?

To get a definition of deconstruction is difficult. There is the philosophical definition. For this, one could turn to American Heritage:

“A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings.”

This philosophical movement has much indebtedness to Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Deconstruction in this regard dismantles everything in an attempt to find the contradictions and to essentially show that everything is complex and unstable. There is much in this literature that will make your head spin, at least it does for me. Thankfully, most people do not mean they’ve read a bunch of Derrida when they say they are deconstructing. It means something different.

To this end, I do not think it is helpful to say that Christians’ deconstructing their faith has its origins in Derrida or Foucault. Rather, today it seems to mean that someone is re-examining their religious faith and the underlying assumptions that it holds. We are probably a few years down the road from really being able to write a history on the origins of such a movement. I don’t think it is to be entirely divorced from the loss of meaning that comes from a postmodern worldview, but it’s not only found there. For many it has come from being disenchanted with the faith in which they grew up.

I think most who are using a phrase like “deconstruction” are 45-50 years old or younger. As I’m writing this, I am 40 years old and I’ve been a follower of Jesus and involved in ministry for over 20 years, many of my peers have been involved in church much longer. Think of all the things we’ve witnessed in the past 25-30 years.

Rewind to 1998 and the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal is in the headlines on a daily basis. James Dobson wrote these words:

“As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world!”

Christian leaders everywhere said that character matters. I was 17 years old. Some of my first exposure to the gospel was through these types of statements. Character matters in our leaders. God cares about holiness. You need moral integrity to be qualified to lead our nation.

I heard these words often within my conservative evangelical churches. And I believed them, and still believe them. Character does matter. But then in 2016 we saw many of these same leaders flock to support and prop up a man for president who bragged about groping women, a man who had multiple divorces and affairs, and one who seemed to lack moral integrity. That was devastating to the faith of many. It caused us to ask questions about so many of the things we had been taught.

Now add to this the fall of leaders like CJ Mahaney, Mark Driscoll, Tullian Tchvidijian, James MacDonald, and more. And in other circles those like Bill Gothard and Ted Haggard. For me as a Southern Baptist who was grateful for the Conservative Resurgence (CR), you can add the difficulty of seeing the revelations of the Guideposts Report in 2022. Events surrounding CR leaders like Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, Johnny Hunt, and more. Now consider those like Jon Steingard (Hawk Nelson), Paul Maxwell, Marty Sampson, Joshua Harris and more. 

All of this has caused those of my generation an immense amount of confusion. For many, our faith is still in Jesus, but there is a big question mark hanging over much of what we were taught about the faith. Speaking of Harris, I remember him saying on a podcast that it all became too much to untangle his faith from the culture of his faith, and so he just threw out the whole thing.

To borrow a phrase from Karen Swallow Prior, if there is this much rot within the building why would we not be thinking about grabbing a sledge-hammer and having a demo-day?

What Are People Deconstructing about Christianity?

But what exactly is supposed to be deconstructed from the house? I think that is where someone like John Cooper and others who have questioned this deconstruction movement are questioning. This movement of deconstruction is happening on multiple fronts.

Some are deconstructing in terms of the historic teaching of the church on things like sexuality. Is a rejection of a homosexual lifestyle something that was inherited from Christian culture, or from the Bible? What do we do with the inconsistency of the churches teaching in this area with lifestyle? If sexual abuse is happening throughout the church what does this mean? Are historic beliefs of gender roles something that came from the Scripture or culture? What is misogyny and what is Scripture?

Others are asking questions of race. How much of the faith is just a centered “whiteness” and doesn’t have anything to do with the biblical Jesus? What role has systemic racism played upon the church? Are there differences between different races? Is the Bible racist?

What do we do with things like social justice and politics? What of our economic policies? What about the death-penalty? What about abortion? What about euthanasia? Does morality matter in our leaders?

What do we say about science and the relationship to the Bible? Does the age of the earth matter? Could one square evolution with the Christian faith?

There are also questions of historic doctrines. What about the nature of hell? Do you have to believe in Jesus to be saved or is it possible to be saved by some other means?  Does the resurrection matter?

As you can see from so many of these questions, your answer to some of them determines whether or not you could be considered a Christian in any meaningful sense of the term. But others’ answers are secondary or tertiary. Yet, almost everything is being deconstructed these days.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Is Deconstruction a Bad Thing?

A man armed with a sledgehammer, a crow bar, and a team of people with similar tools enters into a wealthy neighborhood. Million-dollar homes with perfectly manicured lawns. They kick down the door and start knocking down walls. By the end of the day there is very little standing in the house.

Was this a good thing or a bad thing?

The answer depends on the condition of the homes. If they were in pristine condition and this demo team did not have permission, then this is an act of vandalism. But if they are a disaster relief crew coming into mud a house after a devastating hurricane then their deconstruction was actually a good thing. They took out everything that was rotten so that a rebuild could happen.

The question, though, is who gets to decide what remains? Do we use the Bible? And if so, whose interpretation of the Bible? Do we use the history of the church to help us decide which walls to knock down?

I would say this. If after you’ve torn everything down, are you left with more of Jesus or less? Does this thing look like the Jesus of the Gospels? Are you seeing the fruit of the Spirit increasingly exhibited in your life? Do you love others more deeply? Do you see Christ as more precious?

Those are questions which help us to not only assess what is to be torn down but also to assess what needs to be rebuilt or highlighted in the home we are constructing. I think you could actually argue that the early church was engaging in a type of deconstruction from their Jewish (or Gentile) upbringing. It was an entirely new way of life. What stays? What goes?

Philippians 1:9-11 can be helpful here. This is Paul’s prayer for the Philippians and he prays that their love may abound more and more and to do so in depth of insight. Those two things are necessary for properly deconstructing something. A deep love for people and the Lord is necessary to keep you from wildly swinging a sledge-hammer. Love will help you assess with a surgeon’s care. And depth of insight is necessary to ask good questions and have helpful nuance. It requires wisdom to not only see a thing for what it is but also what it could be and should be. This is why Paul says in verse 10 that grounded love will help them “be able to discern what is best.” That means to approve that which is vital.

If we do this – if we approve what is vital and discard that which isn’t (I would argue that’s deconstruction) – then we are going to be met with purity and a blamelessness as we are filled with the fruit of righteousness which comes through Jesus Christ.

Should Christians Deconstruct Their Faith?

Whether or not Christians need to deconstruct their faith really depends on whether or not it is measuring up to Christ. If something doesn’t look like Jesus, then it needs to be chiseled away and burnt in the fire of sanctification and testing. If it doesn’t look like Jesus, then why would we want to keep it? It needs to be dismantled.

But if something looks like Christ then it should not be cast aside. I think these words of Randy Alcorn are especially fitting:

“Evil and suffering have a way of exposing our inadequate theology. When affliction comes, a weak or nominal Christian often discovers that his faith doesn’t account for it or prepare him for it. His faith has been in his church, denomination, or family tradition, or in his own religious ideas — but not in Christ. As he faces evil and suffering, he may, in fact, lose his faith. But that’s actually a good thing; any faith that leaves us unprepared for suffering is a false faith that deserves to be abandoned. Genuine faith will be tested by suffering; false faith will be lost — the sooner, the better.

If it’s a false faith, then we want to lose it. We want to have a faith that God approves and that looks like Christ. So, in that regard, I completely disagree with John Cooper. There is much good that can come from deconstructing. But in another sense, I do agree with Cooper. If we’re just grabbing a sledgehammer, ignoring the wisdom of Philippians 1, and constructing a faith that makes us feel comfortable, then all we are doing is blowing up a solid structure in order to rebuild it with a sandcastle of our own choosing. That’s foolish, deadly, and not honoring to Christ.

Source
Randy Alcorn, The Goodness of God

Photo credit: ©Getty Images/PM Images

Mike Leake is husband to Nikki and father to Isaiah and Hannah. He is also the lead pastor at Calvary of Neosho, MO. Mike is the author of Torn to Heal and Jesus Is All You Need. His writing home is http://mikeleake.net and you can connect with him on Twitter @mikeleake. Mike has a new writing project at Proverbs4Today.