You Don’t Have to Deconstruct
I had drinks last week with two women in their 20s in town for a conference from Vancouver, BC. They’d come across something I’d written and reached out. We talked about what it’s like to navigate culture as a young Christian in a progressive city.
One woman shared that she and a lot of her peers are tired of thinking about how or when to reveal that they are Christians. She senses a growing frustration among friends that want to stop withholding their spiritual identity and claim their faith, but are weary from the media’s depiction of what Christians look like and value.
There is a dynamic of shame-by-association we all grapple with thanks to Trumpian-flavored Evangelicalism, a lack of Christian action on climate change, and #churchtoo. They describe themselves in a middle space, wanting true relationship with Jesus but not fitting into the current American Christian narrative.
We also talked the pressure to deconstruct. The church they attend is loosely affiliated with Regent, where Josh Harris attended seminary before his faith imploded, and they found his renunciation of Christianity especially personal.
When we see leaders deconstruct, it’s hard to not feel like we should go there, too — a new spiritual rite of passage on par with the Amish Rumspringa or shaman-led iowaska vision quests American tourists seek out in Peru. Maybe you’ll come out on the other side stronger, or maybe you’ll walk.
Our friend Jess talks about the industry he sees building around deconstruction. It might not be as quantifiable as promise rings sales from the 90s, but whenever there is money to be made, it will be.
I can go to conferences about deconstruction. I can buy books about it. I can listen to podcasts and download music inspired by it. There is something to gain when more people deconstruct. And capitalism is starting to notice.
Let me be clear: We all go through times of spiritual crisis. Jacob wrestled. Dark nights of the soul can stretch into a decade. Doubt is real. Of course we’re all changing and growing, all the time.
This is a critique of the cultural trend towards deconstruction. I have no person in mind, and truly, this is not intended to be hurtful if you’ve embraced the language around evolving faith. But I think it’s important to talk about deconstruction in a macro way, to notice when a concept starts becoming a story arc that bends towards a larger post-Evangelical narrative.
In many ways the idea of unwinding where we’ve been is a natural part of our own personal stories. Maybe you were perpetrated against emotionally, spiritually, or physically and that’s connected to church. Or maybe you watched the 2016 election and wondered, “what am I doing affiliating myself with Christianity?” It’s no wonder we feel displaced.
But it’s also important to notice that an industry is cropping up around that displacement. The market has responded to feed the hunger our cultural disillusionment has created.
How we speak about deconstruction in a buzzy way is its own form of post-Christianese. The words "deconstructed" and "evolved" imply that if you haven't done so in the #exvangelical way, then you’re not self-actualized—or that it’s a matter of time.
Let’s call a spade a spade. Deconstruction is a trend, and that word is tired.
I wonder if doing a better job of cultivating the very thing Christians are often accused of having none of — reason and intellectualism — can take the fear out of questioning and legitimize Christianity as a way of life that is backed by two thousand years of theology.
We need imagination and courage to pursue a different way. The Christian story may be rooted in faith, but believing it is also reasonable. Our faith is emotive and centered in listening prayer, but it is also intellectual.
If there are more of us talking about our love for God, that being an intellectual and creative person that also loves Jesus is possible, we can model what we really are — a body of broken people loving God as best we can. A lot of us have been hurt by the church, but we choose to stay. If we don’t talk about the joy of the Christian life, if we’re silenced by the industry building around deconstruction and American politics, no one will find us.
You don’t have to deconstruct. And you can find other people who love God in brokenness, slipping on the ice and sometimes skating backwards, but doing it arm in arm.