Christian history is full of new birth stories. The church dug in its heels and shouted, “But we’ve always done it this way!” And then the Holy Spirit burst through and said, “But not any more!” Time and again, those saints who tried to pave a new way for the Spirit to awaken the church were cast out, deemed heretics and unfaithful. They took seriously 1 Thessalonians 5:21, which says, “Test everything, hold fast to what is good.” They took seriously that the very name Israel means “struggles with God.”
In her book Searching For Sunday, the late Rachel Held Evans defined deconstruction as a “massive inventory of [your] faith, tearing every doctrine from the cupboard and turning each one over in [your] hand.” While the term “deconstruction” may be a modern one, the idea has always been a part of the Christian faith. Test everything. Hold fast to what is good. And if it ain’t good, let it go. Some paradigms make sense for a certain period of our lives, but as we experience more of life and the world, those paradigms begin to break down. It’s daunting to revisit a worldview that no longer holds up. It can be disorienting and scary. But we do it because we value the truth, we’d rather be uncomfortable in the pursuit of truth than blind ourselves in order to stay comfortable in a broken paradigm.
When John Wesley challenged the institution of slavery, he was challenging people who wholeheartedly believed they were being faithful to the Bible. Interestingly, Wesley never cited the scriptures commonly used to support slavery. He didn’t feel like it was necessary to “unclobber” the clobber passages of his day. Instead, he argued from other scripture in a way that changed people’s theological understanding of what it means to be human. He argued that African descendants were also made in the image of God, also fallen, and also redeemed by Christ. And if we are human brothers and sisters, then the law of love applies to all people: love your neighbor as yourself. And therefore, slavery must be abolished. His argument was bigger than this, of course, but these are the key theological points he made, and his tract Thoughts Upon Slavery was widely influential in the early abolitionist movement. And as you can imagine, his new paradigm was despised by Christian slaveholders. Think about the words of Frederick Douglass:
“Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference–so wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason but the most deceitful one for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”
Today, so many conservative Christians view deconstruction as an enemy. The Gospel Coalition recently posted a blog explaining the 4 Causes of Deconstruction, and how true Christians can recognize these causes as faulty thinking, and find a better way of thinking with Christ. They argue that deconstruction is a trendy fad, and equate it to losing faith altogether. The truth is, many who deconstruct their faith have a hard time reconciling the truth with the life of the church. So much of American Christianity is tightly wrapped up with control, nationalism, xenophobia, and racism that folks are walking away with similar opinions to that of Frederick Douglass. This doesn’t look like the Christianity of Christ, so I’m not coming back to it. So conservatives hunker down and shut out questions and despise doubt. What is actually needed is faith communities that provide safe space for questions and doubt, that recognize them as an important part of growth, that show love no matter what. The “exvangelicals” are more likely to be those people who deconstruct their faith in an environment that forbids doubt and questions.
Wherever you are on this faith journey, my prayer for you is that you brave the questions and the doubts. That you find a community that supports you through your struggles with God. That you test everything, and hold fast to what is good.