The Biblical Response to Cultural Deconstruction

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

there is a word that is being repeated in Christian circles, in podcasts, in coffee hour conversations, in social media discussions that stretch on longer than one initially intended. It is called deconstruction. And it is, as some might say depending on who you are speaking to, the most upright thing a human being can do with their religion or the most unsafe road a Christian could take.

And in the past decade you must have seen it in church communities that you have been a part of. Perhaps a friend who also attended church singing worship songs every Sunday and is now an open agnostic. The son of a pastor who had his meltdown on Instagram and left with him. One of the siblings, who began to ask questions and appeared to have found himself in an unfamiliar place. Or perhaps-- and the commonest thing in the world is not so obvious as people may suppose you have felt the attraction yourself. The questions that are never going. The objects which had been presented to you as things which could be counted upon began to lose their certitude.

Deconstruction is real. It's widespread. and the attitude of the Western church to it has too frequently been extremely ineffective, defensive and dismissive, trying to pretend the questions are not questions at all, or so accommodating, as to actually assent to the fact that faith cannot withstand the serious questioner.

What Deconstruction Actually Means and What It Does Not.

The terminology of the term itself is rooted in postmodern philosophy Jacques Derrida and in the critical school of literature and culture that takes on the work of deconstructing texts and institutions in order to reveal tacit assumptions, power relations and contradictions. In that original meaning it is a particular mode of thinking.

However, when people nowadays speak of faith deconstruction they are often referring to something that is more personal and less scholarly than that. By that they refer to a process of questioning, redistributing, and even deconstructing the beliefs, practices and structures which they have inherited, typically a church tradition, a family history or a religious culture. The question they are asking is: do I really believe this? Why do I suppose it? Is that so, or was it given me and I never took it open?

Such a process of pure contemplation does not mean to deny faith. Deconstruction is not a destination but a process. There are individuals that deconstruct and may end up abandoning Christianity altogether.

The Truth of Deconstruction

You can not react properly to something you are not familiar with. And even the misdefensive Christian reaction to deconstruct as all merely spiritual failure, rebellion or the effect of the secular culture, lacks much of what is actually driving it. The real reasons are not to be shaken.

Church hurt is very real and severe. Many of those who deconstruct do so, because they suffered literal damage within church situations. Spiritual abuse, dictatorial governance, misconduct that was never disclosed to anyone, unhealthy community life, these are some of the reasons that do occur, even as the church has not been keen to acknowledge. When a person was harmed by the institution that purported to act on behalf of God, doubting all that the institution taught him or her is not rebellion. It is only natural as a human reaction to pain.

The form of Christianity most of the population inherited was not profound enough to endure criticism. This is one that the church must take seriously. Religion centered chiefly around emotional reactions, national or ethnic belonging, peer pressure or simple custom was always going to come undone when tough questions came around. Whether you were never trained to find out why you think the way you think, or that you think the way you think, the effect of the initial severe intellectual task, can seem fatal.

The internet allowed the internet to have access to the point of views and criticisms which were considerably difficult to locate before. However, throughout the history of the church, when you had doubts or were curious, you largely talked about it with people within your tradition. Now, a person can spend up to four hours on YouTube, viewing what ex-evangelicals have left, atheist thinkers deconstructing Christian arguments, former pastors sharing horrifying stories of what they have observed, all before they even get the chance to hear serious Christian responses to the same arguments.

What the Bible Really Says on Doubts and Hard Questions.

This is something that might shock those brought up in some Christian backgrounds: the bible is not scared of skepticism. It does not consider questioning the opposite of faith. Actually, some of the most level wrestling with God ever written in all of human literature is over there in Scripture.

Over forty-some chapters, Job starts questioning God and in a detailed manner. The answer, which God gives at the conclusion, is not to prosecute Job because he was demanding much but to confirm him against his companions who gave him well-worn answers on paper. You did not speak of me, as my servant Job has spoken of me (Job 42:7). Straight wrestling was more acceptable by God than theological orderliness that failed to provide reality.

When Thomas was informed that Jesus had risen he replied that he would not believe until he saw. And that was not the last episode in his life. Jesus appeared, Jesus came, and offered him the invitation and Thomas replied with one of the greatest confessions of the New Testament; My Lord and my God (John 20: 28). Jesus did not leave him to doubt. He met him in it.

We have said before that the Psalms are not devoid of the most profound and uninhibited utterances of religious anguish in human experience. Psalm 73 is an entire meditation of the crisis of faith in which the psalmist perceived the prosperity of the wicked. He was frank as to how near he got to falling into an entirely different state of affairs, - and he writes to show how the experience of the presence of God brought about the re-adjustment of everything.

The Distinction between Hospital Re-examination and Deconstruction as Drift.

This is where discernment is important, since one and another deconstruction are not necessarily the same deconstruction or it can work towards the same direction.

The re-examination of your faith is a form that is extremely healthy and that Scripture actually requires. According to 2 Corinthians 13:5, the words say, investigate yourselves whether you are in the faith. Life as a Christian is not meant to be an inheritance without examination. Religion should be held in possession, put to trial, and grown up. Difficult questions, reading broadly, attending to those who attack Christianity, being comfortable with uncertainty, all that may be a part of becoming more authentic and more a full-fledged Christian.

But there is still another that resembles drift. Where deconstruction is motivated not by the honest intellectual inquiry but by the need to avoid moral responsibility, by the processing of wounding that has not been brought to the God or community, by the magnetic ease of a social group that has already abandoned the faith or by an air of cultural chic in which it is high cutting-edge and courageous to leave the faith, or by the sort of fashionableness the culture has made out to be. That one is deserving of telling the truth as well.

The Biblical Response: What it Actually Resembles.

And what is it specifically that the church, and individual Christians, ought to do in response to the deconstruction that is being done around them, and at times in them? It is at this point that the biblical framework comes in with something actually useful.

Do not take the questions defensively. The first verse of Peter, chapter three says to be always prepared to be able to give a reason, the hope that you have, but the following part is to be gentle and with respect. The biblical response to diffident, defensive or fearful approach to hard questions is not biblical. Nothing can frighten an actually true God. When Christians recognize that, they can be open-minded instead of perceiving them as daggers to be drawn.

Cease to consider certainty to be the aim. Much of the deconstruction is brought about by the disillusionment of the understanding that the definitely people were promised is not necessarily so. Where faith is promoted as a product which is able to remove doubt, any doubt would be seen as an indication that the product is ineffective. But uncertainty is not promised by the Bible at all. It promises that there will be God within it. The great hall of faith Hebrews 11 is full of individuals who proceeded without knowing the course of things. That is what faith is. It is not the lack of questions but faith in the existence of the questions.

The difference between the core and the peripheral. Among the items which make deconstruction so destabilizing to many individuals is the fact that they were taught all of this as equally necessary. The age of the earth, the theory of translation, the denominational peculiarities, the political attitudes,--all of this crammed in along with the resurrection of Jesus as though they were of the same type of claim. When a few of those peripheral things begin to feel wobbly, individuals tend to dispose of it all since they are not aware of which of it is load bearing and which one is not.

Reconstruction - The Part Nobody Speaks Enough.

This is the step that is omitted in the majority of discussions about deconstruction: reconstruction. Then what follows the questions? build houses when you put things together?

The picture in the bible is not that faith is a fixed inheritance which you maintain or lose. It must be a growing and living thing that is in faith that is tested and grows stronger and becomes more in the testing. James 1:3 argues that the test of faith results in perseverance. In Philippians 1:6, Paul is sure that he who started you off a good work will bring you to completion. Christian life is a process, but not a sale to make - and there is hard ground along the way.

Those who emerge at the end of periods of deconstruction with a faith that is in every way more mature, more authentic, more intellectually based, more personally possessed than what they began with, are living testimonies that hard questions need not lead to the break-up of faith. The material of them they can, with God's favour, with true community, with the material of the tradition, truly available to them, be the smelter in which it is purified.

FAQ: Biblical Faith and Deconstruction.

Q: Does deconstruction mean to lose faith?

No. Deconstruction is not a place, it is a reconsideration of beliefs. Some people who go through it walk away from Christianity. With more earnestness others come through it. These factors include the posture of the person and the society surrounding the person and the resources that the person has. The process itself is not the one that is comparable to apostasy.

Q: Does it not happen that a Christian ought to doubt?

Yes and the Bible presents it. Job, Thomas, even the Psalmists, had messengers in prison enquiring Jesus though that he should, are you the one or ought we to seek another? (Matthew 11:3). A lack of faith is not antithetical to faith. It is not good to act like you are sure but you are not. Doubting God, doubting the community, is far much more devout than practicing certainty in the absence of it.

Q: What can I do when a person I love is deconstructing?

Stay in a relationship. Do not not base your love on their theological resolutions. Be a listener rather than a talker particularly at an early age. Ask questions rather than making arguments. Ensure they understand that your association with them is not leaving anywhere depending on their landing point. And to tell the truth do not feel you must feign that you have no concerns, but concerns in love sound very unlike concerns in judgement.

Q: What led to the deconstruction wave that we are experiencing in Western Christianity?

There were several reasons: the availability of critical views over the Internet, the hurt and spiritual abuse of recklessness that many Christians have experienced more than in the past, a form of Christianity that most churches practiced that was either culturally superficial or intellectually shallow, a generation that has been instructed on what to believe and not why, and the legitimacy of the moral failures of the whole undertaking that has left many people raising very powerful questions about the

Q: How do you deconstruct and remain a Christian?

Yes. Reconsideration of your beliefs does not mean that you have to give up. Most of the Christians who underwent severe deconstruction of their faith nonetheless cling to the essence of the faith, the resurrection, the love of God, the person of Jesus, and lose the cultural accretions and secondary certainties that never formed the core of the faith. That's not apostasy. That's growth.

Q: What really assists individuals during deconstruction seasons?

Entry level: The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel to see into that entry level, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis to see into the rigorous but easy-going background, Benefit of the Doubt by Gregory Boyd to see into the serious theological approach, and The Prodigal God by Tim Keller to see into the gospel reshaping that often finds entry into deconstructing people.

Conclusion

Kornerweis is here to stay. To the contrary, its cultural and informational environment is growing stronger and stronger. The church may react to it out of fear, out of defensiveness, out of condemnation or it may react out of something that even appears to be the gospel.

The gospel answer to deconstruction is to not ignore the questions, to remain in relationship with people asking them, to refer them to the true depth and richness of the Christian tradition, and to believe that a truly true God will be able to bear sincere questioning. Not merely in the presence of it, accept it.

The faith that has been scrutinized, doubted, put to test and decided, is more solid than the faith, which was merely passed on and not questioned. The man who has toiled with the tough questions and discovered that God is true on the other side of those questions has something which he can stand upon and which he cannot readily lose.

The call of Christianity has always been come and see - not come and accept, blindly. Jesus gave this invitation to all who were doubting, questioning, failing, and struggling. He extends it still.

                                             Written By Hirwa Karak Bertrand

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