Deconstructing one’s faith has become very vogue. Many renowned pastors and celebrities in the church have employed this process in an attempt to reform. In Deconstruction there tends to be a spectrum, there are those like Jonathan Harris, the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, that has in deconstruction process lost his faith, and then there is the the song by David Dunn, “I wanna go back to Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so, for the Bible tells me, yes Jesus loves me, Yes Jesus loves me.”
Deconstructing can be useful when it is to step out of bad doctrines and trends in the church. The Prosperity Gospel and Doctrine is a good example, that someone would have to deconstruct their faith in Christ from it because it is a wrongful and harmful doctrine. However, the deconstruction process has perils, because many “throw the Baby out with bath water,” or as I put it, “the Christ child out with the bad water.” We have had a steady stream of mainstream pastors and influencers fall away from the faith as they deconstruct their faith. Part of the problem is that Church culture creates two unsustainable aspects of life: the first is an Aspergers hyper fixation or radical all in for Christ persona and mindset, that makes a person feel like they must be like Paul, “counting all things lost but knowing Christ,” (Philippians 3:8) but the context of Paul’s words was that he was saying he counted all his Jewish pedigree and past as rubbish, not that you couldn’t enjoy things in this world and had to be singularly focused on Jesus all the time. The second problem in church culture is the identity or role playing, where you have to speak in Christianese, and act a certain way, its what Atheists and outsiders call that creepy cheesy Christian behavior, where its amen Brother this and that, and I agree that the fake nature of it does not service to witnessing for Christ; it makes even a Christian like me skin crawl.
There is the reality that many pastors are facing burn out. That being a professional minister is taking it’s toll, they spend so much times fostering and building up others faith, they forget their own interior life, and grow distant from God. They end up trapped in the words of Aragorn, “I give hope to men, but keep none for myself.” (The Lord of the Rings). Do that long enough and you will grow dry, frustrated, and spiral out. Billy Graham himself had crisis of this sorts and he took time to step away into mountains, read Scripture, and seek God’s Face. We have to remember even The Son of God himself had to withdrawal away and seek His Father’s Face, “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed..” (Luke 5:16). Even the Son of God had to disconnect from the needs of others and plug into His Father.
Deconstruction is a very dangerous process. If you are not careful, the devil will use it to destroy your faith as it did Jonathan Harris and many others. I think a better process if Reforming, that is reforming and removing the toxins that slipped into your “pure and simple devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3). And sometimes you do not need to do such a deep introspection, sometimes all someone needs is the like Prophet Elijah, lay there and rest, while Ravens feed you (1 Kings 17:2-16). It is crucial to use these two prongs rest and reform to rejuvenate and restore your relationship with The Redeemer. Deconstruction while it seems noble at first, can take a bad turn and be used by the Enemy of your Soul to lead you away from the LORD. I urge take the Billy Graham approach, withdrawal and seek God’s Face, and read Scripture, and wrestle with the stuff and even with God. Too many in Church either go blind devotion to God and feel they have to act and have a certain way, or they just toss any concern at all aside, and either become Saved By Fire Christians (1 Corinthians 3:15) or they walk away altogether. We are meant to wrestle with God about stuff, and say, “I do not get this! Why must it be this way! I am so burnt out Lord! I don’t want to do this anymore!” For Israel means to “wrestle with God,” and that is calling of every Christian, because in wrestling you are honest and your relationship with God is not one dimensional blind service to a tyrant, but rather an exchange, arm to arm with God, leg to leg, rolling on the ground from whence he made Adam and engaging in a dialogue over your despair, disillusionment, and deep seated insecurities.
Asking ourselves hard questions, examining our motives, and coming to The Holy Trinity with our tiredness and trampled feelings is a good thing. There is a time when our holy zeal wains, and we are confronted with Scott Stapp’s, “What’s This Life For?” They call it a Midlife Crisis, but it actually is very rational thing of “was I just born to share the gospel?” and “am I just a disciple maker?” In our Faith a lot is being stored up in next life, so a mid life crisis pushing you to examine this life more, and that is not an evil thing. One of problems is that as humans we get stuck in he idea of staying in a circle and flow with other fish and that is our life; when life is full of Seasons as King Solomon said, “To everything there is a season under heaven, a time to live, a time to die, a time to build, a time to destroy..” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4)”. If we view things as seasons, we can then accept when it’s time to move on from a ministry, project, or people. It’s not a betrayal or us getting off the path, its that you may have had a season where you were meant to do this or that, but now its time to shift to a focus on family or a focus on travel, or a focus on something else. The problem is the guilt of moving on makes this process feel like we are failing or falling away from our purpose. When in reality this transition is normal.
I know that was side bar, but it is a key to not fall into bad form of deconstruction. If you view things as Seasons. Maybe Jonathan Harris should have viewed his youth and early pastor years of promoting Courtship over Dating as just a season or maybe even just an experiment of trying something different with dating in the Church, than allowing it to be this shame of his life, and leading to him falling away. People get ideas, and they promote them, and sometimes yes they get used for ill, and people use them for control, but we have to remember the spirit of the author, what they were trying to achieve, or propose as a solution to a problem. In other sphere were an experiment fails we do not say the person is evil, its only in the confines of the church do we associate failure as tantamount to be Judas Iscariot, the Betrayer of the Lord. Many of us who teach know the verse from the apostle, “not all should be teachers, for they will receive a harsher judgement,” (James 3:1), but honestly, while I know what the apostle is trying to do, to help us have accountability and scrutinize what we teach and its ramifications, at the end of the day God looks at your heart and intent (1 Samuel 16:7), and when something goes wrong with what you presented, we do not not need to crucify the person for it. We are all as song goes, “I am only human after all.” (Human, Rag’n’Bone Man).
Now I am not saying people should not own and be accountable for what they teach. But in addition to accountability should be mercy, grace, and forgiveness, especially if the person who errored or had a failed experiment in ministry that hurt people conveys a tender heart who loves Jesus, and was trying to help the Church. We have to remember that the human experience is one of paradoxes, and so when we try to use an Utopian answer to something in the Church, it can often go awry because while we are a “New Creation,” (2 Corinthians 5:17) we also “keeping doing the things I do not want to do, this is sin working inn me.” (Paraphrase of Romans 7:15-20). Deconstruction seems a fruitful way to handle the fallout of failure, but all it really is doing is self crucifixion that will lead to spiritual pride in the form called self pity or utter destruction of the faith in a person. So the better answer is to focus on the intent of what you did for God that fell apart, repent of the harm it did, and start again. I hate that in churches in the West, we take someone who makes a mistake and drive a stake through them like Dracula. We are suppose to be patient in love with people, and be merciful, “be merciful as your Father in Heaven in merciful,” (Luke 6:36) and “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6:37). There is this quote from a show I cannot exactly recommend but its in my opinion a good way to look at the human experience, “Maybe we all are just doing the best we can in a world were it is way too easy to do your worst.” (Burt, Resident Evil, Netflix Series). We are all doing best we can as Christ’s Ambassadors, but we make mistakes, and we feel ashamed on stuff we promoted in the past. But we have to remember in growth, and the passage of time, we often look back at things with lens of hindsight that we did not have at the time. We can look back at art we did as teen that at the time we thought was brilliant and think, “this is God awful!” Or read something we wrote in early twenties and say, “this is dribble!” Using hindsight can actually be detrimental, because you scrutinizing the past with lens from where you are now, not how you were then. The opposite form of this is nostalgia, where we view it as the paradise of our life, that all was good back then, but we as Christians when it comes to our faith walk tend to use hindsight in ways that murders our past, rather than saying, “at the time that was my zeal and how I saw it or how I did things,” and appreciating that our intent was to do good and help Christ’s Church. Amen.
Comments
Post a Comment