A year after I became a Christian, I went off to college. A few guys from my high school called me a Jesus freak—and they didn’t mean the statement as a compliment. When D.C. Talk, a Christian band, released the song “Jesus Freak,” it was so good for my soul. A cool band was celebrating what I had been called. Kevin Max sang the song, and I loved it. A year later, I went to my first Christian concert. A band of college students named Caedmon’s Call, with Derek Webb as one the lead singers, was touring universities all over the country. I took Kaye. One of our first dates. The lyrics grabbed me, and I listened to the band over and over throughout college. Today, both Kevin Max and Derek Webb say they have deconstructed their faith and are no longer Christians, as has been historically defined. They are not alone, as the phrase has been used a lot in recent years. “Deconstructing” paints the image of dismantling your faith or core beliefs you once held.
I have met people who also use the word “deconstruction” differently— to describe doubts that are common to the Christian faith. Or to describe the process of wrestling with a non-essential belief—such as a view of end times, politics, or how to take communion. So, when someone says “I am thinking about deconstructing,” I believe it’s kind and clarifying to ask, “What do you mean by the word?” As we know, words change over time. Sometimes, someone is not talking about departing from Jesus. And because the word has been used to describe all kinds of experiences, some pastors have tried to distinguish “bad deconstruction” from “good deconstruction.” The bad being walking away from Jesus and the good being tearing down unbiblical beliefs in one’s worldview.
But is there “a good kind of deconstructing?”
Many trace the origin of the current use of “deconstruction” to just a few hundred yards from my office. Jacques Derrida was a professor at the University of California Irvine and credited with the philosophy of deconstruction. From an article in the LA Times:
What is deconstruction? A notoriously difficult theory that has alternately been described as utterly brilliant and utterly absurd. Used to analyze literature and other texts, it seeks to find ambiguities and contradictions that undermine the surface meaning of the words. Deconstruction rejects the idea that a text can have a single, authoritative interpretation…In literature, scholars used it to radically reinterpret classic works.
Applied to the Christian faith, the Scripture can be radically reinterpreted. There is not a single authoritative meaning. Even the word “deconstruction” could be used to make Derrida’s case, as the word takes on all kinds of meanings. Philosophers who disagreed with Derrida pointed to authorial intent—that an author meant something by the words the author chose. Historically, Christians have believed the Scripture is God’s Word. We submit to what God meant, and we don’t have the authority to change what He meant.
While I don’t want to be “the word police,” I am not one of the pastors who advocates for “a good type of deconstruction.” Instead, I say something like, “I want to talk about what you’re wrestling with more than the word you use to describe your wrestling. Could you consider that may not be the best word to describe what you are experiencing? Here is why…” My hope is to give someone other options to consider in the midst of their very real, and often painful, wrestling.
Here are other words and definitions that may be helpful as someone processes doubts and struggles. The words and definitions are from the book Before You Lose Your Faith, which I found very insightful.
| Disbelieving | Not yet placing one’s faith in Christ |
| Departing / Deconstructing | Leaving Christ or “the faith delivered once and for all” (Jude 3) |
| Doubting | Wrestling intellectually with aspects of what one believes |
| Disentangling | Separating unbiblical beliefs from one’s faith |
| Disenculturating | Separating cultural expressions from one’s faith |
Disbelieving is when someone just has not yet believed in Jesus.
Departing or deconstructing, as it is originally defined, is leaving God’s Word as the ultimate authority. People debate whether departing begins with behavior or beliefs. We see both in the Scripture. The apostle Paul wrote about a man named Demas who “has deserted me, since he loved this present world” (2 Timothy 4:10). Jude writes of people who stopped believing in “the faith delivered once for all to the saints” (Jude 3) and then changed their behavior. Either way, the departure is from Christ, and it shows the person never really belonged to Christ (1 John 2:19).
Doubting is common, and faith can be stronger on the other side of doubt. Tim Keller compared doubt to antibodies, that when your faith is given some doubt and you work through it, you are stronger to handle the onslaught of future struggles.
Disentangling is separating unbiblical beliefs from one’s faith. This is always good. We should disentangle people’s opinions from God’s truth, other people’s harmful actions from His gracious character, and human traditions from what God has said. So that disentangling doesn’t turn into departing, disentangling while holding on to the Word and Christian community is vital.
Disenculturating is separating cultural expressions from one’s faith. It is a term missionaries use to take the gospel of Jesus and put it in a cultural context, while not confusing the gospel with the context. God uses all different types of expressions of the faith, and we must not confuse the expression of the faith with the faith itself. For example, my friend Ed Stetzer has pointed out that God used the house church in China and the mega church in Korea to pursue people.
Though all of this can sound new, none of this is new. Remember this encounter with Jesus?
From that moment many of his disciples turned back and no longer accompanied him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus replied to them, “Didn’t I choose you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” He was referring to Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, one of the Twelve, because he was going to betray him. (John 6:66-71)
The crowd is filled with disbelievers. Jesus teaches that they must receive Him the same way you receive food and drink, and folks are out. It would be logical to assume some of them later believed in Him, but at this moment, they do not.
Judas is the departer who wants Jesus for his agenda and does not submit himself to Jesus as his Lord. Please notice that when Judas departed, Jesus did not blame the disciples for their inconsistencies, and there were many.
Peter is the doubter, the disentangler, and the disenculturator. He will later deny he even knows Jesus, but he comes through that low point even stronger. Peter and the early disciples teach their Jewish friends that the good news of Jesus must be disentangled from their religious upbringing—that only through Christ we are free. They had to constantly make it clear that the true gospel was not the same as their cultural context.
Peter knows there is nowhere else to go, nowhere but Jesus, for real life and joy. We have tasted and seen that He is good. May we remember that there is nowhere else to go.
