What prompts deconstruction?
An article from The Gospel Coalition, by pastor Joshua Ryan Butler, caused quite a stir on my Facebook stream yesterday.
In it Bulter diagnoses the 4 Causes of Deconstruction. He uses a diagnosis / cure structure, claiming that deconstruction doesn’t really cure people the way they hope.
I think many believe Butler has misdiagnosed the causes, and has therefore misapplied the cure.
So let’s take a look.
And full disclosure, I’m not a disinterested observer either since I’ve also expressed my own 5 “headwinds” of deconstruction. And I liked Butler’s The Pursuing God, and interviewed him about it on the Theology on Mission podcast several years ago.
Church Hurt: Butler’s First Cause
Butler acknowledges that people have deep hurt caused by leadership failures and church disillusionment. He claims that the cure is not deconstruction. But cure is to practice lament.
Butler says, “We’re not good at grief today. Much of deconstruction exists because it’s easier to move on than to be sad. But the only true and eternal cure for these deeper wounds is Christ.”
True. As a society, especially the majority white population, we aren’t good at grief or lament.
But my response to this is, “I think the deconstruction IS the lament!”
My second response was, “But I think we have a lot more to lament than just individual leadership failures and abuse.”
Sure I know people (like I literally know them) in the wake of churches blowing up because of leadership failures. And that certainly prompted their deconstruction.
But what about the everyday witness of the (fundamentalist) church? Perhaps this has cause countless deconstructions.
I know many people who are disgusted by the “faith” in action of their believing parents, the churches they were raised in, the churches down the street during the last election cycle, during the pandemic, during the decades long “culture war”.
These people are asking, “Do I really want those people to be my people.”
If deconstruction is a cause seeking a cure, then I think the church (especially the white-fundamentalist-evangelical church) needs to learn confession, grief, and lament.
It could start by confessing and lamenting
- Pursuit of political power over faithful witness to Jesus (his way and his truth)
- Church growth that traded on implicit (if not explicit) racism
- Promoting a doctrine of total depravity without acknowledging systematic sin
- A pro-life platform that focuses on the unborn only (not the poor or imprisoned).
- A “soul” gospel instead of a “whole” gospel.
- An “individualism” that excludes the need for corporate confession.
- And many others…
Poor Teaching: Butler’s Second Cause
The second cause for deconstruction is poor teaching. People are deconstructing faith because they have been given bad teaching about Genesis 1, or distorted ways of understanding why Jesus had to die.
Butler’s cure for this is good teaching.
Instead of endless deconstructing, believing in doubt, and slipping into skepticism, we need better teaching.
And Jesus is our model for overturning bad, human teaching and traditions, for the very word of God.
As a theology profession and author, I trade in ideas. So, yeah. I think better teaching is often really helpful.
But what about the operating system this “good teaching” runs on?
I don’t think Butler has found the real cause for deconstruction. And so his “good teaching” isn’t really the right cure.
Deep down—even if people can’t articulate it this way—people are struggling against the very modern fundamentalist-evangelicalism that they were raised in.
People are kicking against the
- The biblicism the replaces life with Jesus for worship of the Bible
- The cognitive individualism that denies the need for authentic community and embodied emotions
- The anti-science view that denies the sacredness of God’s presence in the world.
- The elevation of ideas over a life of love for God and others
So we certainly need better teaching. But the rise in deconstruction and deconversion isn’t going to stop with better “modernist” teaching.
We need to make more fundamental shifts.
Desire to Sin: Butler’s Third Cause
Butler’s third cause for deconstruction looking for a cure is that “some deconstruct out of a desire to justify their sin.”
As a pastor, Butler notes how often intellectual deconstruction coincided with personal sin (an affair, an addiction, unreconciled relationships, etc). People ask God why God has left them when in reality it is they who have been effectively walking away from God.
As Bulter says, “What the heart wants, the mind justifies.”
To this desire for sin we Butler calls us to the cure of confession and repentance.
But, is sin really why people deconstruct?
The response to this by many (on the more progressive end of deconstruction) has been strong.
If not outraged.
Many see this kind of accusation as
- a type of blaming the victim,
- or shifting the focus away the church acting badly,
- or perpetuating a purity culture of individual sins.
Most people don’t narrative their story of deconstruction by starting with them falling into sin and moving forward form there.
But is it totally wrong?
Certainly, starting a conversation with someone deconstructing by asking them about their history of sin is totally inappropriate. And I don’t think this is the case for most people deconstructing.
But Butler isn’t totally wrong either.
Progressives rightly fault fundamentalist for the inconsistency of (a) claiming a doctrine of total depravity, but (b) denying systematic sin.
But conversely, I would also fault progressives who (a) claim persistent, unacknowledged racial bias/prejudice, but (b) deny sin as an unacknowledged prompt in the deconstructive process.
I would say that many progressives are outrages by “appeals to personal sin” as a reason for deconstruction partly because they have fully shifted from a “purity culture” of personal sin to an emphasis on social and systematic sins such as racism, sexism, patriarchy and economic exploitation.
Certainly I agree that the fundamentalist-evangelical church has been too focused on individual sin, ignoring the corporate nature of the witness of the church, and the systematic nature of sin in the world.
But I also think that personal sin still matters, that fidelity to marriage still matters, that addictions, and bitterness, and anger still matter.
Street Cred: Butler’s Fourth Reason
I honestly don’t know what to do with this one.
I supposed that “famous” people deconstruct as a way to fit into the social norms of their industry.
And certainly these deconversion/deconstruction stories influence ordinary people.
And in a sense, some people feel the draw of moving from the “victim” of the fundamentalist-evangelical system, to the “rescuer” who is revealing all the ills (see this and this on the “drama triangle”).
But I don’t think many are motivated by these reason.
Mostly this feels like a shot in the “culture war” playbook that more often obscures than illuminates.
If you feel like I do that deconstruction is not about destroying faith, but about finding a faith we can live with, then check out Deconstructing without Destroying Faith (a free video series).
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