Geoffrey Holsclaw
People deconstructing faith have questions about the Bible. They are often deconstructing a fundamentalist view of the Bible And I used to say things like pastor Timothy Keller that just don’t help. “Contemporary people tend to examine the Bible, looking for things they can’t accept; but Christians should allow the Bible to examine us, looking […]
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 […]
PAY ATTENTION! Our entire culture is trying to capture your attention, to make you look at this shiny object, to make you love or fear whatever it is selling at the moment. The prophets of attention are just selling your attention for profits—they are paying to make you pay attention. Amid the prophets of disaster…Amid […]
We don’t need to focus so much on balancing faith and doubt. We need to GET OUT OF OUR BRAINS and back into OUR BODIES. Or better, we need to realize that every brain is essentially embodied, flowing with emotions and embedded in relationships. Isn’t Enough Saying that we need a little more doubt […]
I was wrong. I was out of date. I had a much too narrow understanding of “progressive” when I talked about (and criticized) progressive Christians. In times of social transition WORDS CHANGE. A word changes because people change, cultures change, and institutions change. And right now it seems that “progressive” has come to name that […]
It’s OK to do those Jesus-y things while deconstructing faith. Because it is WHAT WE DO that activates WHAT WE KNOW. In other words, can we normalize continuing to follow how Jesus lived while we deconstruct, rather than putting on a practical agnosticism or atheism? Too often I’ve know people who have genuine questions and […]
For all of us…it’s OK we’re asking questions while deconstructing. But can we ALSOs normalize BEING ASKED questions by others, of being REDIRECTED by those who have gone before us? Are we open to shifting our “AWAY FROM” to a NEW WAY? I’m saying this in the context of already acknowledging that sometimes we need […]
Can we stop placing “deconstruction” on a continuum between conservative beliefs that are transformed/updated/revised into more progressive ones? Instead, there is modern fundamentalism in the West pretending to represent ALL OF CHRISTIANITY. And we need to deconstruct it in favor of the historical, ancient faith. The process of many exevangelicals is to fault conservative […]
For those who need to hear it, let’s normalize the experience of God’s absence. It’s OK that you DON’T SEE Jesus as you deconstruct faith. And that might be a good thing—in the long run. You used to see Jesus everywhere, in everything…leading, working, guiding, providing. But now Jesus is gone, absent, invisible, missing. […]