What Causes Deconstruction?

Deconstruction has become a real buzzword in the Christain theological zeitgeist. Whenever a term has a rapid jump in usage it spawns untold numbers of articles, thought pieces and books. Adding to that pile of content was Joshua Butler’s article entitled 4 Causes of Deconstruction through The Gospel Coalition.

Being a pastor of a church that would largely identify as Christians at various stages of deconstruction, I feel like this is one of the few areas I can speak to.

I’ve processed many stories of church trauma, abusive theological teachings and painful exclusions from churches when questions veered outside of the predetermined pastoral FAQ’s. I’m writing this not to say that Joshua Butler is wrong, but rather that I have a much different experience of deconstruction.

The first listed reason for deconstruction is “church hurt”. I whole-heartedly agree! Traumatic church experiences often serve as the catalyst for greater questions about the nature of faith, God and the Bible. And they should!

When you’ve been in a church system that tells you how to engage with God and the Bible and then a person in that system betrays your trust, abuses you or berates staff or congregants, you start to ask some questions. I would be more concerned if this doesn’t happen. The characterization in the article is that deconstruction bypasses grief and simply “moves on”. Deconstruction, by its very nature, is not an avoidant or bypassing strategy. It is a process that demonstrates involvement to the level that you start dismantling parts of the belief system that are damaging to God and the community of believers.

To characterize deconstruction as a kind of taking-your-ball-and-going-home is an insulting way of diminishing the anguish and grief that is wrapped up in the process. Deconstruction takes the pain and grief seriously enough to wrestle with it and face of the ways it has wronged the image of God planted in each one of us.

I will also note that writing about church hurt as a cause of deconstruction and not calling for repentance of the churches behind this hurt, is a massive act of blame shifting. It ignores the power dynamics that church systems have and makes the whole enterprise the responsibility of the congregant.

The second reason for deconstruction listed is “poor teaching”. Again, this is a good reason in theory, but fails to address the complexity of what defines good or bad teaching in a church. How many Sundays of sitting through someone’s teaching do you think you would have to rack up before you could judge if it was good or bad teaching? 10? 20? 52?

And what would define good or bad teaching? Interpreting the Bible is a massively subjective task and whatever “good” or “bad” is I doubt many people could agree. So again, the weight of responsibility is placed on the congregant and the cure to deconstruction is to identify a subjective category of church teaching.

The folks I know in deconstruction spaces have been subjected to awful teaching, which has communicated to them that they are bad to the core, but Jesus can heal them if they stay obedient to a specific community of faith. This system pretends to center God, but it actually centers church leadership and their particular interpretations of how God operates. Maybe the cure isn’t trading “bad” for “good”, but stepping out of systems built on control and domination instead of personal and communal liberation.

Now the last two causes of deconstruction are real doozies. The first is “desire to sin”.

Yes, you read that correctly.

People in deconstruction are actually plotting to do harm to self, others and the concept of God by damaging behavior, but they just couldn’t break the combo of the Biblical lock to do what they want.

I’ve yet to meet a person in deconstruction who’s main takeaway is, “Hey! Sin is actually good everyone!” Maybe what this concept is really exposing is that specific behaviors or identities are seen as sinful in these church communities and the process of becoming who God created them to be gets interpreted as just “loving sin”. Folks in deconstruction are wrestling with the biggest questions of the nature of God, the nature of church communities and the distance between the two. That’s not the same thing as just wanting to do something and not liking being told “no”. The parent-child dynamic of the example exposes so much of how people are viewed in certain church contexts that denies the wisdom and insight of every member.

The final cause for deconstruction listed, and I can’t stress enough that I am not making this up, is “street cred”. The rationale, as I read it here, is that deconstruction is super cool now and like lemmings running after the newest Tik Tok trend, ex-vangelicals have put down their Bible for a skateboard. One of the examples given is that being a Christian is like being a kid sitting alone at lunch and an Instagram post on deconstruction is how you make friends.

This one really fires me up.

I don’t know anyone (and I really want to stress anyone here) that hasn’t gone through intense personal loss of relationships and community through deconstruction. When you ask hard questions of faith and don’t come to the same conclusions as others in your faith community the invitation is to submit or leave. These are relationships that have negotiated the hardest and darkest moments of your life and have loved you deeply. You don’t flippantly walk away from that to become cool. it’s actually the opposite.

Now, you do make connections with other folks on the other side of deconstruction and leaving a church as a matter of survival? Of course, but that’s not to be equated with a desire to be cool. I don’t meet with folks in deconstruction high fiving all day because of our perceived coolness.

We grieve the loss of community and certainty. We grieve the years we learned our belonging was ultimately conditional and we grieve the oppressive weight we put on others out of religious zeal. It’s a painful and daunting task, not some grab at popularity.

Diminishing deconstruction in simplistic and selfish terminology is deeply damaging. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the deeply theological conversations at the root of the movement and deepens a divide that shouldn’t exist. Greater curiosity would serve church leaders talking through deconstruction instead of greater certainty. Pastors owe it to themselves and the people formerly under their care.

If you’re interested in processing your own journey of deconstruction, feel free to sign up for Coffee with a Pastor in person or virtually.