“If your faith deconstruction doesn’t include decolonizing (which means you deal with white supremacy and patriarchy at the personal and systemic level) then you are just switching the weapon you are using to harm others, but harm will continue to be done at your hands.” Twitter Feed.
This idea of “faith deconstructing” is here with a vengeance in our culture. A basic definition is:
In short, faith deconstruction is the systematic pulling apart of one’s belief system for examination. For Christians, that can mean a wide array of questions ranging from the theological to the practical.
There are some reasons to be concerned about this new ideological framework called deconstructing one’s faith. That being said there are good reasons to be continually examining our faith and reviewing what we believe. I tend to see deconstruction as destruction and examination as carefully looking to make adjustments. The issue is not the objective truth from the Scriptures that needs to be deconstructed but the messed up ideas in our own head about our faith. Consequently, I am not talking about the core essentials of our faith: the nature of God, the Deity of Christ, the Spiritual “fallenness” of humanity; the nature of redemption in Christ and those elements that anchor our beliefs from the Scriptures. The question is what needs to be deconstructed and what do we need to leave alone?
We could say that Jesus “deconstructed” the religion of the Pharisees and Scribes in Matthew 23. There are some very strong statements, the least of which is not Matt. 23:15 –
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”
Whoa! I would not want to be on the receiving end of those comments at all. But before Jesus “deconstructs” their faith, Jesus told the multitudes, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” (Matt. 23:2-3).
Even in this context Jesus did not “throw the baby out with the bathwater” so to speak. The Pharisees and Scribes had the seat of authority (v. 2) and apparently taught things people needed to hear, obey and observe (v. 3). That being said, Jesus warned them, “do not do according to their deeds”. Jesus made it clear that some things we need to avoid, other things we still need to do. In this case there was a clear demarcation between doing those things that the Pharisees taught and how they lived. When their teaching aligned with the “seat of Moses” then practice those things. Jesus warned the multitudes to not do the things that the Pharisees did, not because it was not just a distraction, but deadly harmful.
When we look carefully the principle of “deconstructing” the problem we run into is the old problem of being hearers of the Word but not doers of the Word. Jesus had little time for this kind of hypocrisy. In this sense we all ought to be examining our life for those hypocritical elements in us that compromises truth rather than causes us to walk in truth. If there is any place for “deconstruction” we might want to look at ourselves first. We have to be wise in what we listen to and observe. My fear in “deconstruction” is that people tear down everything around their faith and walk away from it because everything looks hypocritical and fake. Examining our “walk of faith” is important to keep on growing, maturing and to set aside the things of the old life and embrace our life in Christ. But when deconstruction begins destroying our faith then it is not healthy. The obvious problem is if you tear something down, what replaces it? Usually, the state of that person continues to spiral out of control and becomes worse than it was before.
My encouragement – keep listening for His voice in the midst of a sea of voices longing to be heard.
Pastor Brad Little
