Human

The following post is part of a series describing my story of deconstructing my Christian faith and reconstructing it within orthodoxy rather than choosing to deconvert.

What is “Deconstruction”?

Deconstruction is a hot term floating around Christian circles right now and feels amplified because social media, big-name pastors, Christian leaders, and docuseries like “Shiny Happy People” are talking about their experiences with it.

Looking at my own experience, and that of others, and those who have gone before me, I think deconstructing our faith is a very usual thing for people to go through and always has been — it’s just been called different things at different points in history. 

People differ on the definition of deconstruction; some prefer to call it “disentanglement” or simply “sanctification” to avoid being associated with the now very cultish, almost derogatory term of deconstruction.

I have often referred to this process myself as a “crisis of faith” and a “crisis of identity” rather than deconstruction alone — I don’t know that the two can be separated. What we believe and give our allegiance to inherently shapes who we are, and there’s no escaping that.

A crisis is a thing that exposes a weakness and a vulnerability that then threatens our sense of stability and security. And the deconstruction of something elicits a sense of taking something completely apart, looking for anything stable that might be left.

The deconstruction of what I believed happened because of a crisis — because I was exposed to the faulty things I’d used to build my sense of self and my understanding of the Gospel, revealing that what I had was a house built on sand.

But this process has also been something else — an ongoing, twofold invitation to let God strip back all the way down to the bare foundation of what I believed and thought to be true about what it means to be a Christian, and allow the Holy Spirit to help me reconstruct and reorient my life around orthodoxy, or sound teaching, so that my faith could hold water — so that it could sustainably hold life. 

You’ll hear many stories of people who’ve been invited to deconstruct but who don’t also accept the invitation to let God show them His true design and instead, because of understandable feelings of disillusionment and anger and pain, choose to redefine what it means to be a Christian for themselves — or completely deconvert altogether.

In essence, they forfeit the call to struggle with God, and persevere in struggling. 

In Genesis 32, when Jacob is on his way to meet his brother Esau for the first time in decades, a reunion that would end in reconciliation, we find an interlude where he wrestles with a man and perseveres in wrestling him until the man blesses Jacob. The man gives Jacob a new name, Israel, in Hebrew meaning “struggles with God,” telling him “for you have struggled with God and men and have prevailed.” Jacob knew then that he had seen God face to face, and his life had been spared. 

Israel becomes the name of God’s chosen people; their very identity as ones who were appointed to represent God to the nations was also to be ones who struggled with God, who persevered in struggling, and prevailed. 

As ones who have been adopted into this chosen people by God’s grace and our faith in Christ, this is our call, too. 

A Brief History

I grew up in the Church. My mom intentionally laid a foundation of instilling Scripture into me and my sister, teaching us the importance of discerning God in our lives. This would prove important for the survival of my faith later in life.

I also come from a very charismatic background where the gifts of the Spirit and “manifestations of the Spirit” were always talked about and, for me, became equivalent to

• evidence that I was near God and
• that something was being done right.

Things like “holy laughter,” speaking in tongues, “falling out” or getting “slain in the Spirit,” praying long and fervently for physical healing, prophecy, evangelism, and sometimes bodily reactions that looked like convulsions were all commonplace.

Worship became a place where I sought an emotional high, yet more evidence that I was near to God, and something was being done right (spoiler alert – this is false).

I was full of zeal, ready to see God’s kingdom flood the earth.

After I graduated high school, I went off to Youth with a Mission (YWAM), a large Christian discipleship and missionary training school, where I was set on becoming a missionary to the nations. I genuinely loved God. I learned so much about who He is in this school and out on the mission field. The culture and atmosphere of YWAM was very similar to the church I grew up in, and I felt right at home.

After I came home from YWAM, I started attending my current church and would serve in youth ministry for the next three years. This was another thing I loved and, again, I learned so much about who God is during this season of my life. I made great friends and found a community of like-minded people that I felt I could run with forever. 

But here was the kicker in all of this: I knew that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for my sins; that He resurrected on the third day, defeating sin and death, and is now seated at the right hand of God — but, to my surprise, that was not the Gospel I internalized. And it certainly wasn’t the one I was living out.

The Gospel I internalized and lived from was a form of sneaky legalism: it told me that if I participated in all these spiritual gifts, and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and evangelized, and did mission work, and made disciples, and did “all the right things” and “was a good Christian,” then I would be saved.

I would be good, and righteous, and accepted, before God, before man, and before my own self.

This brings us to the obvious: the beginning of a very surprising and painful invitation to struggle with God.