The Importance of Deconstruction
We live in an era where the largest and most mainstream churches in the Evangelical world (and outside of it) are taking the time to beat up the idea of deconstructionism. Recently, Pastor Matt Chandler went viral accusing those who would be going through the process of deconstruction of doing so out of a desire to adopt the latest in faith fashion. Those are my words, not his. Essentially, he said it was the latest fad and he warned that it would lead to deconversion. Lead singer of the band Skillet, John Cooper, made a public call for Christian’s to declare war on the ideology of deconstruction as it walks a fine line towards deconversion. It would appear that there is a generalized fear towards whatever deconstruction is … leading you away from the faith you currently espouse.
The cultural understanding of deconstruction is a dismantling of your faith. If construction is the process of building something, then deconstruction is the process of taking something apart. Construction builds a structure piece by piece. Deconstruction takes it apart piece by piece. It seems that if you are a spiritual leader then that is something that you may fear your flock or constituency doing.
But, that isn’t deconstruction.
Deconstruction is a real ideology. It’s actually a philosophical idea proposed by a philosopher named Derrida. It may surprise you to know that the idea was actually centered around literature and words and binary meanings. Derrida proposed that words don’t mean anything without a word that means something contrary to them. For instance, consider the old question: to be or not to be? This question is the interplay of two contrary or opposing ideas. “To be” can be summed up with one word: being. “Not to be” can be summed up with “not being” or in a single word: nothing. The single word or idea “being” really doesn’t mean anything without an opposing idea: “nothing.” The single word or idea “nothing” really doesn’t mean anything without an opposing idea “being.” The two, totally opposing, ideas depend on one another to give the original question “to be or not to be” any meaning whatsoever. The process of recognizing this and breaking this down is what Derrida referred to as deconstruction. He pushed it further than allowing the concept to solely reside in literature. He said these same opposing forces exist in society and society depends on them as well. Within the philosophical idea of deconstruction there is both a literary component and a societal component.
Does that sound like the process that so many Christian’s are going through as they question their faith? Does the recognition of the contrary forces in literature as necessary to the meaning of words sound dangerous to folks staying on the “straight and narrow?” Nope. Because we’re not talking about deconstruction.
What many Christian leaders don’t want people doing is quite simple but terribly distressing. Many Christian leaders don’t want Christian’s asking questions about their faith, their church, their leaders, their theology or the interpretation of scripture that they have been handed. When you sit in a sermon or a Sunday School class with a gifted teacher you can be fed a prepared question and a prepared answer. A gifted teacher can even make it seem as though it isn’t prepared. If you sit through an apologetics class (apologetics is the process of learning how to defend the Christian faith and scriptures with well prepared arguments/answers) you will learn that there are many trends of questions and arguments that get made and many answers and arguments that can be memorized in preparation. And all of this comes across as discipleship, shepherding and leadership but in reality, is simply the intentional stagnating of someone’s growth. It’s foot-binding. It’s deliberately refusing to teach a person to fish, all the while preparing for them seven-day old cod in lots of butter and breading.
I promise you it is the opposite of what Jesus would do.
A philosopher named Descartes proposed an idea called Cartesian Doubt. It was a process of slowly questioning all that you held as beliefs and it was based, largely, upon where those beliefs were rooted. Could you prove that they were true? Did you know they were true or were you told that they were true? It was a slow form of reduction that was meant to leave you with a foundation of beliefs that you could trust and upon this foundation you could rebuild. This is the process that I took my faith through two decades ago when I nearly walked away from God. It was a painful process that left my faith reduced to a single idea that I knew for a fact was true – not because I read it in the Bible or sang it in a song, but because I had experienced beyond a shadow of a doubt: God is love. I knew this to be true. It helped then that scripture agreed. Upon this idea I could rebuild my faith. It was a slow process and this process continues today. But even today when I encounter a new idea I use the process of Cartesian Doubt to measure it against what has come before it. Does this new idea or proposition line up with what I knew to be true: God is love (and everything that has now been built upon it)? If it doesn’t then this idea may not belong in my spiritual house. Or I may need to spend some more time with it.
Here is why asking questions is so important – Jesus asked questions. Every prophet asked questions. The reformers asked questions. Each movement in our theological history has begun with a question. If we are not free to ask questions, then we are not free. God demands this kind of freedom for his people for God is bigger than any question we could ever propose and God is small enough to sit with us in the waiting as we pursue an answer to it.