Jesus Welcomes Your Questions
Photo by Mike Yukhtenko
The evangelical Church is responding to a crisis. The past few years have seen large swaths of congregants question their faith and subsequently jettison beliefs, churches, and traditions they once held dear. The modern theological buzzword for the movement is deconstruction.
This week Joshua Ryan Butler published a piece on The Gospel Coalition offering four underlying reasons for deconstruction and four ways the Gospel can heal each. His overall point, that deconstruction is a symptom of underlying issues, is accurate. However, having worked with deconstructing students and congregants first as a teacher then as a pastor over the past decade, I believe he misses the mark and, in doing so, further compounds the issue at the heart of the matter, the rampant hypocrisy of evangelical institutions. And the real solution, an actual encounter with Jesus.
It should be said that the deconstructing phenomenon seems to largely be an evangelical one, with deconstruction more often than not consisting of the rejection of evangelical theology and institutions rather than Christianity as a whole. Of course, this is not exclusively true but seems to be the impetus for articles like Butler's.
He begins by rightly identifying the ways church hurt and poor teaching have led to the questioning and rejection of these same churches and their teachings en masse.
But he unfortunately continues. Butler proceeds to identify both a desire to sin and "street cred" as the final two reasons we've seen a significant movement towards deconstruction. In doing so, Butler exemplifies the actual root cause, evangelicalism's tone-deaf hypocrisy.
I want to point out that I would still consider myself an evangelical theologically. Furthermore, I was raised as an evangelical, educated as an evangelical, and believe as an evangelical to this day. None of what I say comes from an outsider's criticism. I was very much on the inside, both theologically and institutionally. I sat back absolutely baffled time and again by evangelicalism's behavior over the last several years, both in the institutions I was a part of and in the nation as a whole. The church has had me unironically saying out loud, "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills," to close friends and family over and over again. And I am not the only one.
It is here the general gist of stances and articles like Butler's rub me the wrong way. Not once does he acknowledge the elephant in the room. Evangelicalism's body count over the past decade is staggering. Yet, the cure for Butler does not lie in calling evangelical church's, institutions, and leaders to repentance. Instead, the deconstructionist is the one with the problem.
Yet the institution as a whole has defiantly and stubbornly continued to tighten its grip on power and control, casting aside LGTBQ people, abuse survivors, women, people of color, the poor, illegal immigrants, and on and on and on. In the face of this, it has ironically been the evangelical Church's lack of Butler's four cures (public grief/lament, good teaching, confession/repentance, and crucifixion of their image) that has left so many spiritually untethered. What have we become when the world knows us more by who we hate than by who we love?
For many like me, we deeply believed what the evangelical Church taught us about Jesus, love, truth, character, and sin. Only to watch the evangelical church abandon the concepts of love when it came to "outsiders," truth when it was costly, character when power was at stake, and sin when it was our own. It was evangelicalism's own prophetic voice and subsequent failure to be all that God envisioned for her that has led so many towards deep seeded questions of faith. Ignoring this reality undermines any attempt at dealing with these questions. What if Jesus was right and bad trees produce bad fruit? And what if fruit is more than theology? What if we were known by our love? Perhaps deconstructionists have gone elsewhere in hopes of finding communities that embody this.
For most, deconstruction is not an attempt to distance oneself from Christ. Instead, it is a necessary and frightening step, an attempt to follow faithfully the Jesus we've come to believe wherever He may lead us. Deconstruction is not an enemy to Christ. Let me say it again. Hard questions, doubt, real-life fledgling faith may be an enemy to evangelicalism's empire, but they are not to Jesus.
Every single person I have listened to, talked with, and offered direction to, who was deconstructing, wanted desperately for it all to be true. They each wanted the real radical life-changing presence of Jesus but had encountered crippling obstacles and were left believing there was nowhere for them to go. They each took tremendously courageous steps to see if He was out there. Listen to their stories. Please. For these people, deconstruction is an authentic search to see if the Jesus of the scriptures, a gentle, merciful, forgiving God, is really out there and really loves them. The solution to the dizzying reality of deconstruction is not better faith, better teaching, or better morality. The solution is always and only the risen Jesus.
Jesus is ok with your questions. Jesus is ok with your doubt. And so are we. If you need a safe community to explore and encounter Jesus, to ask hard questions, we are here. Join us this Sunday or grab coffee with one of our pastors. We have and continue to encounter Him in our midst. We'd love to share that with you.
Here are a few other reading suggestions for you:
