Deconstructed

There are enormous pressures that people are facing across our world today.  We see an increased emphasis on mental health, something that the Church should rightly be addressing.  September is National Suicide Prevention Month, a chance to place our attention on challenges people are encountering.  

When the pressures of life invade us, we can either choose to draw closer to Christ or, as some unfortunately have done and are doing, to redefine our faith - it's called deconstruction, and as it's been pointed out, the end of that process typically leads to the adoption of unbiblical ideas.   James 4 lays out our process of humility before God in our most challenging times:
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

When a well-known influencer who used to run in evangelical Christian circles discovered her pastor husband's unfaithfulness and the couple got a divorce during the early part of the pandemic, she used it to be critical of the Church, which had become, unfortunately, part of her talking points.  She told Time Magazine: "Divorce is not that interesting of a story. It happens to every other one of us. I did not anticipate my marriage going down in flames in that way, but when I got far enough away from the trauma of the way it ended, and I started examining all the bricks that built that house—patriarchy, religious subculture, body shame, gender limitations, purity, culture, misogyny—I started to realize that maybe it just wasn't such a shock that that house came down. I hope I've taken a clear-eyed look at what those bricks are and how they contributed, and how I was complicit."

But, she says that the Church is at least partly to blame, stating: " I think that the church, at least the one that I have been a part of, idolizes marriage to such a degree that it pushes people into unhealthy spaces, and it keeps them there. It has done a real disservice to marriage overall."  So, Jen Hatmaker says, "I'm out of the church right now. I don't know that I will ever go back, and I don't know that I will never go back," adding, "So I need a break from the machine. I don't feel like I am forfeiting or want to forfeit my faith. I'm relearning what faith can look like outside of the structures."

I don't think this is at all surprising to those who have followed Hatmaker throughout the years.  A recent Christian Post article included quotes from the Time article and related:

Hatmaker’s eagerness to critique what she has deemed “corrosive systems” has long made her a lightning rod among Evangelical Christian circles. Her website states: “I used to be a darling of evangelical women’s subculture but now I am a bit of a problem child.”

“I still love Jesus but church is hard for me, and this makes me sad, like I am missing my childhood home.”

In 2016, the publishing company Lifeway stopped selling her books after she expressed support for same-sex marriage.

“From a civil rights and civil liberties side and from just a human being side, any two adults have the right to choose who they want to love.” She added that “they should be afforded the same legal protections as any of us,” and maintained that, “I would never wish anything less for my gay friends.”

She says, "Many of us grew up seeing scripture as a rigid rulebook, but there is room for a more nuanced approach — honoring it as a source of wisdom rather than a set of ancient instructions to follow word-for-word...," and adds: "Through the lens of Jesus and the deconstruction of faith, we see a pattern of love-centered, people-focused interpretation. Jesus himself challenged oppressive systems and reframed scripture to prioritize compassion, justice, and liberation."

Unfortunately, it seems that the process of deconstruction leads someone away from the truth of Scripture and devotion to the one true Jesus.  We have to make sure that our practice of Christianity is based on His teachings - He is not some "good teacher" whose teachings we can pick and choose, accepting what seems good to us and rejecting what does not.  Truth is not detemined by what we think it is or should be, but by what the Scriptures teach.  He is our source of absolute truth. We must allow the Scriptures to teach us what it means to be a true Christ-follower.

And, you can't separate Jesus from His Church.  He is the Head of the body of Christ, the Church.  We are called to love God and to love our neighbor, and that includes our brothers and sisters in the Church.  Certainly, the Church has its flaws, but it is the ordained body of believers whom God has chosen to get His work done on earth and establish His Kingdom.

We can certainly look for ways we can improve our faith walk - that's not deconstruction, but is better defined as "re-evaluation."  And, we should be doing that consistently.   We are called to grow spiritually, and we accomplish that, or, better put, God accomplishes that through us as we seek Him daily.