A Conversation with a Deconstructing Friend

Is Deconstructing Really like Redecorating a Room? Yes. No. Sort of.

Hey Friends,

Taking a breath from my “21 Strategies” series to share something a little different with you. One of my central interests these days is having conversations with deconstructing evangelicals. I’ve had hundreds of these over the years. So I’ve put together an amalgamation of one type of conversation I tend to have with this crowd. This one’s about a central metaphor used by deconstructers: deconstruction as “redecorating a room”. I think there are good things about this metaphor, as well as some room to explore more. Hopefully it will help you in your own conversations:

One time a young friend of mine told me he was deconstructing his faith. He said for him, it was like redecorating a room he’d lived in his whole life. He was taking down the old musty antiques and the fading wallpaper, replacing them with things he really liked, like jars of pistachios and wacky wallpaper with little flamingos and some shrubs and maybe tiny squirrels hiding in the bushes. 

     “That sounds like a great little apartment,” I said. “I’d like to go to there!” I said that because my friend is a beautiful, quirky person, who listens to offbeat podcasts about topics like how teddy bears are made and what comedians do at pool parties and how any homegrown, small-town friendship could end up being a murder. 

      Just weird enough to be trusted. 

     “Thanks!” he said. 

     “But I’m also wondering,” I said, “What makes this little apartment Christian? If you don’t mind me asking.” 

      “What do you mean? It’s Christian because it’s about Jesus.”

      “Yeah,” I said. “But is it, though?”

      “Of course it is,” he said. Now he did a thing where he leaned way back and folded his arms, which people tell me is something I should pay more attention to, because it means someone thinks maybe I’m being too aggressive and they’re worried I might scratch them on the chin or give them a noogie or flick some little wads of paper at them, those little wet wads I make absentmindedly out of straw wrappers when I’m nervous, and I would flick it right at their nose. 

     That’s what they worry about, but I would never do that. 

      So I tried to say something nice. 

      “Oh,” I said. “Well, your room really sounds great. I can see you doing really well in it.”

      “You do realize it’s a metaphor, right?” 

      “Of course! It’s a metaphor about you being you. You’re saying Christianity has space for you. It’s not some cultural mold you need to fit in. The Bible brings out your beauty, and the beauty of other cultures. It it doesn’t squash them…even if the evangelical church does. Is is something like that?” 

     He unfolded his arms. 

     “And I agree with that, I really do,” I said, “Christianity wasn’t meant to be a little cultural bubble. It has all the space in the world for people to be their quirky little selves. More than any other religion, actually.”

      “Uh, not the way I’ve seen it, it doesn’t. Evangelicals seem to think anyone who isn’t like them isn’t really Christian. I’m not about that.”

      “I’ve seen that, too. But let’s think about other religions for a minute. Buddhists and Atheists and Hindus and Muslims have all pretty much stayed put. Hinduism is still overwhelmingly Indian. Buddhism is still mostly Asian. Islam is mostly Middle-Eastern. Atheism is mostly western. They’ve all traveled a little outside their region, but not much. Christianity is the one religion that’s traveled into every culture and adapted itself. How?” 

    “I guess because following Jesus doesn’t demand you be one type of culture?”

    “Exactly. Christianity has high standards. But it gives breathing room. So we find more Christians in Africa and South America and Asia today than in in America by a long shot. That never could have happened if Christianity - true Christianity - demanded people become American or western. Christianity helped Africans become more African…healthy, flourishing Africans. Not Middle Easterners or Americans.”

     My friend nodded. 

     “So like I said, I like your room metaphor. Christianity lets you decorate things the way you want. It honors personalities and cultures. But Christianity also does something else. It talks back to us.”

     “What do you mean it talks back to us?” 

     “Well, let’s think about Jesus,” I said. 

     “Always good.”

     “Right. On the one hand, Jesus is upsetting the religious leaders because of his radical inclusivity. A great example of this is his conversation with the non-Jewish woman with a racy past in John 4. Jesus offers himself to her, freely. He doesn’t demand she become Jewish. He promises her he is creating a movement where she can worship him as a non-Jew. As a woman. As herself. She’s thrilled by this news, and immediately goes home to invite her non-Jewish friends to meet Jesus.”

      “That’s awesome.”

      “It is awesome. And that’s where your room decorating metaphor is totally right. Jesus lets the woman decorate the room how she wants…which is extremely upsetting to the religious leaders.”

    “Enough to get him crucified.”

    “Exactly. But Jesus doesn’t just name and affirm cultural beauty. He also talks back to cultures and individuals. We see this especially in the way he talks back to the Jewish culture surrounding him. Jesus says to the conservative religious Pharisees: ‘You have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.’ (Matt. 23:23). In other words, ‘If the scriptures’ heart beats for the poor, the broken and the oppressed, so should yours.’” 

      “I like it.”

      “Me too. Then Jesus turns to the more progressive Sadducees. Jesus says to them: ‘You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.’ (Matthew 22:29). Do you notice what’s true in both of those encounters?” 

     “Jesus is very punk rock?” I laughed. 

      “So punk rock. But notice what Jesus does. He talks back to the cultures and individuals of his day. And how does he do it? Through the scriptures. See, the problem with the conservatives and the progressives of Jesus’ time was this: they weren’t letting the scriptures talk back to them. They were picking and choosing which scriptures to obey. That way, scripture could be gagged from correcting their wrong thinking, or exposing their cultural biases, or shedding light on their unjust practices. They made the scriptures into something in their own image. Something that looked and sounded more like them.”

     “That’s my whole problem with evangelicals, though. They say they believe the Bible, but they pick and choose what they want to believe in it. They make it seem like the Bible is all about being a white republican.” 

      “Okay. Sure…but what about you?” 

      “What do you mean what about me? I care about the poor and voiceless. That’s why I left evangelicalism.”

      “Have you left evangelicalism, though? I’m not so sure. Here’s a question for you. How has scripture talked back to you recently? How has it corrected your wrong thinking? How has it corrected your cultural biases? How has it exposed your behaviors that don’t lead to flourishing? Because, I’ll be honest, the idea that all of Christianity is your own personal room? That sounds like the most evangelical thing I’ve ever heard. ‘Here’s Christianity. Have it our way.’”

      My friend laughed a little. 

      “I guess I can see that.” 

       “Look,” I said. “I don’t blame you for thinking that way. But if you want to get away from evangelical culture, you’ve got to get away from the evangelical framework. So let me add a couple of contours to your metaphor, okay?”

     He nodded. 

     “That room of yours needs foundations to give it a shape. Decorate it however you want, but it needs a blueprint, or it’ll crumble. That’s why Jesus compares religion not founded on his words to building sandcastles on the beach: when hard times come, it’ll be washed away. So what does Jesus say are the foundations of faith? The scriptures. He says ‘not one word of the scriptures can be broken’ (John 10:25) That’s because they’re written ‘by the Spirit’ (Matthew 22:43). God Himself. So, like the foundation of a house, they can’t be changed or adjusted: ‘Not one jot or tittle can be removed’ (Matthew 5:18). Jesus never talks about rabbinic writings or other teachers that way. That’s language a Jewish man would only reserve for God’s own words. The scriptures are the spaces where God talks back to us. Otherwise, the thing we’re calling Christianity is just an echo chamber for our own opinions and biases.” 

       My friend thought about this for a minute. 

       A long minute, where I took maybe seven drinks of my coffee and thought about leaving or pretending to go to the bathroom and then escaping through an air vent like in the movies.  

Problems

      “Okay. But I’ve seen evangelicals use the Bible to exclude people.”

      “Sure. But you’ve also seen ‘evangelicals’ fight for justice. In the 1800s, the black community and the evangelical abolitionists banded together to take down slavery. And both of those communities had ‘evangelical’ convictions. They both used the scriptures to talk back to American greed and racism. The scriptures formed the music, the sermons and the moral vision for abolition. Later, it did the same for the civil rights movement.”

      “That doesn’t sound like the evangelical church I know.”

      “Sure. We took a wrong turn, and that’s a long story. But the long and short of it is this: around the late 19^th century, evangelicals started making some interesting choices about how we interpret the Bible. We started making up ideas that we thought would help us win the culture wars. But what those choices actually did was isolate us from the global, historic church. And here’s where, if I can, I’d like to expand your metaphor even further.”

     “Oh, great.”

     “Let’s think a little more about the way Jesus describes following him. Does he describe it like being in a room alone, putting up curtains? Because that doesn’t sound like the life of a Christian. That just sounds like the life of a very sad clown. I think Jesus has something better. Here’s the way Jesus describes our faith: ‘Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life’.’ Hundreds of houses and people. What does that sound like?”

     “Like…a city?”

     “Exactly. Not just a room. A city. Or, a village. Which sounds more quaint and friendly like the one from Beauty and the Beast with a little library and singing birds.” 

      “You know,” my friend said, “if the Spanish Inquisition had tortured metaphors, you could have had a great career as a priest.” I laughed. 

    “Thank you? Look. Here’s my point. In order to let the scriptures talk back to us, we need to let the global, historic village of the church help us to read them. Otherwise we’ll just skip past the parts we don’t like. So we need to read them through the eyes of martyrs, through church counsels who dove deep into the scriptures, collaborated, and argued out the nuances of scripture, through brilliant pastors and theologians over the centuries who’ve taken wrong turns and said, ‘this is a dead end. Don’t go that route.’ We need the Christian village filled with faithful Jesus followers all around the globe: Africans and Asians and even Canadians.” 

    “Even Canadians?”

    “Yes, even Canadians. Some Canadians. Actually I’ll get back to you on the Canadian thing. The point is, Christianity isn’t just a room. It’s a village. So here’s what I would say to you, and to the evangelicals you’re deconstructing: ‘Step outside. Christianity’s a lot bigger than us. The air is great. You don’t need to be cooped up in a room alone. Christianity is an ancient, beautiful, global village. You can be part of it.”

      “Okay,” he continued. “I get what you’re saying.”

       He took another long pause, and I put my little straw wrappers in my pocket.