Deconstruction has perhaps accelerated in recent years, but I suspect that deconstruction is part of the evolutionary / biological process of the human species. We tend to evolve to new understandings, new ways of looking at things, new scientific discoveries, and so we deconstruct the religious beliefs that we had because they don’t align with science, or they don’t align with history, or they don’t align with what we now understand to be more accurate or factual in our world.
So, by deconstruction I mean to say that we question things we have been taught, and I would have to say that I’ve been doing this all my life. Most people would probably agree that they question various things they are taught over the course of their lives. We do not simply believe everything we are told all of the time. We all explore; we all ask questions. But there are also different types of questions. Some questions stay more inside of a particular religious belief system and don’t push the belief system very far, while others seem to stretch beyond social and religions norms and could seem like more obvious “deconstruction” questions.
When I was 14, I asked some smaller-scale questions, exploring my faith. I could see that there is more than one religion in the world. I was a Christian, but there were other people who were Muslims, Buddhists, Jewish, Hindu Taoists etc. I asked myself why do all these religions exist and how do I know I’m in the “right” religion. As a fourteen-year-old with an under-developed brain who just wanted a little bit of reassurance, I decided that I would look up in the Encyclopaedia (because that’s was our go-to before the internet), whether or not Jesus actually historically existed. It would be no different than googling whether or Buddha or Mohammed existed, but, at the time, I decided that if Jesus was in the encyclopaedia, I was going to believe in my religion because of the fact that Jesus walked the earth. I was going to trust that what we believe about Jesus is true because my religion was founded on a person who lived and breathed and made claims about himself. I wanted to know that my religion had at least some kind of truth or historical basis to it that was more than just belief in an inanimate object or some convoluted, pie-in-the-sky “god,” that isn’t based on real people.
At fourteen, I discovered that Jesus really did exist on planet earth 2000ish years ago. I verified his existence according to the encyclopaedia, and I decided that I would continue to be a Christian. I did not necessarily believe that Christianity was superior to other religions. I actually wanted to explore other religions and find out why other people believe what they believe, and try to determine whether what I believe has less validity in light of other people and cultures. But I was also scared of doing that, and my school did not offer studies of other religions. Plus I was hearing messages like “Christianity is the only way” and that people who don’t follow my religion will go to hell! Those kinds of threats don’t give us a lot space to push the boundaries or to deconstruct and reconstruct various beliefs.
By age eighteen, I was depressed, and I couldn’t understand why. I essentially believed that God was the answer to my problems and yet God didn’t seem to be helping me or fixing/“saving” anything. I felt like I had to fake being happy and pretend to have thing “all together” as a baby-adult, when I most definitely did not have my life “all together.” I used to spend hours in the fetal position, bawling my eyes out, wondering what was wrong with me, why I was so sad, and why I felt nearly suicidal—I didn’t exactly want to die, I just didn’t want to live in the state I was in. I didn’t trust that my life was going to improve, and it felt so bad to me, that I just didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t like my life. I didn’t have a good job. I was having trouble finding a job because I had moved interstate to a place where there were fewer jobs available, and I was having trouble keeping a job because of my mental health. I was just beginning a college degree but I didn’t know what I wanted to study and I couldn’t afford my degree. My car broke down a few times, and I was evicted and moved house three times—all between the ages of eighteen and nineteen. On top of all that, I didn’t have a boyfriend, I was single and I feared no one was ever going to love me or marry me. My life felt shit and hopeless.
Depression furthered my deconstruction journey because I wanted “out.” If religion, at the time, was only adding to my confusion and depression—because I was angry at the sermons I heard about how I should have it all together, and serve God, and give more time and more money that I don’t have—then I wanted “out” of whatever it was in my religion that was making me depressed. I was feeling a tremendous amount of guilt, my God-concept was basically a voice in my head constantly convicting me about what is “right” and what is “wrong,” and I didn’t get things “right” all the time and so I feel depressed and hopeless, guilty and ashamed, and my external life of study and trying to find a job, and place to live, and a car that worked only added to my feelings of utter failure as a baby-adult. Shame was eating me alive by the age of nineteen. I was barely an adult. My brain was not fully formed, and yet I felt so much shame that I can barely describe just how painful it was and I would argue now that it was irrational too. It was not a “normal” or healthy level of guilt.
Meanwhile, I was going to a Bible College that actually agreed with me that my God-concept was not helpful because I was full of shame all the time, and that should not be what religion does to a person, since we believe “God is love.” Romans 8:1 Therefore there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus—this verse began to transform my life at the age of 18. I came to the conclusion that Jesus died on the cross to save me from my guilt, which was something I didn’t really think I’d ever heard preached before. It was one thing to tell me God forgave me and loved me, but to tell me that God didn’t actually need or want me to feel extreme levels of guilt and shame—that I was “saved” from that—this was monumental information for me at the time. I deconstructed guilt, and I reconstructed: God is love; I am forgiven AND I don’t need to feel this level of guilt anymore.
So, once again, I was deconstructing at 18, but I wasn’t deconstructing my entire religious upbringing, it was just a deconstruction and reconstruction of various doctrinal and theological beliefs. It felt revolutionary to me because I was able to feel better about myself and gradually heal some of my depression.
Ten whole years later, when I was 28, my mother died and I felt reassurance in my heart that God was going to use her death for my good. That’s probably the complete opposite of what you might expect. I wasn’t questioning why God didn’t heal my mum. I wasn’t hating or blaming God for her death. I actually interpreted her death as a seed. I latched onto that verse in John 12 that says “as a seed falls to the ground and dies it produces many seeds.” Within the next year, I deconstructed hell and I honestly believe that mum’s death and my deconstruction of “hell” are linked and not a coincidence. I can’t say for sure that I would ever have gone through that if my mother was alive today and that is a complex thing to grapple with. My mother was asking questions while she was sick with cancer and dying. The things she had believed for years, weren’t working for her anymore. She came into the same kind of “grace” awakening that I had had ten years earlier—she wasn’t meant to be shackled by guilt anymore, even a guilt that asked her to fight to live, instead of receiving her own death. She stopped fighting and she was ready to die, and I took up her questions. Rob Bell happened to write “Love Wins” the same year my mother died! And I read it within twelve months of her death, and I was sure I had just stumbled onto “the truth.”
Mum and I had changed churches and were going to grace-based church just before she died. In fact, her new church was directly connected to her cancer journey. Because of cancer, she saw a naturopath who recommended this particular pastor and his church. I approached my new pastor some time after mum’s death and I told him to read Rob Bell’s book. I explained that I was really struggling to believe in hell because a belief in hell justifies how guilty I felt growing up and how guilty my mum felt before she came to a grace awakening. Either God is capable of saving all people from guilt and from hell, or why should I believe that God has saved me, but excluded all those who are in hell?? It didn’t make sense anymore. I was starting to believe that I shouldn’t feel extreme shame AND I didn’t deserve to go to hell for my sins because God is love and God forgives rather than punishing people. That was the point I got to in my deconstruction journey at 28-29. Soon after, my pastor read “The Evangelical Universalist” and we both became passionate Universalist-Christians!
The next step in my deconstruction journey meant expanding my religious beliefs to the extent that some people would label me a heretic. I was pushing the boundaries almost beyond my religion, but technically not beyond Christianity, because universalism has been “option” like a denomination, since Christianity’s inception. People simply love to argue about whether or not it is heresy, but it is no more heretical than the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism. Does God choose exactly who God sends to hell (double predestination / sovereignty) or do human beings make choices that cause them to go to hell (free will)? Universalism is just another branch equal to Calvinism and Arminianism. It is the idea that God only allows people to go to hell temporarily to heal them from self-righteousness / disbelief / anti-love, and eventually everyone embraces heaven.
Fast-forward another ten years: I was married to an American and we move to the United States in 2021 when I was 38 years old. I was still basically a universalist but I had a lot of questions around human sexuality, starting to recognize purity culture trauma in my life and becoming queer-affirming (to the point of saying I don’t believe it is sinful to be LGBTQIA+). I found that there were a lot of people in the United States also deconstructing, not only hell, but also racism, sexism, homophobia, all the “isms,” all the stuff of our religion. There are a lot people asking where discrimination came from and why our religion says this is “God’s law” when the Bible is not scientifically accurate and was written in a particularly context to a community and is specific to their culture at that time.
We are deconstructing verses like “the children of ham turned black for their sins,” “women should be silent in the church,” “if a man lies with a man, that is detestable.” We are arguing that Biblical interpretation has evolved and must continue to evolve over time. I feel the spirit propelling many Evangelicals to deconstruct, many churches to evolve, various denominations and religions to unite in discussion and reconstruct something healthier than the religion we have held onto in the recent past.
And so I am deconstructing again! I’m evolving again! And I’m very open to evolution. In fact, I’m reading books about evolution because it was something I was never taught in my “Christian school,” alongside reading books deconstructing the isms, challenging and expanding Evangelicalism.
I want to believe that creation is being propelled toward love. That we are evolving into love. That the universe; the spirit of God, is love, propelling us forward into greater love.
That is the kind of Evangelical Deconstruction Journey I am on. Since it has taken such a long time to evolve to the place I am in right now, I suspect I will be deconstructing and reconstructing for my entire life. I think it is healthy to explore the social systems and structures we have created for ourselves, especially religion and especially since religion is often the basis for our governing laws and the foundation of our morality as human beings.
So when I talk about deconstruction, I’m talking about a vast array of questions and explorations that hopefully lead us in a direction of greater love for humankind, and greater equality/equity.
I would love to hear your deconstruction journey. Where it has and is taking you.
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