Daniel Rose: The Pastor Next Door

Hey, welcome back.

This is the Pastor Next Door.

We are ready for season two, a season focused on deconstruction and reconstruction of our faith.

I want to remind you, this is a podcast for honest conversations about faith, especially when faith feels complicated, uncertain, or worn down.

I’m not here to give you easy answers or to fix anything.

I’m here to sit with you for a bit, ask good questions, and make room for grace and honesty along the way.

Wherever you’re coming from today, I’m really glad you’re here.

Let’s get started.

So this season is about deconstruction and reconstruction.

And maybe for some of you, just hearing those words is weighty.

It just kind of puts something on your heart.

For some of you, this is going to feel really threatening that I’m even using these words.

You’ve already begun rolling your eyes, and it just feels like a real threat.

For some of you, hearing a pastor beginning to talk about the idea of deconstruction and reconstruction might be relieving.

Because here’s the thing: deconstruction is not the enemy.

All throughout the history of faith, what we have seen is a constant cycling of deconstruction and reconstruction in people’s lives.

And so it’s not an enemy.

It’s not something to be afraid of.

It is a part of the process of growing in our faith.

So, what do people mean by deconstruction?

Well, I think at its core, deconstruction is the idea of taking long-held beliefs that maybe we have just kind of received or that have just kind of been a part of our belief system and the way we think about things for a long time, things that we’ve never, maybe never really examined.

And so we question those long-held beliefs.

We are re-examining our theology.

And let’s be clear, whether you are someone who is an atheist or someone who is an atheist, if you are someone who is a Christian or a Buddhist or a Muslim or any other variety of belief system, we have long-held beliefs, and we need to question them.

We need to re-examine them.

For those of us who are theists, we probably need to unlearn some harmful ideas about God that we have.

For those of us growing up in the church, we may really need to wrestle with some significant church hurt because churches are people, gatherings of people who are imperfect, who aren’t, don’t have it all together.

And so we are gonna experience some hurt there, and we need to wrestle with that.

It also means that we may be doubting things that we once assumed were certain.

So, you know, I don’t want you to feel like this is some big dramatic thing.

This is not some big sensational thing.

No, this is a very normal part of growing in our faith.

For many people, deconstruction isn’t rebellion; it’s honesty.

Now, how does this get started?

How does deconstruction begin to catalyze in our lives?

Well, oftentimes it comes through suffering that our theology didn’t account for, right?

We live in America.

Most of the people listening to this are people who live in America.

And the way we have been sold the Christian faith is that if you believe in Jesus, then everything will be great.

Your life will be roses and puppies.

We kind of skip over the whole, you know, Jesus says to take up your cross daily thing.

And so when we suffer, when we go through hard times, a lot of times our theology doesn’t account for it, and so that leads us into a season of deconstruction.

We might also experience hypocrisy from church leadership, because we believe, and I think rightly, that those in leadership in the church really ought to be held to somewhat of a higher standard.

And not that they should be perfect.

I don’t think any of us expect them to be perfect.

But I do think we expect church leadership to have integrity.

To be people who live out as best they can what they say they believe.

And so when we see hypocrisy, when we see doublespeak, when we see people who talk about grace and love and mercy, and then they don’t extend that or that’s not a part of their lives, or perhaps they fail morally in a pretty significant way, that leads us oftentimes into a season of deconstruction.

A big one these days is political entanglement of faith.

Now, we sometimes seem to think that politics and religion being entangled together is a new thing that really started in like 2016, but that’s not the case.

Throughout the history of the Christian church, politics and faith have become intertwined.

And when they become overly entangled, that is when significant movements of deconstruction begin to occur.

I think you can look back to things like the Reformation and see how the Catholic Church had grown in political power, and that pursuit of worldly power really led to some significant theological problems that caused the Reformation.

And we see these movements throughout the history of Christianity, and I think you see these movements throughout the history of other religions too.

Whenever politics and religion get entangled, we are going to see seasons of deconstruction or movements of deconstruction rise up.

The world shrinking as we encounter different perspectives, we are going to deconstruct.

That’s kind of part and parcel with finding out that those people who we have been told are enemies, are problems, are bad people, really are good people, and people that we like, and people that we enjoy, and their beliefs don’t line up with our beliefs.

How can that be?

It turns out that maybe they’re not enemies.

Maybe they’re not the people that we have been told are like this.

And so we deconstruct.

We begin to say, well, if we were wrong about that, what else are we wrong about?

And then there’s just the natural reality of maturing morally, emotionally.

We grow.

We become more mature in our faith and in our personhood, and we realize that kind of the simple Sunday school answers don’t work in a very difficult world.

When we emerge into a world of complexity, simple answers don’t often work.

You see, sometimes what’s being dismantled isn’t our faith in God.

It’s faith in a version of God that couldn’t hold real life.

I want to say that one more time because I think it’s really important for us to grasp this.

Sometimes what’s being dismantled isn’t faith in God.

It’s faith in a version of God that couldn’t hold real life when we are in a complex life.

Simple answers don’t often work.

Jesus, he was a deconstructor.

Jesus deconstructed all kinds of things.

I’m working my way through the Gospel of John right now in my Sunday gatherings, and what we see is Jesus deconstructing the faith of the day on every page in the Gospel of John.

He challenges distorted interpretations.

He critiques religious hypocrisy.

He reorients people to mercy over sacrifice, and he exposes false securities.

He pushes the envelope.

He deconstructs the simple things, or the false homes that have been built up over time by the people of his generation.

So he is a deconstructor.

If deconstructing means exposing what distorts the heart of God, then Jesus was deeply committed to it.

So often when we hear about deconstruction, we think of something that is bad or antithetical to the faith, but it’s not.

It is the clarifying work of God in our lives, I think.

I think it is how we begin to strip away the superfluous.

We begin to get rid of the things that we have added in to our faith, the things that distort our understanding of God.

And what it does is, while it simultaneously strips away, it also expands, and it helps us to have a view of God that can hold the complexity of the life with which we live.

So Jesus dismantled, deconstructed people’s faith in order for them to heal.

It wasn’t to leave rubble.

It wasn’t to leave people in a state of despair.

It wasn’t to destroy their faith.

It was to restore it.

And I think we have to understand what deconstruction is not.

It is not something that destroys faith.

It ultimately brings about a restoration.

So we need to have some guardrails without defensiveness as we enter into this season of discussing deconstruction and reconstruction.

We need to realize that deconstruction is not cynicism as identity, right?

Cynicism despairs.

It’s hopeless.

So often, I think when people begin to think and talk about deconstruction, they think that it leads you to this place where you are cynical about everything, and then that becomes your identity.

It’s not that.

It’s not a perpetual dismantling.

Some people think that as you dive into a season of deconstruction in your life, it is never-ending, and all you are doing is constantly tearing down and destroying.

It’s not that.

It’s not taking pride and skepticism.

It’s not all of a sudden being like, Oh, look at me.

Look how enlightened I am.

I see all the ways that your faith, that other people’s faith, that is flawed and broken.

No, it doesn’t do that.

And it’s also not a refusal to rebuild, right?

It’s not this thing where you lay waste and then all of a sudden you simply walk away.

That’s not what good, healthy deconstruction is.

Deconstruction, remember, is ultimately about a restoration of something that is true and real and good and beautiful.

Taking apart, deconstructing, is only healthy if you’re willing someday to rebuild.

If we are simply going to be in a place of constant deconstruction, constant destruction, constant taking apart, then we never get back to a place of health.

Healthy deconstruction demands a reconstruction.

Now, as we enter in, as you enter into this kind of a season, you might experience some fear.

You might be even feeling some fear as you begin to think about some of these things.

You might say something like this in your head or in your heart: If I question this, I’ll lose everything.

There are some communities of faith where if you question something, they will kick you out.

And so that fear is very real.

But I have to tell you, there is room in the Christian faith to question everything.

And there are communities of people who will let you question everything and will encourage you to question everything and embrace you in your doubt.

You won’t lose everything if you question things.

You might be thinking, If I admit doubt, I’ll disappoint people.

Well, here’s the thing.

You can’t control people’s responses.

If you admit doubt, what I have found as I admit doubt is I don’t disappoint people as much as I create a space for them to say, Oh my gosh, I doubt that too.

You might actually find that more people than you realize are questioning and doubting some of the same things you are.

Or you might be afraid that if you pull on a specific thread, the whole sweater is going to unravel and you are just going to be left with nothing.

I was afraid of that too as I entered into a season of deconstruction earlier in my life.

What I found at the end was not an unraveled sweater, but a more beautiful sweater, one that was, I think, maybe a little bit more real.

Because you see, God, He’s not fragile.

God is not fragile.

God is not worried about your questions.

God invites your questions.

God invites your doubt.

It is in our doubt that we really truly begin to experience faith.

Truth is not threatened by your questions.

Truth isn’t threatened by it.

Truth invites questions, because for truth, questioning leads you deeper into it.

God’s faithfulness precedes your clarity.

As you wrestle through the things that you’re struggling with, as you wrestle through questions and doubts, there is a faithfulness from God that comes before.

Because God is always faithful.

And so because God is not fragile, because God is not afraid of your questions, because God can bear up your questions, his faithfulness is going to precede your clarity.

There will come a day where you have a clearer picture of things, and God’s faithfulness will have led you there.

Relationship can survive uncertainty.

If these are people, if the people in your life are truly your friends, if they are people who truly care about you, as you enter into a season of uncertainty, those relationships will survive.

And while you might lose some, what you will find is those relationships were purely based on transaction, on transactionalism, and they weren’t real.

Because people who truly love you, people who truly care about you, are going to walk through and are going to embrace you in the midst of your uncertainty.

So where are we going here this season?

Well, we’re going to talk about things like what happens when faith stops working.

Right?

Like, when the world, when my belief system seems to no longer work for me, what do I do?

What aspects of my faith should I keep?

Should I let go?

We’re going to talk through how to discern that.

We want to talk about how to rebuild without pretending, because sometimes as we go through a season of deconstruction and we enter into that fear of losing people or that fear of everything unraveling, all of a sudden we go, Oh, oh, oh, and try to put the toothpaste back in the tube, and we try to fake it till we make it.

But we can rebuild without pretending.

We’re going to talk about how do we find community again?

How, after deconstructing, do we connect back deeply into community?

How do we rediscover that?

Because some faith communities really aren’t going to welcome the questioning and the doubts and the struggles.

And we’re going to talk about how a mature faith, one that is resilient, can actually carry you forward.

I’m not here, as we walk through this season, to dismantle for sport, right?

I don’t want us to just kind of dismantle this for some sort of, like, fun thing, poking holes in faith.

That’s not it.

What we want to do as we sit into deconstruction and reconstruction is a pursuit of honesty in the presence of grace.

You know, we might even think about it.

In the story of Jesus meeting the guys on the road to Emmaus, right, it’s after the resurrection.

They’re walking to Emmaus, and Jesus shows up, and he starts asking some questions.

And what he finds is they are absolutely confused, and he listens.

And their hearts are heavy.

Their hearts are weighty because Jesus had died.

All of their expectations collapsed.

Their entire belief system in Jesus had fallen and had collapsed, and nothing made any sense to them.

And so Jesus walks with them for a while, and he listens.

And then, in the midst of that relationship, he begins to share with them the scriptures, how everything pointed to Jesus.

Jesus never shames them for misunderstanding what had happened.

He simply walks with them.

And that is what we want to do this season, is I want to walk with you as you begin to wrestle with your faith.

So if you are in a season of questioning right now, I hope this feels less like warning and more like permission.

As you question, you are not disqualified.

As you question, you are not dangerous.

As you question, you are not beyond grace.

And so in the next episode, we’ll talk about what it feels like when faith stops working, when the old framework just won’t hold.

So take your time.

And I’ll see you next week.