1+03 - 13+23
Unknown
Welcome to Faithful Deconstruction. I'm Jesse Cruickshank. And I'm Roland Smith. And we're here to have conversations about how to journey through deconstruction without losing your faith.
16+27 - 34+31
Unknown
So recording this is a conversation. We want to invite you into it because the the reality of deconstruction is it's raw. It's unsexy. And so is this conversation. We're going to lean into the actual struggles and tensions and internal conflicts that deconstruction can have. And we want to invite you into the space with us. Yeah. And this is actually something we've been talking about for months.
34+31 - 64+25
Unknown
I mean, this maybe this actual blog started months ago over coffee and lunches, and I've hosted a deconstruction group in my home where we've had conversations about that. And so as we've talked about it, I know that the idea spurred and you just that this needed to be a conversation that's out there and just presented to people, not as that as the answer, but at least getting people started thinking how can I work in my own deconstruction and how can I have other people help other people through their deconstruction and reconstruction of their faith?
64+30 - 82+26
Unknown
Right. Because they're having the conversation anyway. Sure. And it's whether or not they have somebody to hold space with them, to have the conversation with them, to help them deconstruct without losing their faith. And that's why we want to have this here. So people have a resource. But as we're thinking about this time in this moment in the church, why do you think the church was ripe for deconstruction?
83+16 - 111+33
Unknown
Well, I mean, I think the church has has has kind of done this to itself ever since the church was the church in a little in ways. And I don't know that people think about deconstruction this way, but I actually kind of go back to Jesus and the launch of his ministry. And if you think about it, if the people of God in the structures of Hebraic faith and rhythms of life and those kinds of things, Jesus sets the scene and I know he's not deconstructing who God is.
112+11 - 130+04
Unknown
He's he's he's given a better construction of who God is. But he is deconstructing how they practice their faith and what how they look at things and hierarchy and religious structures and. And so really, I kind of look at the Gospels as the first deconstructive journey. So deconstructing a religion that they had, not necessarily who God was. Yeah.
130+04 - 146+34
Unknown
Yeah. And I think that that goes along with, you know, while we're doing this, just because my experience with people is that are quote unquote, deconstructing is that many of them are not deconstructing away from Jesus. They're deconstructing away from a religious structure. And if you think about it, that's exactly some of the stuff that Jesus was doing.
146+34 - 170+00
Unknown
And so we can kind of understand why the Pharisees and Sadducees and others were maybe a little bit irritated that things were deconstructing. Right? Right. It was very scary. But it's not it's not the first time that the church has the has reconstructed after deconstructing the religious structure. Right. We have a history of that throughout Christianity. It started with Jesus probably arguably started, you know, with the people of Israel in the middle of the wilderness, deconstructing the way they knew God before him and with Moses reconstructing that.
170+11 - 200+02
Unknown
But then we have it with Jesus. We have it a couple other times in history, too. This would be a great page. You should take this on is like the the storyline of scripture and deconstruction. I bet it's in there. But but there are other times that we've seen and there's this really interesting phenomenon that several people I mean, I've heard Mike Ross talk about it and others friends of ours that have talked about it, but it seems like there's kind of this almost every four or 500 ish years rhythm where the church kind of knocks up against a wall that in some ways it's created itself and has to go through some kind of
200+02 - 219+13
Unknown
a reconstructive disruption limb analogy, you know, with people and with structures and things like that. I mean, we we look at when Constantine legalized religion, you know, all of a sudden. So Christianity goes from persecution to, you know, now it's a religion of the state. And so there's there's a whole shift in that, you know, and that's around the three hundreds.
219+13 - 237+18
Unknown
And then we see the East-West schism of the church, you know, Eastern Orthodox and where we get Catholicism and then Protestantism out of that happening a little bit after a thousand, and then the Reformation in the 1400s. You know, and so you see these kind of four or 500 year blocks. And now here we are at 20, 22, 23.
237+29 - 257+22
Unknown
And you just you have to kind of wonder, you know, with like COVID and everything else, the church is seeing some structures that don't work for people and and they their faithful people, I mean, they follow Jesus. They love Jesus. They sense a God that loves them. But the structure of the church or the structure of the religious rhythms don't work for them.
257+22 - 277+23
Unknown
And so something has to reconstruct in that. Right. So, I mean, essentially, we're not just talking about the deconstruction and reconstruction of the church itself as an institution, although we are talking about that. Right? That's what everybody is feeling. The new systems of society and a post-COVID world, and in how every part of our social systems crumbled during COVID.
277+23 - 301+36
Unknown
I mean, whether it's supply chains or energy, any energy supply chain, our politics, our social engagement, the way that we work, all of that kind of crumbled and is being reconstructed right now. So there's the whole institutional deconstruction and reconstruction, right? Because the systems that the institution is run on come to an end or hit a wall. But then there's also individual and personal deconstruction and reconstruction, which we usually all experience at our own rhythms.
301+36 - 318+36
Unknown
I think it's just because the institutions are deconstructing that it forces all of us into the space where we have to ask our own questions. And I think it might be important then for us to define when we talk about deconstruction, what are we actually talking about? And you had an interesting opportunity to be in a forum and here's some answers to that.
318+36 - 334+05
Unknown
So research. Yeah, this was just I mean, last week and I mean, we're in October 2022 and this is last week, and I'm in some kind of weird deconstruction and really heretic type groups on Facebook. But I love these kind of conversation scenes, you know, and just seeing where people are and their faith. And this this post came up.
334+24 - 353+11
Unknown
The evangelist in you it it's the evangelist. I mean this post came up and the question was, can you finish this sentence in your own words? Deconstruction is like and then fill in the blanks. So I thought some of these answers were really interesting. One of them said, Your world turning upside down. But oddly, things seem right in the world.
353+20 - 371+01
Unknown
This is where I am now. After lots of work and therapy, still deconstructing. That was in parentheses. Another one said Death to your previous vision. Nothing will ever look the same again. And I think that's true for whatever type of deconstruction you're going through. It's probably like the blinders are coming off and nothing's going to look like it did before.
371+01 - 387+20
Unknown
You can't go back. Yeah. Another person said the movie Anaconda, if you know, you know, which I didn't watch movie obviously I don't know how plays live what else out there now I want to go watch it just so I can figure out what that means. I heard it's a really amazing movie. Yeah. Deconstruction for me was like realizing I'd been wearing glasses all my life and didn't know it.
387+25 - 404+39
Unknown
I thought I'd been seen clearly and objective and didn't know I'd been looking through a very specific lens, deconstruct this when I finally started examining those glasses, which is interesting because perhaps that's perspective that the glasses were causing you to see faith incorrectly or something, or at least in a certain way, that in a certain way now you don't need the glasses.
404+39 - 431+35
Unknown
And yeah, maybe one more here. Not not being sure if what you believe is out of faith or fear. And I hear that a lot, especially in a group that's been meeting at my house on many nights, talking about deconstruction with people that are in various stages and different types of deconstruction. One of those people is going to be a guest on a on an upcoming episode, but I hear a lot of fear in their voice, a lot of freedom, but then also a lot of fear about.
432+08 - 448+03
Unknown
So now what do I believe or now what's my identity? Or, you know, how do I frame who I am, if that's how I framed who I was for years and years? You know, and I think that's the key point, is that so as a developmental psychologist, I think about deconstruction as just a transition in the way somebody forms their identity.
448+15 - 467+22
Unknown
And so it's not that the way that they formed their identity before was wrong or incorrect because that's how they formed their identity out of the previous stage. So it's just an evolution and a progression of that identity formation as we live our lives, as inputs come, as our seasons change in our work, in our family, we change and eventually we have to make meaning of our life in a slightly different way.
467+32 - 487+15
Unknown
And so deconstruction is that identity coming to its kind of natural lifecycle and and then it's a transition period which is always painful, always a struggle, because whatever exists, it has to be broken apart and examined in order for the new thing to be reformed. So that identity in the way that you form your identity on the other side is not necessarily that that's clear and before you were deceived.
487+15 - 507+12
Unknown
But they're just different and it's not only our own identity that we're deconstructing and reconstructing, but it's how we understand God, which I think is what makes it feel so unstable. Yeah, because where we're learning a new way to think about and see God as well as ourselves, as well as our group. So for me, I define deconstruction as this identity change, which then changes all of our relationships.
507+34 - 533+21
Unknown
So I mean, I think we degree the sources of that of that identity change. Or maybe a fair way to say it is the thing that like purchases pushes us into liminal city. That liminal space can be very different. So it can so it can be just a change of perspective in theology or, or faith or, um, you know, issues of sexuality or what are all the cultural things that can kind of push us into those things.
534+08 - 552+08
Unknown
But then I also know people where it has been straight out like church abuse or those kinds. And so those are those structures that have built themselves to a point where they've got to they've got to change because they're they're not those structures don't serve the people that are walking with Jesus, you know. And so some people have been, you know, abused in those kinds of situations.
552+08 - 581+18
Unknown
So I see all kinds of sources of the commonality. But I agree with you. And when you said make meaning, it made me think of this guy, Jack Massaro and transformative learning theory. And, you know, it's basically a liminal process. But he you know, he uses making a new meaning of yourself. That's the terminology that he uses. So as you as you hit a disruption and you work your way in community through it and through the desert and come back out the other end, he says, you make a new meaning, you know, And that's what he the words he uses, Right.
581+18 - 598+06
Unknown
And you and I both know from our understanding of being disciple makers and learning theory and psychology, that if we don't embrace that process like we find ourselves in the middle of that deconstruction and that disorientation and disruption and we don't embrace and recreate, reconstruct on the other side of it, it ends up being very traumatic for us and very destructive.
598+22 - 625+31
Unknown
So it doesn't have to be destructive, but it can be if we get lost in the wilderness of it. Yeah, You know, there's a section of scripture that for me has been really helpful in understanding that the season of the church that we're in and it's Genesis 11 and the Tower of Babel and I've been spending a lot of time, it's not a lot of verses, but it, you know, is referred back to in the New Testament and it's just been that thing on my heart because for them, for the people who are building the Tower of Babel, like, like God changed the world on them, it wasn't a natural like progression.
625+31 - 639+16
Unknown
Oh, I guess we're feeling starting to feel frustrated with one another. Maybe we're speaking a new language. It was like the world was one way and then they woke up the next day and the world was completely different. And in the story of the Tower of Babel, they have both types of experiences of the two different types of deconstruction that we see.
639+16 - 657+38
Unknown
So the deconstruction of I was with my group, with my people, we spoke the same language and then suddenly we don't. And I'm different than my people and how do I handle that? And then the other space of deconstruction of I'm different and I actually have to go find people like me and live as a different person in a new place because they were scattered so the the story of the Tower of Babel holds these interesting mysteries in there.
657+38 - 689+02
Unknown
And we're going to examine some of those insights from scripture there as we walk this journey together. But my hope and I'm interested in what your hope is, but my hope is that through these conversations, we can kind of normalize deconstruction, that we can kind of take some of the energy out of it, that people can ask questions and and discuss the awful things that have happened to them and the different ways that they're seeing the world without having to lose their faith that they don't have to both leave God or abandon Jesus while they're asking hard questions about systems, their own identity, their relationships with others, and that we don't have to look back
689+02 - 717+07
Unknown
on our past and judge what God thought was good, not the trauma or the abuse, but just the way that they were raised like that. That doesn't necessarily have to be bad. It's in order for it to be okay, to be different. Well, yeah, I totally agree. And I would also add to that I think I think my my thesis or my premises that deconstruction is a necessary thing and it's a it's actually probably something we all go through all the time because our theologies, you know, evolve and change and, you know, and I'm a deconstructed person.
717+07 - 735+33
Unknown
I mean, I could tell you I didn't grow up in the church, but then when I came to faith in my twenties and you know what I how I viewed scripture in the church and, you know, all those kinds of things is it's very different now than it was then. So I have deconstructed those things and and I like to think that I've gotten closer to God and I feel closer and I feel like I'm more on the right path.
735+33 - 763+35
Unknown
And so deconstruction is not a an evil thing. And I think, you know, there are some parts of the church when they hear the word deconstruction, they automatically think, Oh, you're leaving Jesus behind or you're losing your faith. My experience is that, you know, some of those people have deconstructed theology perhaps away from orthodoxy a little bit. And there and there and they're asking the question, is there a way, you know, should I go back to the thing that is keeping them in the conversation is community, right.
763+35 - 781+07
Unknown
And so that part of the Bible story where they find some people and they start journeying together, that perhaps that can be one of the answers, you know, that we come out of this with is that it's important if you are deconstructing or if you're guiding people through deconstruction that you do it in community and you create a safe space for that to happen.
781+07 - 794+36
Unknown
And I found, you know, some of the people in our group, I mean, they've started coming to our church and sitting in the very, very back against the wall and, you know, exploring what does it look like to still be in the church and still be part of the faith, but have a new view? You know, I love it.
794+37 - 815+21
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Well, I think if we can help and equip people to embrace the journey that they're on and then help others as well to be with them in that journey, I think we'll have succeeded. Yeah. So I'm I'm really looking forward to like the guests that are coming up because I think I mean, you and I have like hours of commentary a week because we've already done it in the coffee shops, you know, in Denver.
815+31 - 835+12
Unknown
But we've got in particular three very different guests, a couple of pastors, and then a person that was in a community of faith, you know, and it was kind of an abusive situation. And so we've got some interviews coming up and conversations with them that are really give us varied pictures of what deconstruction even looks like or how they arrived at that.
835+12 - 847+38
Unknown
So I think that's going to be real telling. And and I'm looking forward to coming out of these six conversations with better clarity myself, you know? Yeah, me too. I'm really looking forward to hearing their story. So, yeah, we're looking forward to you joining us in our next episode.
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