A Surprising Form of "Conversion"

From Invisible Jesus, pp. 87-91

Preface: When Tommy sent this reflection to me about deconstruction as fitting into the model of conversion I offer in Turning to Jesus, I was thrilled to discover another way of looking at what we see so many going through today. Conversion involves group identity, and what today’s reflection shows is that some today discover they no longer “fit” into their group and need to find one into which they fit (more comfortably). But that’s not what this reflection is about. So, enjoy.

Though many view deconstruction as a deconversion, we want to make the unusual claim that deconstruction is more a matter of conversion. In his highly regarded book, Understanding Religious Conversion, Lewis Rambo pulls together a century of scholarship on conversion—not just conversion to Christianity, but the experience of conversion in general. Before his book came out many believed conversion resulted from manipulation (which is still how many skeptics view it today). However, in the 1960s it became clear that converts were not simply passive victims of social forces or of manipulative evangelists, but were active agents in their own conversion. Rambo discovered that someone who converts arrives at a crossroad in life (a crisis), and at that intersection decides how to respond to new information with personal, existential implications. That is, she converts.

When considered in light of this understanding, we both have come to view deconstruction as a matter of conversion.  There are five points taken from Rambo’s book that have helped us better understand deconstruction as a conversion process, rather than a deconversion process. 

First, we must understand that people are always making choices in a specific context. Everyone has a context, a world where people around them think the same things, view the world the same way, and respond in the same manner. A person interprets their own context as the default and everyone outside of that is other. Contexts comprehensively weave together the diverse parts of someone’s life in such a way that it becomes very difficult to think or see outside that particular context. This means we need to know a person’s context to communicate with them or even about them.  And in order to know their context, we must learn to listen to them. We will never be able to see deconstruction as a type of conversion until we have practiced that kind of listening. 

Second, there is no such thing as a conversion without a crisis. Some crises are intense. It might be the death of a partner, the sudden loss of a job leading to unemployment and welfare lines, or a diagnosis of cancer. These are sudden events that can have spiritual provocations. A person comes to believe that if they shirk the moment or behave wrongly they will forfeit their opportunity for redemption.  

For others the faith construct may entail a slower back and forth. That is, a faith crisis can function like a see-saw. We give weight to some ideas and understandings that anchor our faith, keeping it rooted. But over time we pick up bits and pieces of ideas that challenge the weighty beliefs we hold close to our hearts. Most of the time we ignore these challenges because the new counterweights are not “weighty” enough to unbalance the see-saw. But if spiritual mentors, pastors and elders, or parents shut down questions and conversation by not listening or empathizing, those counterweights begin to accumulate. Something that has been slowly building may one day shift to the point that a person can no longer remain as they were.

There is another side to the crisis experience that needs to be acknowledged. While a faith crisis can happen on its own, preachers, revivalists, and evangelists are often aware they can manufacture crises.  They know they can manipulate a person toward a decision.  This can include threatening the hearer with fear of eternal conscious torment to the terrifying idea that one's entire family may be raptured one day and you, alone among your family, will be left behind. Even political leaders understand how to utilize the fear and anxiety of separating children from their parents. Such fears can stir hearts and can be stoked to precipitate a “conversion.” This is spiritual abuse. Anyone who has been brought into the church through a manufactured crisis will eventually leave through deconstruction. When they eventually meet Jesus, his beauty—compared to the hellfire and brimstone of fear-based preaching—will likely lead to a faith crisis.  They will question if their previous experience was a genuine conversion, and if they decide it was not, they will be unsure of what to do now that they have encountered the real Jesus. In many cases, they will view their new experience of Jesus positively while rejecting their earlier church experience as a sham. 

Third, this crisis experience inevitably leads to a quest. Nobody wants to remain in perpetual crisis. It’s too painful. I (Tommy) see people in crisis every week. It might be a husband entering through the church doors behind his wife and three kids, his face drooping with the hopelessness that comes from watching his faith disintegrating, week after week, for years. He comes because his wife’s faith seems anchored and because his children have community. But the crisis is evident on his face, and it is clearly painful. 

The church’s unwillingness to listen and empathize reveals serious deficiencies in our faith and the purpose of our gathering. The modern church service is not designed for listening. Sunday mornings are shaped for one-way communication where the speaker on a platform speaks and the rest of us listen. And because there is no mechanism by which we can genuinely listen to each other, the skeptic easily finds a listening ear outside the church.  This happens frequently on social media. Rambo and others have labeled this stage of conversion a quest. The person moving into conversion seeks resolution to the crisis. That is, the person is now a seeker searching for an end to her crisis. She experiments, goes to websites, and enters conversations searching for resolution to her pain. 

Deconstructors have now moved from the crisis into the quest. They’ve got a satchel full of questions for those who will listen. They have seen too much and have accumulated far too much counterweight on the see-saw of belief to continue pretending that things are okay. They will find the answers they are looking for, perhaps in the church, or perhaps elsewhere. Perhaps God will meet them in the desert as he did some of the prophets throughout scripture, prophets who could no longer abide the faith crisis of wayward spiritual leaders who had shut their ears and eyes to those at the margins of the community. 

Fourth, the quest leads to an encounter. As the individual seeks answers, they have an encounter, which comes about through an advocate. An advocate is a credible person, a genuine witness to something beyond what the person in crisis has experienced. More specifically, they are an advocate for an idea that resolves the crisis for the seeker. This is incarnational in the sense that it involves someone who is present who embodies the thing or idea you are drawn to. For many, the encounter occurs when the idea in one’s head takes flesh and stands before them in a living body, giving them a full picture of what the resolution, or the new way of living, looks like. Once they meet an advocate, the deconstructing convert comes to a place of decision: whether or not to commit to the way of life witnessed in the advocate. 

Fifth, there is a point of decision where they either walk away or make a commitment to intensify or shift their faith. One of two things will happen as a result of this encounter. A person either walks away or commits to this new path and this new way of being and living. Typically there is some form of ritual involved: a prayer to pray, baptism, a class, or some form of initiation. The ritual may involve leaving behind one’s church and attaching oneself to another group. It may include “witnessing” to one’s former church friends with words like “I’m not there anymore” or “I don’t believe like that any longer” or “I left.” 

Our belief is that those who leave their faith or their church community are questing to cleave tighter to Jesus.  The simple story of the real Jesus often precipitates a crisis leading to commitment in the hearts of those who hear it. They learn that Jesus was a man condemned by the authorities, though innocent. He was a man who allowed himself to be poured out and broken for the benefit of people who hated him, while revealing the oppression and violence that props up their power. The story of Jesus is a powerful story.  

And many deconstructors are converts to a new way of being a follower of Jesus.