Beyond Deconstruction: A Parable and a Paragraph

The word “deconstruction,” on the lips and more importantly in the heart of many, has never sat with me as the right term. But it is the term that many are using. I hear it this way most often: “I’m going through deconstruction.” Some have left the church entirely and classify as Nones. Others are hanging on to a local church at some level by the slenderest thread of connection. This series has been about such persons who not only are in a deconstruction period but also speak up about what the church would look like if reconstructed. Tish Harrison Warren recently wrote that the term “reformation” is better than “deconstruction.” She has a point for those who are reconstructing.

Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash

What the deconstructors find loathsome about the church has been sketched by Josh Butler, but I find what he says too simplistic for the deconstructors I speak with, but his four points are involved (church hurt, poor teaching, desire to sin, street cred).

I’m glad both of these writers are engaging the issues.

Today I want to continue the engagement by pointing to one parable and one paragraph that express why some are deconstructing and what they want on the other side of deconstruction, in the reconstruction of the faith. Some want a radical reformation of the church. The church, yes, but not as they presently experience it.

Here’s the parable, Matthew 21:28-32.

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.

The operative question is “Which of the two did the will of his father?” The answer is, “Not the one who said he would do it but the one who said he wouldn’t but did it.”

Public confession, public participation, public honor – these are not the way of the Father. Turning from who we are to follow in the ways of Jesus is the way of the Father.

Mike Bird wrote a scathing post, if also full of poking and smoking fun, about the tribalism of inerrancy in America. He was right. I’ll riff a bit on that here. Many who mark boundaries with inerrancy are using the term for the authority of what they claim to be true, and some of the hot button topics include same-sex marriage, some feature of Calvinism, and the submission of women. They take pride in their difficult doctrines and socially-critical stances. Other verses in the Bible are every bit as clear, if not clearer, but are not “inerrant” for them. Like the necessity of a pastor’s/elder’s/bishop’s children having faith for the person to be a legitimate pastoral leader, like the calls to poverty in the Bible (which are more than abundant), like greed, and like the call for some kind of measurable equality (2 Cor 8:13-14, read it). When the former Biblical lines are inerrant and the latter lines are (functionally, practice-wise) not, in the sense of authority and the necessity of following them to the T, then inerrancy has left the house. It is what my colleague David Fitch calls an “empty signifier” and a hollow tree.

All of that is at work in the parable of Jesus. But reconstructors take it one long step farther. They want a faith and a church and a community that does what is right, what is loving, what is just and not just a bunch of people claiming the Bible is right.

Which leads me to a paragraph I find resonant with the quest to get beyond deconstruction. This time not from Jesus but from his brother, who surely saw it in his brother.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world (James 1:22-27).

James knows of people who believe in the Bible, who make divine claims for it, but who don’t do it, don’t practice it, and he wants no part of the Confessors-Not-Doers and wants his twelve tribes to Do-it-as-Confession.

If that’s not clear enough, James follows the above words with these questions in chapter two for us:

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

The answers are:

What good is it? No good.

Can that kind of faith save you? No.

Faith without works is a dead faith.

James’ next point is our point: “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith” (2:18).

Reconstructors want to dwell among followers of Jesus who actually follow Jesus. Not among those talk about Jesus but do what they want. They want people’s whose profession is their confession.