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
I have seen the fruits of the modern church and most of it is bad. This gives me pause every time I read the bible. It makes me resist my own default interpretation, which is what I have heard over and over, mostly from the Baptist tradition. But I am reminded of the stories, the memory verses from my childhood teacher: my mother, and I can sense something different than the empty words of so many pastors/preachers that came after, even in the charismatic prosperity/sensationalism gospel that I was inundated with as a teenager and young adult. Now, I find comfort in hearing these words repeated in the bible, "all of this is about loving your neighbor as yourself, treating others as you wish to be treated, love God wholeheartedly and demonstrate that by feeding his sheep, his "humans" that he created in his image. You don't have to know anything else about the law to follow Him." So when I see people talk about trinity or atonement theory or gay marriage or whatever, I roll my eyes with this sense of, "Wow! How did they miss the point after committing their life to studying the bible?" I actually do think it's about ego, idolatry, all of those things the bible warns against, the "leaven of the pharisees", and the idolatry that Israel fails to resist over and over again. Maybe, similarly, I should eye-roll my own failure to predict the modern church's reaction to the bible.
You've left out one of the most important things: significant alterations in theological interpretations of core evangelical beliefs: inerrancy; meaning of gospel; last things; original sin, etc,
I have seen the fruits of the modern church and most of it is bad. This gives me pause every time I read the bible. It makes me resist my own default interpretation, which is what I have heard over and over, mostly from the Baptist tradition. But I am reminded of the stories, the memory verses from my childhood teacher: my mother, and I can sense something different than the empty words of so many pastors/preachers that came after, even in the charismatic prosperity/sensationalism gospel that I was inundated with as a teenager and young adult. Now, I find comfort in hearing these words repeated in the bible, "all of this is about loving your neighbor as yourself, treating others as you wish to be treated, love God wholeheartedly and demonstrate that by feeding his sheep, his "humans" that he created in his image. You don't have to know anything else about the law to follow Him." So when I see people talk about trinity or atonement theory or gay marriage or whatever, I roll my eyes with this sense of, "Wow! How did they miss the point after committing their life to studying the bible?" I actually do think it's about ego, idolatry, all of those things the bible warns against, the "leaven of the pharisees", and the idolatry that Israel fails to resist over and over again. Maybe, similarly, I should eye-roll my own failure to predict the modern church's reaction to the bible.
💯 here on deconstructors/reconstructors demanding the church be doers of the Word — the whole Word and not just the selective pieces.
Thank you for explaining what is confusing to me with deconstruction/reconstruction terminology.
My journey could be called " There and Back Again...to a Much Different Place."
You've left out one of the most important things: significant alterations in theological interpretations of core evangelical beliefs: inerrancy; meaning of gospel; last things; original sin, etc,
We can simply put it as Salvation and the Sanctification process. One cannot go without the other.