God is Not Afraid of Your Deconstruction
By Jana Koh
Jana Koh served as a pastor and church planter for 10 years, holding a Masters of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. She is certified as a Spiritual Director through Sustainable Faith, and is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry degree at Portland Seminary focusing on Leadership and Spiritual Formation. Jana is passionate about hearing others’ stories in order to better understand how they know and experience God so that they can look for God’s presence and activity together. Jana currently lives outside Seattle, Washington with her husband, two children, and basset hound. She loves to sing, play piano, write, crochet, dabble in photography, and she will find any excuse to visit the Puget Sound. You can connect with Jana through her website, www.theabodewa.org.
It’s not difficult today to find someone having a crisis of faith. In the wake of viruses, social upheaval, moral failures, political unrest, and the fear and uncertainty that have come with it all, our lives have changed in ways we never could have predicted — and our faith has shifted with it. Some estimate that over 65 million American adults have left the church in recent years, and 2.7 million will continue to leave each year. [1] In their memoir on disillusionment and leaving the church, Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church, Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal put it this way: “There is a great exodus taking place in Christian circles. Can it be called a loss of faith? I don’t think so. It is rather a loss of confidence in everything at once.” [2]
For many, this shift in faith is incredibly painful. In my work as a spiritual director, I almost constantly encounter people who feel adrift in their faith journeys, leaving their communities of faith and wondering where God might be in the midst of all that swirls around us these days. This “great exodus,” as Stroop and O’Neal put it, is very real — and the effects on congregations, pastors, and church leaders is palpable.
Sadly, many of these stories of faith shifts include some sort of relational distancing or distrust towards those who leave. Books like Stroop and O’Neals, like Rachel Held Evans’ Searching For Sunday, and countless other writings and day-to-day life conversations tell of the response of individuals and systems within congregational life. Most often, these stories include a lot of hurt. Those who doubt, deconstruct, and disengage from church and congregational life are often met with fear, pity, or a sense of danger.
Often, to be fair, these responses towards those who leave from those who stay are fueled with good intentions. Our hearts ache as we watch someone who once was a leader in our congregation become disillusioned and disengage from church. It’s painful for parents, teachers, and leaders to think of those we care for becoming angry or frustrated and walking away. We worry about their faith, about their life with God. That worry stems from love; but the fear and the action that stems from that fear can produce a great and deep harm.
A careful look at Scripture, however, shows that God doesn’t react to us out of that same fear. God, it seems, is not afraid of our deconstruction. Take Gideon, for example. In Judges 6, when he was asked to go into battle, fully out-numbered, Gideon doubted whether God was capable of helping him or if God was even there. He began to deconstruct the stories he knew of a God who performed miracles and great acts in favor of God’s people. In Judges 6:13, Gideon says, “Pardon me, but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us.”
That, my friends, is the voice of deconstruction.
Then Gideon contrived some tests involving fleece and dew and what was wet and what wasn’t, all to make sure that God actually existed and was on his side. And God played along with his the tests — but what’s more, God promised His presence, saying, “I will be with you.” (Judges 6:16)
Gideon is not alone. There are so many stories like this in the Bible. Moments where regular, human people encounter the divine in some way — maybe it’s in words, maybe in worship, maybe in prayer, maybe in life circumstances — and something just doesn’t match up. Their experience of God doesn’t match up with their life right now, or with their understandings of the world, or with the reality of their circumstances, or with their perceptions of themselves. And so we doubt. We deconstruct.
Of course we do.
But I’ve found so much comfort in these stories in Scripture where people respond to God in doubt, because almost every time God responds to our doubt with his presence: “I’m here. I’m with you.”
When we are afraid, unsure, questioning, deconstructing, angry, disillusioned, cynical, doubting — God promises us his presence.
There are a growing number of individuals today who know well that experience of doubt and deconstruction. So many know what it’s like when something they were sure of before no longer seems to work. Or when the circumstances of our lives seem totally at odds with the faith we grew up with. Or when the actions of the people who claim to follow Jesus seem completely opposite from what we thought we understood that to mean. And all too often, those who doubt get left alone. All too often, questions are seen as threats; uncertainty or fear or discomfort with the status-quo is seen as going too far. Straying from the fold. Falling away. Deconstruction is seen as unfaithfulness. Doubt can be a very painful, isolating thing.
But one thing we can learn from Gideon — and from Moses, Jeremiah, Sarah, Abraham, Thomas and so many others throughout Scripture: In the face of our excuses, our fear, and even our biggest, most painful doubt, God promises His presence.
God isn’t afraid of your questions. Or mine. God isn’t threatened by your doubt. God isn’t worried or disgusted or wary of your deconstruction.
Instead - God promises to be with you. Even when others might fade away, even when you aren’t sure if this whole faith thing is real - God promises to be with you. The God who made you, who sees you, who calls you by name, who loves you right now, just the way you are — that God promises to be with you always, even to the end of the age. And maybe, on the days we can believe it - that’s all we need.
[1] Myers, Jeremy. “65 Million American Adults Have Left the Church?” in Redeeming God: Liberating you from bad ideas about God. Accessed March 15, 2022. https://redeeminggod.com/adults-have-left-the-church
[2] Edited by Chrissy Stroop and Lauren O’Neal, Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. Indianapolis, IN: Epiphany Publishing, 2019. XI.
Thank you thank you, my wife and I left after we were very hurt by a church leader. We reach out for support and all we got was silence.
I'm quite with you, Ms. Koh, in almost all of this. Here's the remaining problem: I have friends for whom this statement—"In the face of our excuses, our fear, and even our biggest, most painful doubt, God promises His presence."—doesn't mean much, because they're not experiencing God's presence. Yes, I know, we take that promise on faith a whole lot of the time. But the words that "God is with you" anyway don't mean much to someone who is unsure that that's true, because it's not experienced. For me, much of this comes down, in the end, to Pascal's wager/Kierkegaard's perspective on faith: we believe in the absence of any evidence that we can see (even if we want to see evidence; some don't, of course). In those cases, the best that we can offer is that a friend, another person, may see something of God in my ongoing faith (which itself can be a bit rickety, depending on the day).
I'd welcome further thoughts on this.