When Deconstruction Becomes a New Beginning

Three Phases of Deconstruction: LIBERATION

In our book, Invisible Jesus: A Book About Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ, Dr. Scot McKnight and I riff on what we see as the three phases of deconstruction as a way of helping those on a faith pilgrimage understand where they are and to help them make sense of what they’re experiencing.

I’ve broken our work into three posts based upon these three phases: Liminality, Elimination, and Liberation. Last up lets talk about:

Liberation

Many deconstructors eventually find a new way forward. When you break into this third phase, you feel free. You still think about your old church, but that time is clearly in your past. At times you miss elements of that church, but you are on a new path, finding freedom to think what you think, do what you do, and feel what you feel. Best of all, you are doing it without those familiar stumbling blocks on your path. These new ways of liberation differ as much as the diversity we find in our world. As one of the “liberated,” you have no desire to go back to the cages, to the chains, or to the walls that formerly confined you in your faith.

We offer these descriptions to help unpack some of the nuances among those who are leaving religion behind but still seeking Jesus. They are looking for the Jesus who is missing from their church—the invisible Jesus. But we also offer a word of caution because no stereotyping of deconstructors fully fits. So forget about finding one that will cover every person and every scenario.

Some of those who fret about deconstruction in our churches want a simplistic theory that explains it all, but there is none. Underneath it all, the best we can say is that deconstructors find the complexities of the Christian faith as they have experienced it in a family, a church community, or a circle of trusted voices to be inadequate. For them, the complexities have been oversimplified, and the answers to their questions are inadequate. They are tired of simplicities; they are done with them. Whether it is an intellectual problem (e.g., the apostle Paul seeming to silence women, gruesome theories about hell), the problem of hypocrisy (e.g., well-known pastors who are morally compromised on the basis of their own teachings), or a social problem (e.g., Why can’t the church get on board with universal healthcare?), they know the church falls short. The confident credibility of the church’s claims withers their faith. As one parent shared with me the other day, “My son is so over the whole church thing.” This parent is a Christian leader, but she thinks her son is onto something vital.

We do too.

Your past is inadequate. The days of accepting the answers you were given are behind you. You are searching for the meaning of life. And you are not afraid of Jesus. No, you aren’t disappointed with or disengaged from Jesus. Jesus remains your heart and soul, but you think he has been lost in the morass of institutions, theories, requirements, competitions, and Christian celebrities. To borrow from the title of Dan Kimball’s book, you “like Jesus but not the church.”¹

Please know that if the description we’ve been unpacking fits you, we are not trying to persuade you to abandon your journey. Instead, in the pages that follow, we want to sketch a view of Jesus, a reconstruction that avoids the trappings of institutions and has the potential to start you on a new path on your journey further into the kingdom of God.²

1. Dan Kimbal, They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations

2. McKnight, Scot; Phillips, Tommy Preson. Invisible Jesus: A Book about Leaving the Church and Looking for Christ (pp. 32-35). (Function). Kindle Edition.