The Brutality of Deconstruction
One of the fulcrums in anyone’s faith deconstruction story involves a breaking point. The cognitive dissonance rears its head to such an extent then one can no longer continue in the same direction as before. People describe it in different ways.
The house of cards came crumbling down. Someone pulled the chair out from beneath me. My world went dark. There are many ways to describe this feeling. But there’s only one way to experience it.
Brutally.
For some, a faith deconstruction may not be so dramatic. Maybe one grew up casually Catholic, with parents who went to mass occasionally such that leaving in college was never so difficult. It was more of a drifting away than a clean cut decision.
However, for those of us inside the machine of the White, American, Christian Empire for much of our lives, that breaking point seems nearly catastrophic.
You see, we were convinced that our sole identity was in God first, and the church community second. We were nothing without Him, so we were told. Sinners on the outside had a life void of meaning, one where there could be no true happiness. Such a desolate wasteland. How bleak one’s life must be without God and without church.
Combine this with the Evangelical desire for certainty and you spell near disaster for anyone who decides to start questioning.
The logic of such teachings may have begun with intent other than to cage free birds, but that is where it ended up. The fact of the matter is anytime you underpin a system, such as a church, with the necessity for money, when that money is from the constituents of the system (the members), you must keep them coming to your church at all times. The American church chose the route of business enterprise and capitalism in deciding how it would rule. Their shareholders were the church members, and they must keep driving in new ones each week in order to eat, live, or expand their empire.
The greater White American church needs money.
Needing money, I suppose, has never been the issue. Needing money at the cost of allowing others to believe and search and doubt for themselves? Herein lies the problem. Because if people start to question your intentions or your faith deeply enough, they won’t feel the need to stick around anymore.
If this is the case, the powers of the church, the theologians must keep people in the pews and how better to do that than tying doubt and seeking with division and dissension? Add hell in the mix, and the validation and ego of pastors and you’ve got enough pressure and fear to keep most nearby. Now while all pastors may not be doing this intently, the structure of theology has been laid for hundreds of years such that many embark on their leadership roles in the church with repression close by. It’s a perpetuating cycle. Until it is rooted out from it’s birthing place in the ground, it will only continue.
Fast forward to me.
I lived in this context, I went overseas for missions, I attended church my whole life, I worked in college ministry, I read the Bible over and over, I didn’t go to parties in college and instead watched sermons because I wanted to know everything about God. I wanted to follow him with all my heart.
Until I didn’t.
I reached a point in my life where I honestly began to question the faith that I was raised in. Nothing was off limits. The Bible, Jesus, Heaven, Hell, God himself. Everything was up in the air.
And I became anxious. And I felt sick most of the time. And I was confused.
But mostly I was scared. Because what if it was all a lie. What if none of it were true? What if we had all been bamboozled, tricked, deceived? What if it was true and I left and then I went to Hell? The stakes felt life or death.
And if it wasn’t real, then who was I in the midst of all this?
Jesus was my entire identity. It’s the only reason I was alive. In college as an RA, I was called the “Jesus RA” because Jesus was always on the tip of my tongue, I was always talking about him.
So when I started to genuinely question the reality of the faith I knew, I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know who to be. I had no clue of my place in the world. And that was hard. It was brutal. Because if your entire framework, your entire worldview begins to vanish in front of your eyes, that is terrifying.
So where do you turn? When your whole community is Christian, when they all are so firm in their beliefs, when questioning your faith had never been modeled, and when it had even been demonized in many ways, who do you go to?
I couldn’t talk to my family. I tried to talk to some friends, but if just one reacted poorly I shot back up into my shell out of fear of rejection.
I remember one day I felt a bit of courage. I was reading a book on different views of the Bible and I left the library and texted a friend “I don’t know if I want to be Christian anymore.”
As disorenting as it was, it was a step. An honest step. I had finally admitted to someone else that I was potentially heading down a different road. It was as if my brain was finally catching up to my body and it’s desire to forge a new path. A path I was unsure of.
Truly, I didn’t know the answer to the text I sent my friend. Not at that time. I didn’t have a definitive “fuck you christianity” moment and then leave forever. I had painful nights of anxiety and questions and uncertainty until I finally admitted to myself “maybe this isn’t for me right now.”
Amidst the pain I was feeling during my uncertainty, I decided to take a break from it all and just stop. I was so tired of the anxiety. I was so tired of living my life in fear. I was so sick of having to try and figure it all out. So I didn’t.
I penned a letter to my greater, Christian community and sent it out. I explained I didn’t know if it was real anymore, I shared how difficult it was, and said I was taking a break. I don’t know, maybe it was my last ditch effort to force the hand of God to answer the prayers of these people, I’m not sure.
But what I do know is I decided to be honest with myself and take one big, honest step into the world of the unknown.
And it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.
I pen this today for those who are struggling in the midst of their spiritual journey. They may feel alone or isolated in their doubts and questions. They may be unsure of how to brace the pain of what they're feeling, the disorienting nature of the whole process.
You’re not alone. You’re not by yourself. It is going to be hard. You are strong enough to stay the course. You are not a sinner for asking questions and going on a journey to find out what you believe. You are loved. You are worthy, even aside from believing in a God.
Deciding to question and pursue different avenues of faith is heartbreaking and heart building in many ways. The brutality of it all is an emotional and spiritual concoction that is difficult to truly describe. I do know it’s worth it.
Here’s to the doubters, the skeptics, the confused. Your emotional torment in the process of deconstruction is never in vain. You are not alone. You will continue to rise. Let the waves come and let yourself feel its weight. It is often under the weight of intensity that we can begin to understand ourselves, the world around us, and the path that is before us.
<3
Reid
*I have separated the greater white evangelical church from other expressions of Christian faith as I am not trying to lump all together, but speak from my experience. The greater white christian church has had a unique tie to the power of the political empire whereas all Christian expressions, such as the Black church, has not experienced. We must be prudent that the version of white supremacy based faith we flee, not turn into a white supremacist denunciation of faiths and cultures from different origins.
