In the spirit of building bridges, I wrote this short letter several years ago to a fundamentalist friend as I was at the beginning of my own faith crisis. This was one of the first times I referred to deconstructionists as ‘us’, a categorization of marginalization which I now realize was assigned to me by the church, despite never really being comfortable with claiming that label for myself.

I am frequently told by PFMs that it resonates with them as well. You don’t have to accept the claims. Please hear ‘our’ heart:

Dear Friend,

Whatever you think of us ‘Deconstructionists,’ please consider that many who are using that label are just not knowledgeable enough to mean it as anything official, so perhaps we don’t believe the things that you are sure a proper Deconstructionist believes.

For all the Deconstructionists I know, we just mean it allegorically: we were given a complete, ornamented fortress of religion, and were sternly warned, for years or decades, that the whole thing — furniture, decorations, and all — was ‘absolutely foundational’. As good Christians, with respect for our spiritual authorities, we spent those years believing what we were told, and acting in accordance with it, defending and preserving the foundation of Christendom against its enemies.

But at the point that we watched the gutters or railings fall off the fortress, and our spiritual authorities just doubled down on the claims that it was all foundational, we couldn’t help but wonder,

How much of this structure is actually the foundation?

Is any part of this fortress foundational?

And why a fortress, anyway?

Are the enemies of this place even real?

And if they are, am I so sure that I am on the Right side?

By default, we still want to believe the answer is “Yes”, but after a lifetime of being told we could be certain about all the ‘foundational’ parts, it’s absolutely devastating to suddenly realize we don’t know which things we don’t know. Adding chaos to calamity, the one thing we do know is that the people who were supposed to do the knowing for us, are unaware that they don’t know.

This is not our fault. This is not a matter of rebellion. All we did was stumble upon information we didn’t want, and then endured the criticism of the people we trusted, who blamed us for the discovery.

We believed it when we were told that all questions were welcomed — not silenced — in our church. So we were painfully slow to learn that these types of questions, when sincerely asked out loud, would not earn us answers, but instead scorn. Distrust. Being ‘relieved’ of our ministries, reassessed for our reputations, and relabeled with terms of disenfranchisement; shocking labels like ‘Prideful’ and ‘Faithless’ and ‘Quarrelsome’.

Frequently, we’ve been told we are no longer ‘real’ Christians and, just as frequently, that we never really were. We hear from church leaders that we’re a danger to ‘their’ flock — ‘our’ flock! — the flock we still can’t bring ourselves to realize we’re no longer a part of.

Many in the church show their disgust through their sincere disappointment, “I thought I knew you,” while others offer their more passive condolences, “I’ll be praying for you, and waiting right here when you want to return to God.” Still, many others are more direct, informing us that we are now ‘the enemy’. So we frequently find ourselves unwittingly disowned for naivety and honesty: an ignorance of the unaskable questions, and an unwillingness to say that things make sense when they just don’t.

Newly alone, unsure, feeling bewildered and betrayed, we now test the fortress, a tiny piece at a time, wondering if — as we were promised — the whole thing will fall when that one piece is missing, and almost hoping it will, so we can at least know that part was true. But with each experiment; each exposed exaggeration, we can’t help but be compelled to keep searching for the elusive foundation; a foundation we still hope to find; a foundation on which we believed our salvation was dependent, right before we started being honest about our thoughts.

In my life, people with these experiences are not rare. They are neither reckless nor stupid, so they try not to think because they don’t want to lose their salvation, and they try not to speak because they don’t want to lose their friends.

This is not merely an intellectual or philosophical rebellion for many of us. It is not rooted in pride, and it frequently has nothing to do with a demand to be ‘free from an objective moral truth’. On the contrary, we were comfortable with the Truth the religious leaders gave us. We wished it to be true.

So this feels less like Adam hiding in the garden, hoping to avoid the punishment he knows he’s earned, and more like a post-Damascus Saul, who has suddenly realized:

“I have been a naïve accomplice for the wrong side, calling all my atrocities ‘character’. I must change my identity and rewrite the rules, since that’s the only way I can continue honestly and still preserve any part of my beloved religion.”

Of course, many have also experienced the soul-shredding, church-sponsored physical and sexual abuse, life-altering spiritual trauma, and crippling disempowerment. But even the un-traumatized deconstructionists I know are desperately trying to cling to the remnants of a Jesus they want to love, even in the face of spiritual dissonance. I think they should be applauded. They’re not de-constructing their religion, they’re trying to re-construct it. The ‘de-’ happened to them, not because of them. But the one place their journey is not welcomed is in the church.

So, as dire as you consider the condition of the American church, I am sure the situation is exponentially worse, because I know exactly zero people outside your church who secretly want to get in, but I know scores of churchgoers in your congregations with secret, growing doubts. And for each one who is brave or naïve enough to express their concerns, despite the fears of ridicule and threats and disconnection, there are many more with the same lurking concerns who stay silent … for now, until they join the thousands each week who slink out your back door, never to return, and never telling you why.

Like you, I wish I were wrong, but I think you know I’m right. So I beg you: listen patiently. Engage with the concerns and stop the flood of exiters from your church. Don’t allow them to find more empathetic interactions and more honest answers outside your walls than inside.

To be fair, the church’s reactive defensiveness is understandable. You see them fiddling with a religious culture you hold dear, and that has served you so well, and you are certain it would serve them the same way. I have no doubt you are sincerely doing your best, but I see them, and I hear them, and I know they are doing their best as well.

Surprisingly, they’re even right about some of their complaints. So, while many churches deserve credit for extending patience and kindness for the deconstructionists who supposedly need to work their way back to the fortress, I think the church is being called to love more completely, becoming a church that also does not resent, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs; a church that does not delight in its rituals but rejoices in uncomfortable collision with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

For the churches that prophecy — they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. But the church that learns to communicate its love — it will never fail.[i]

Love,
Jamin

[i] 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (New International Version)