It’s no secret that evangelical churches have taken hits lately in America. Fewer people have been going to church. To add to the problem there has arisen a movement that has made its goal to lead people away from their faith.
I’m not talking about the bold atheists who are extreme, even proud, or their anti-Christian views. They wield their hatred like an axe.
Another anti-Christian movement has arisen that is much more subtle. It doesn’t use an axe, but a scalpel. It almost looks innocent because it couches itself in language that says, “We’re here to help.”
It is the deconstruction movement.
Because it comes in the benign appearance of helpfulness, it is all the more dangerous. People, scrolling around online, might stumble on one of its promoters and get sucked in.
The movement seemed to start off as an anti-fundamentalist backlash. It decried the (in its own opinion) narrowness and legalism of fundamentalism. They treated fundamentalism as a mental disease that people needed years of therapy to get rid of.
Then it expanded its attack to the whole evangelical faith, calling it toxic.
I recently read a book, The Deconstruction of Christianity by Alisa Childers and Time Barnett. These authors are Christians who are exposing the movement. There I found that deconstruction has become a pivotal word. Sometimes deconstruction can be healthy, but not here.
Those in this movement are keen to make themselves self-appointed judges. They slander evangelical Christianity as racist, sexist and hateful. They even attack the basic tenets of Christianity–especially the unpopular truths about human sin and the need for Christ to die on the cross to save us from that sin.
We all know that the church has problems. The Bible books of 1 Corinthians, Galatians and Revelation (chapters 2 and 3) make that clear. It is freely admitted; no one can deny it: the church can be wrong. Churches might be too legalistic or too traditional or too…something. They might have people in them that did or said something offensive to us.
It’s easy to find fault, but we should appreciate the good that churches have done for us. We should credit them for it. And if reform is needed, we should have reformation, not destruction. Martin Luther had the right idea.
If frustrated, or questioning, the answer is not to ‘deconstruct’ from church teaching, viewing it as toxic, but to ask our questions and seek answers from trusted, godly people. We might find answers we weren’t looking for or find that our frustrations were misplaced.
The deconstruction movement seeks to destroy faith and offer no alternative. It puts up a benign front–like “we’re only here to help, to help you on your journey,” but won’t say where the journey will take you. The only thing that matters is that they lead you away from the faith you once knew. The movement offers chat rooms and ‘safe spaces’ to go on your ‘journey’…but to where?
This movement’s twin features of 1) proudly judging and labelling others, and 2) offering no alternative to Christ’s true church, reminds me of something Jesus said about the deconstructors of his own day: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to,” (Matthew 23:13-15).
One ‘deconstruction coach’ named Kurtis Vanderpool said on his website, “Deconstruction is a deeply personal and emotional experience and no one else can tell you where it should lead or how you should do it.”
Contrast this to what Jesus offers: “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full,” (John 10:9-10).
Destroying is easy. You knock things down with a sledgehammer or set them on fire. But building is hard. True, sometimes demolition is needed but God always desires to replace it with the good. I think this is summarized by the call of the prophet Jeremiah, he was to “uproot and tear down…” but afterwards “to build and to plant,” (Jeremiah 1:9). This almost seems like a summary of the Christian life. The tearing down is always replaced by something better.
Jesus said to make disciples. Discipleship is a continual following. When we discover something bad or unprofitable (maybe something that was lingering in our soul but we were not really aware of) we get rid of it and then replace it with the good. We demolish in order to build.
But the devil only wants to kill and destroy.
The devil’s methods might be violent and persecuting (those are obvious) or more subtle, but the goal is the same: to turn Christians away from the faith.
Until Christ comes back, Christians will always have to contend with opposition that will come in one form or another. The key is to be strong and ready with the Spirit and truth to deal with it no matter how benign and friendly the new movement may seem.