Are you REconstructing?

When I “deconstructed” as an evangelical believer, it kind of felt like it happened like this:

After that initial toppling, I sifted through the rubble for quite a long time and went through various phases. There was the “I still believe in God, but the Bible can’t be true” phase, followed thereafter by the “I think I believe in God, but I really can’t be sure” era, which gradually morphed into the age of “whenever anyone mentions God I get the creeps.”

Ultimately, I gathered what I could from the wreckage and made a small structure I like to call, “I’m totally cool with having no idea.”

Now, this evolution has played out over the course of the public/political self-destruction of the American church. Looking back, it certainly feel like I got out just in time (about halfway through Obama’s second term). I honestly don’t know how anyone outside of the church could join at this point without being born into it.

But I’ve seen people re-enter friendlier branches of the Christian church. Some gravitate to eastern or new age religions, others switch from Catholic to Protestant or vice versa. Others go hardcore atheist to the point that they’re downright evangelical about it.

For the first few years after leaving the church, I really had a difficult time thinking about it. A few Christians at various stages of deconstruction recommended books I had no interest in—I didn’t even want to read the title. My trust of the written word absolutely vanished.

After awhile, a friend outside of the church directed me to The Four Agreements, which I found rather delightful and refreshing if for no other reason than I never felt pressured to accept the mythology presented at the outset of the book. It struck me as so obviously mythical and fictional I didn’t feel confronted by it. It was like, “Hey, this is a story. It’s a different way of looking at the world.” It felt safe. At some point I’m sure I’ll have more to say on it, but for now, the important thing was that there existed a book about spirituality and the human struggle (on second thought, it might be more about psychology than anything else) that wasn’t frightened off by my defensive posture.

I honestly don’t know that I really reconstructed anything. I think I’ve established a certain semblance of morality and ethics, but it’s sketchy, and I’m definitely still in the discovery stage. I’m not convinced morality is as active a force in people’s lives as we make it out to be. Maybe the best way to say that is there seems to be a big difference between our words about morality and our actions.

This is far less an expository look into the different avenues we can travel after departing or stepping back from the church and far more an invitation to discuss the avenues you’ve traveled down. So . . . after deconstruction, what are you constructing?