What You Don't Lose When You Deconstruct

If you don’t have the Word of God, what are you left with?

If you don’t believe in God, what is there left to believe in?

Without the Bible, what stops you from murdering and stealing and doing whatever you want?

Whether you’re in the church, left it, or rethought it, you have probably heard (and/or thought) sentiments like these. The implied assertion is that the Bible is the only thing stopping any of us from falling apart psychologically, morally, and metaphysically. With God there is order, without God there is chaos. Without the rules and narratives outlined in the Bible, we have no framework for our worldviews.

Outside of the church, these statements sound ridiculous; inside the church, they seem affirming and absolute. But when you’re standing in that limbo between knowing you belong in the church and feeling totally out of place, these warnings torture you. You’re afraid God is the only force holding you together, and if you let go of that truth your entire world will fall apart.

Speaking from experience, I can say with great certainty that the more you believe your life will fall apart without God, the more profoundly true you will prove that to be. It doesn’t at all have to be that way . . . because that part is all in your head.

And I am here to tell you this today: you have a lot of say over what goes on in your head.

One of our most important affirmations when we deconstruct our faith is exactly the same as one of my chief criticisms of so-called Bible-believing evangelicals: everyone decides which parts of the Bible to adopt as a guide for living, to what degree they’ll do that, or how they’ll explain away the implications they don’t like.

Genesis 22 tells the story of God testing Abraham’s faith by commanding him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Everyone, every single person who’s ever read that story or heard it preached to them, has decided for themselves what the lesson of that story is supposed to be. We make decisions about how to interpret the actions and attitudes in that story, and we each inform those decisions on something outside of the text itself.

Because that entire story is 100% messed up no matter what your personal moral framework is unless you explain some part of it away with your real and personal sense of right and wrong and force that story to fit into your moral framework.

It’s pretty clear why that story and the mental contortions it forces believers to make undercuts the credibility of everyone who accepts it as a story of good. But why is that an affirmation when you stop allowing the authority of the church or the authority of Scripture to do your thinking for you?

Because it proves you always had your own sense of right and wrong, independent of the Bible. Even if you trusted the Bible completely with every ounce of faith and commitment you had within you (and then some), you still had a manual override over that system. You still had something within you that said, No, obviously I’m not going to sacrifice my own kid. Not happening . . . not with a knife anyway.

Adam, don’t be silly. God would never ask me or anyone to sacrifice a child. Ah, my italic critic, so you admit you don’t believe this story actually happened, or you believe God is different now, or you have explained away the part of the story you know is nonsense so you can preserve some lessons about faith, trust, moral fiber, extreme loyalty or . . . whatever it was you chose to get out of the story BECAUSE YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF WHAT YOU BELIEVE. Yes. I know.

And you know this too.

So that panic that comes when you wonder what will happen when the bottom falls out from under your faith if you question it? Take a few deep breaths and think about all the other times you realized you had the final say in determining what was right or what was wrong.

That time you justified the wrath and repulsion you had against homosexual acts? When you told yourself God condemns such things even when you feel compassion for those people? Even if the thought didn’t crystallize in your conscious mind, some part of your brain contemplated it. You wondered, is this one of those things in the Bible I dismiss as archaic and cultural, or is this something I really think God is telling me is important? And you know who made that call? You did. And do you know what the deciding factor was? Your own fears and predispositions.

It felt comforting to call that God’s will, didn’t it?

You have to make those same calls when you deconstruct your faith. The main difference is, when you’ve made your decision you own it.

Another big difference: you have the complete authority and freedom to change your mind.

So that fear that your entire framework of how the world does and should work and how you should live in it will somehow disintegrate the moment you say those words, “I don’t believe that,” may be very real, but it isn’t grounded in truth. You have always had the final say in what you believed and how you should live, even if you didn’t acknowledge it.

If your faith implodes, it’s okay. When you’re searching through the rubble of what’s left of your belief system, you’re going to find the most important part is still standing: you.

And if you realize that sooner than the ten or so years it took me, you’ll be doing great.