Happy Sunday!
Here are a few thoughts I had over my cup of coffee this morning. Feel free to pass it along to a friend or loved one, or to those people in your life who think you’ve gone off the deep end in regards to this whole “deconstruction” thing.
Have a wonderful day, let’s get some rest.
❤️✌🏻🤙🏻
Glenn || PATREON / BUY ME A COFFEE
"You're a person of integrity." That's what the still, small voice inside whispered to me this morning. And it's something I needed to hear because one of the bigger criticisms that has come to me from members of my former tribe is that I've decided to "deconstruct" because it's "easier" than holding on to "the Truth".
In other words ...
Choosing to "believe" what I've always been taught is hard.
The "Truth" is a hard pill to swallow.
The "world" will try to lead me away from the Truth.
The "world" will try to give me a softer message, a more palatable one.
The "world" will give me a false Gospel, a lighter Gospel.
... And clearly I've bought into it.
They like to throw Paul's words at me from 1 Corinthians and say that I've gone back to "drinking the milk of babies" as opposed to "chewing the meat of adults", that I've let go of the "hard Truths of the Gospel" in favor of a message that does little more than make me feel good and gives me a license to live my life in disobedience to God.
What a load of crap.
First of all, who actually decides to deconstruct their faith? What does that even mean? I don't know about you, but I didn't wake up one morning and think to myself ...
"Hm. You know what? Let's get nuts and start abandoning everything I once believed! Let's just replace all the comfortable exclamation points in my life with uncomfortable question marks and put every single one of my relationships with church people, fellow seminary students, friends, family, etc. in jeopardy because ... why not!"
Deconstruction isn't a decision somebody makes, it's something that happens. Like the Gospel of Mark says about John the Baptist, one day you wake up and just sort of "appear in the wilderness" - it's not a decision you make, it's a place you one day find yourself as a result of no longer settling for easy answers to hard questions.
Secondly, the way of deconstruction is not a wide and easy road that many travel; rather, it's a narrow and difficult road that few will have the courage to take. It's a road filled with land mines and missiles that (in a moments notice) could blow up all the things in your life that took you a lifetime to build ...
Your relationships.
Your reputation.
Your self-esteem.
Your family.
... It's filled with emotional and mental turmoil that no sane person would "choose"; it's turmoil and anguish and stress that is far from easy to bear.
And lastly, it takes a lot of integrity to deconstruct. I don't know about you, but I couldn't look at myself in the mirror anymore while 99% of the people on the outside thought I was a power-preaching Evangelical, but the man on the inside was filled with questions and doubts and no longer believed in ...
Hell.
LGBTQ Exclusion.
Biblical Inerrancy.
Pro-Life.
Creationism.
Original Sin.
Jesus as a Sacrifice for my sins.
Etc.
... Becoming vocal about my questions on the outside so that I could be true to who I was evolving to be on the inside took guts, it took courage, and it took a sense of fearlessness to walk into that land mine-filled wilderness knowing full well that everything I had built in my life for 35+ years was at risk of being blown to smithereens.
I wanted to encourage you this morning - your questions and your doubts, they are valid and they are important and the voice you use to share them each day is not a sign of your weakness, but of your strength, and a sign of your integrity and desire to be true to yourself, true to the Divine image within you, and true to who the Divine has created you to be.
Keep walking the narrow road. I need you, and so do so many others.
❤️🙏🏻✌🏻🤙🏻