Deconstruction
Over the last several years, I have heard a lot of people talking about deconstructing their faith. I love witnessing the moment when people start to question the doctrinal tenets and narratives that have held them captive for so long. Questioning violent theologies is a life-giving, encouraging, and exciting process to experience. it is part of a Human Catechism. It is also a process of mourning and loss because we leave behind the narratives that have held us for so long.
I am always questioning, inquiring, and inspiring others to do so. I encourage my theology and leadership students to constantly question anything that I present to them. I do make sure that people know that there is a price to pay when we challenge our theology, doctrine, and faith practices. For example, the price I payed was to lose my faith community for asking questions and criticizing unhealthy and spiritually abusive practices and theologies.
More recently, I have grown weary of the way we use the word deconstruction. The use of this term by progressive Christian pop-culture reveals the lack of critical thinking we have when we just take concepts that seem to be innovative without doing our homework. As a result, we end up with reductionist ideologies that keep us from seeing God, the Bible, and some of our theologies in truly liberating ways. What is worse, if we only partially deconstruct, some times we end up with a new righteousness test that perpetrates violence onto others. We keep building our identity over and against others, instead of constructing it with and for each other. If we were to truly deconstruct our faith and religion, we would realize that there is no us v. them. There is just all of us together.
The word deconstruction comes from continental philosophy, specifically the work of Jaques Derrida, who coined the term. In this context, deconstruction is the constant questioning and dismantling of a linguistic system in order to deprive it of its meaning. For that reason, If we want to deconstruct our faith, we would have to dismantle any interpretation of the Bible we may hold as important to its core, which I believe might be very necessary in our day and age.
However, I am not sure yet if Christianity as a system ought be deconstructed until there is nothing left (I might change my mind tomorrow). In Christianity, there are beliefs and ideas that can help us to become better humans. Nevertheless, our faith should be constantly questioned and reinterpreted at a personal and communal level. And the re-reading and re-interpretation of our faith should be done through the eyes of Jesus. As we do that, our ideas of who Jesus is need to be untangled from our violence, colonialism, Christian nationalism, evangelicalism, and many other isms.
Change/deconstruction comes about when we look back and realize that some of our past beliefs are not something to be ashamed of, but something that we can laugh at. They are just silly. There is a quote attributed to sir Francis Bacon that says:
Imagination was given to humanity to compensate us for what we are not; and a sense of humor to console us for what we are.
That is why, a human catechism should invite us to evolve and continue to become more human with a lot of imagination and a sense of humor. Hopefully, if we untangle ourselves from our violent theologies, we will move towards the creation of systems of mercy that will make our current violent and sacrificial systems obsolete, unnecessary.
We could argue that this transition from sacrifice to mercy is deconstruction itself. However, the objective of such evolution is not to constantly questioning for the sake of questioning (which perhaps is my narrow interpretation of Derrida), but questioning for the sake of becoming more human, whole, attuned to one another, and full of life. We question because we need to undo and name our violence to become more human. And, if Christianity has been/is violent, could it be that perhaps we ought to move on without Christianity as we follow Jesus?