Friends: Believers have been running away from God since the beginning … the very beginning.  Now we have a 21^st century name for it and an oh-so revealing book, The Deconstruction of Christianity. Read it. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #918

June 18, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Something Else … Again

By Bob Walters

“…for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me.” Paul, 2 Timothy 4:10

Demas (DEE-mus), while not a Sunday school poster boy, was part of Paul’s crew. And I’m betting only you particularly astute Bible readers recognized the name. I didn’t.

But all of us in church recognize the move. With breaking hearts, we’ve watched people walk away from Christ. I don’t mean folks who move on to another church; I mean those who reject the truth and promise of Jesus, and reorient their lives away from the reality of God.  They want something else; they want their own truth.

Adam and Eve did it in the Garden. Examples are listed throughout the Bible, seen throughout history, and modern culture now has a name for it: Deconstruction.

I often read material with a lot of big words, but “deconstruction” was a new one for me this summer in the context of dismantling one’s faith. And it’s a pretty big thing that, I guess, I’ve been insulated from. Now I know. 

It’s sort of an annual thing, actually, that I ask our E91 pastor Rick Grover what he’s reading, and a recent volume he recommended was The Deconstruction of Christianity, by Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett.  Oh my … let the truth fly.

We’ve all seen public polling the last few decades pointing to declining church attendance and a rise of a demographic called the “nones,” those who claim no faith identity. Turns out there is an entire, thriving online marketplace of “deconstruction” websites, coaches, and forums. I had no idea.

But in our age of “do your own thing,” “be your own person,” and “find your own truth,” deconstructing one’s Christian faith is the hot new philosophical fad.  Except … it is a “fad” as old as mankind. I heartily recommend this book because it not only explains the modern movement, but is an easily read and marvelously astute manual of biblical context and philosophical help.

Too often – whether religion, politics, education, or culture – I’ve read screeds of “what’s wrong with things” that expose problems but offer no answers or prescriptives.  The Deconstruction of Christianity is an arsenal of scriptural and relational firepower that pays back its depressing information with well-constructed defense of truth.

Demas, the authors point out, was evidently a “significant player in the early church,” mentioned by Paul as a “fellow worker” in Philemon 1:24 and Colossians 4:14. By Paul’s last letter, 2 Timothy, Demas “in love with the present world” likely hadn’t just abandoned his friends, but – reluctant to share their suffering – left his own faith as well.

“In love with the present world”? Demas had traded eternal hope for earthly comfort; he denied his divine savior for physical temptation. It is still easy to see that in the world today, Christianity has been culturally re-categorized from its proper role as creation-level objective truth to just another subjective choice of existence.

The authors point out that the “Deconstruction” industry went viral around the time of the 2020 Covid pandemic and that, ironically, it was fueled prominently by high-profile faith denials by contemporary Christian pastors and music artists such as the purity movement’s Josh Harris and Hillsong worship leader Marty Sampson.

It’s an interesting if disturbing story. “Exvangelical” is more or less the call sign for the deconstructed, but that also infers a faith that was once there but now abandoned.  They have searched for something else in their lives, but this book makes a strong and highly accessible case for the divine value of what we already have.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) has been keeping copious notes.  More soon.