This sponsored post was provided by Burke Care, and written by Jen Arend, which invites you to schedule care today with a certified biblical counselor.
As the music swells, she begins her descent down the aisle. All eyes are on her, especially her groom. She is radiant, majestic, and filled with beauty. Her gaze meets his tear-filled eyes. The two express vows before God and witnesses, though it does not take long before they learn that living out those vows becomes a dance of beauty and chaos.[1] How can earthly marriage thrive in the dance? Any discussion of roles in marriage begins with beholding the ultimate Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. In beholding the true Bridegroom from Genesis to Revelation, marriage is transformed into a beautiful dance, reflecting the relationship of Christ to his church.
Beholding the Lord Jesus, and his bride, begins in the “very good” creation of the opening chapters of Genesis. First, this relationship is seen in the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit dwell together in perfect unity and mutual love (Matt. 3:16-17; 12:18; Mark 9:7; John 14:31; 17:24). God then gave human expression to this beautiful, Trinitarian relationship by creating Adam and Eve in the garden. What God created was “very good,” a real-time, flesh and blood expression of the deep unity that exists in the Godhead, an earthly picture of Christ and his church. The man and the woman walked with God in perfection and experienced the blessing of an unstained unity and love for one another, a dance of sheer beauty . . . until Genesis 3.
The fall of man, as recounted in Genesis 3, warped both the vertical and the horizontal dance. The whole human race was plunged into sin through the disobedience of Adam (Rom. 5:12-19), as Adam became the first bridegroom who failed. The relationship between God and man was marred, and because of the curse, earthly marriage became a dance of beauty and chaos. Where Adam failed as the first bridegroom, Genesis 3:15 revealed the seed promise of a Bridegroom to come who would never fail, alluded to throughout the entire Old Testament.
While the vertical relationship between Christ and his church continues in a fallen world, horizontally Christian marriages are called to reflect the beauty of this relationship.Jen ArendShare
The books of Genesis to Malachi are replete with references to God as the ultimate Bridegroom (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 31:32; Ezek. 16:8-32). Throughout the Old Testament, there are large portions of Scripture dedicated to this theme. Some examples include: the book of Ruth with marvelous Boaz, Hosea’s chaotic depiction of loving his prostitute wife, and the Song of Song’s vivid allegory with much application to earthly marriage. Throughout the Old Testament, God presents himself as the perfect Husband to his people, foreshadowing his Son who would come to be the ultimate Husband.
After years of silence, God spoke to us in his Son (Heb. 1:2). Christ came to us gentle and lowly. Though somewhat veiled in the Gospels, Jesus referred to himself as the Bridegroom in relation to fasting and to his second coming (Matt. 9:15; Mark 2:19). Then in Ephesians 5, Paul with total clarity presents the Lord Jesus as the great Husband of his bride, the church. Quite clearly, Christ’s model of sacrificial love is to be the example for all earthly husbands. Jesus was the servant of all (Mark 10:45; John 13:1-17) and the lover of his people to the point of laying down his life on a rugged cross, conquering sin and death through his glorious resurrection.
In contrast to Christ’s perfection, his bride the church walks in this broken world as a new creation in him, and yet still not wholly perfected. The church battles against the world, the flesh, and the devil as she lives out the dance of beauty and chaos in her relationship with Christ. This brokenness is an ever-present reality in this life. But Christ loves his bride and woos her until one day he will take her home by death or his imminent return. The bride will be perfected, and the Bridegroom will dwell with his bride in radiant glory. All of redemptive history points to this. The great multitude of Revelation 19:7 will thunder, “Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” Oh, what a glorious day that will be, when the perfected bride will behold the face of her ever-perfect Bridegroom!
As we gaze upon the beauty of Christ, these truths have implications for the dance of earthly marriage. While the vertical relationship between Christ and his church continues in a fallen world, horizontally Christian marriages are called to reflect the beauty of this relationship. Because of the fall, this warped dance is found even in the best of marriages, some more beautiful and others more chaotic. How can these truths help the more chaotic moments or the desperately broken seasons of marriage in a fallen world? Sinners by faith must first be brought into a living relationship with the perfect Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, and continually behold his beauty. It is only in a growing relationship with Christ that a couple is able to love the way that God loves and find greater oneness in the dance. Though not perfected in this life, “abiding in Christ” makes it possible to live out a more beautiful picture of Christ and the church, for “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4-5).
Could it be that many marriages suffer as a result of not beholding the Bridegroom as presented in all of redemptive history, from creation to consummation? A robust understanding of the perfect love relationship that exists between the persons of the Trinity is the sure foundation for earthly marriage. And when one beholds Christ as the ultimate Bridegroom, foreshadowed in the Old Testament, and the church as his beloved bride, there leaves little room for wrong views of headship and submission, little room for habits of mistreatment in Christian marriage. Roles in marriage flow from the robust foundation of the oneness of marriage, just as the roles in the Trinity flow from the beautiful oneness of the Godhead.
When one gazes upon the beauty of Christ as the ultimate Bridegroom, the heart is inevitably changed. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed . . .” (2 Cor. 3:18). Being drawn back to the perfection of the garden and drawn forward to the new creation, Christ makes all the difference in the present. With eyes fixed on the true Bridegroom, the dance of earthly marriage becomes a little less chaotic and filled with greater beauty, all to the resounding glory of God alone.
[1] Imagery of a dance inspired by Tim Keller’s book The Meaning of Marriage.
If you have found “being transformed” more painful than expected, please consider reaching out. One of our Burke Care Team members would love to hear your story and help you navigate the “dance.”
You can find more blog post like this at Blog — Burke Care.

Sometimes we are forced to have conversations that are almost too strange to believe—conversations, for example, in which we insist that there is such a thing as a gender binary. Yet today so many people are convinced that gender is a mere construct of an oppressive culture. Gender, they believe, is a decision we make for ourselves and not one grounded in any biological reality (not to mention any divine design). In his book Does God Care About Gender Identity?, Samuel Ferguson expresses the importance of teaching and displaying the beauty and goodness of gendered bodies. I was particularly struck by one simple application—singing in the local church. When we sing as men and women, there is a special way in which we display God’s design. I’ll allow him to explain.

The beauty of gender difference adorns God’s world. We need to help the next generation see and honor it. As a pastor, I have the joy of seeing couples meet, marry, and have children. The fruit of their union reminds us that only a biological male and biological female can produce life. “People often present the sex binary as oppressive,” writes Rebecca McLaughlin. “But at its very heart, the male-female binary is creative.” In appropriate ways, parents must teach and remind their children that the complementarity of the two-gendered world—the dance of male and female—is the creative source that stands behind each one of us. By God’s design, every human being owes his or her existence to one man and one woman.
Another place the beauty of gender shows up is in church worship. In my church, when songs have parts for men and women, the guys can’t help but sing a little louder when it’s their turn. They send a low rumble through the pews. When the women have their go, it’s as if a bright and gentle joy enfolds the congregation. When all the voices finally sing together, one hears, even feels, the truth and goodness of our gendered world. Surely this will be an enduring display of our maleness and femaleness as we worship the Lamb in heaven (Rev. 5:9; 14:3; 15:3). Christians must point out this beauty to the next generation whenever we experience it. We must celebrate the goodness of God’s design, that we are our bodies, that our gendered bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit, made to glorify God (1 Cor. 6:19–20), and that this is anything but restrictive—it’s beautiful.

There is nothing new and nothing particularly unusual about apostasy—about people who once professed the Christian faith coming to deny it. From the early church to the present day, we have witnessed a long and sad succession of people walking away from Christianity and often doing so with expressions of anger, animosity, and personal superiority.
Yet while apostasy is not new, the modern nomenclature is: Today it is often referred to as “deconstruction.” And the specific form it takes is new as well—people using social media to chart their rejection of the Christian faith and to join with others through shared apps, subreddits, or hashtags.

The Deconstruction of Christianity

As we witness these new forms of an old issue, it stands to reason that we should have a new book to address it. That is exactly what Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett provide in The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How To Respond. This is a book that offers the “prayerful observations, thoughtful analyses, and honest conclusions of two people who have spent a significant amount of time collectively—as a team—living, studying, eating, sleeping, and breathing deconstruction.” In their research, they listened to countless stories of deconstruction, read the books and Twitter threads, watched a host of TikTok videos, and even met with some of its foremost proponents. They made certain that they understood the issue before they addressed it.
Their book falls into three parts. In the first part, the authors identify and define “deconstruction” as “a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without regarding Scripture as a standard.” They show how it grew from a fringe movement to a popular one and tell of the experiences of some of those who have been very public with their own apostasy. They also grapple with whether there can be a positive sense of the term in which a Christian deconstructs their faith by simply closely examining it and ensuring it is sound. But here they conclude the word “deconstruction” comes with too much philosophical baggage and, therefore, with too much confusion. After all,

Deconstruction is not about getting your theology right. It’s not about trying to make your views match reality. It’s about tearing down doctrines that are morally wrong to you to make them match your own internal conscience, moral compass, true authentic self, or whatever else it’s being called these days. Yet the goal for all Christians should be to align our beliefs with the Word of God, despite our own personal feelings or beliefs on the topic.

In this part, they also look at self-proclaimed exvangelicals to consider the reasons they have left the faith. They identify five main reasons: A literal reading of the Bible; the belief that women are to be submissive to men; a belief in the sanctity of heterosexuality and the rejection of homosexuality; the assumption that the American way of life is best; and identification and partnership with political and social conservatism.
As they progress into the book’s second part, Childers and Barnett examine the details of deconstruction. “Every act of deconstruction contains three basic components: (1) a process of deconstruction, (2) a belief being deconstructed, and (3) a person deconstructing.” In other words, there is always a how, a what, and a who and in a series of chapters they address each, first pausing to show that deconstruction most often begins with some kind of a crisis, and often an understandable one—abuse, suffering, doubt, and so on. Yet they aptly show that such a crisis does not make deconstruction inevitable.
In the third and final part, they suggest ways to love and help people who are in that process of deconstructing their faith. They insist that it is okay to ask questions about the Christian faith and to wrestle through difficult issues. Yet they guide people in asking questions that truly look for answers rather than exits. They also offer wisdom to those who are grieved by a loved one’s potential apostasy and tell them how to stay engaged in their lives. They conclude with some personal stories and encouragements.
Some potential readers may wonder who this book is for. Though it could be a book you hand to someone who is deconstructing their faith and heading down the road of apostasy, that isn’t quite its primary purpose. Rather, it’s mostly meant for those who have heard of the phenomenon and are wondering what it’s all about or for people who have seen friends or family members waver in their Christian profession. In that way, it is a book of theology and discipleship more than it is a book of pure apologetics or evangelism.
The Deconstruction of Christianity is a timely book that has been written to address an urgent contemporary issue. If you have been wondering what deconstruction is or where it came from, if you have been grieved by those who have begun it or if you have been considering it yourself, this is exactly the book you need. It is kind and compassionate in its tone but also unwavering in its commitment to truth. It would be hard to recommend it too highly.