I changed my mind about deconstruction. After researching this topic, I’ve come to see that deconstruction isn’t merely asking questions or a synonym for doubt. Rather, it’s a process with no correct destination, no ending, and no biblical authority. As a result, I don’t use words like “healthy deconstruction” or “good deconstruction” anymore. For me, that’s an oxymoron. Deconstruction is a fundamentally flawed process, and I don’t think that changes by placing a few positive adjectives in front of the word.

I changed my mind about deconstruction.
When I first began looking into deconstruction, I quickly discovered that people were using the term to mean different things. For instance, when someone says, “I’m deconstructing my faith,” they could mean anything from questioning a tertiary doctrine, like young-earth creation, to leaving the faith altogether.
Attempting to bring clarity to the conversation, I thought adding adjectives to the word deconstruction (like healthy versus unhealthy, or good versus bad) would help. So, for example, I would say that while unhealthy deconstruction rethinks faith without requiring Scripture as a standard, healthy deconstruction corrects mistaken beliefs to make them align with Scripture. Problem solved, I thought. However, this approach assumes deconstruction itself is a neutral process. I don’t believe that anymore.
While writing The Deconstruction of Christianity with Alisa Childers, we discovered some fundamental beliefs that undergird the deconstruction process. Moreover, these ideas are antithetical to the Christian worldview. This helps explain why so many who deconstruct their faith end up leaving the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Here are three reasons why I changed my mind about deconstruction.
No Correct Destination
First, deconstruction has no correct destination.
A defining feature of deconstruction is that there’s no right way to do it and no right destination. For example, Jo Luehmann, author of Decolonizing Traditional Christianity, expounds on this idea in a video titled Our Journey of Faith Deconstruction:
This is the thing with deconstruction that I really think it’s important to understand. Everyone lands wherever they land. There is no right place to land with deconstruction. Some people land away from faith. Some people land in a different type of faith. Some people become agnostic. Some people become a different type of Christian. Some people become atheists. And all of those routes in deconstruction are valid and to be respected.
Luehmann is not alone. “NakedPastor” David Hayward, who regularly creates social media content on faith deconstruction, puts it more concisely: “There isn’t a right way to deconstruct, nor is there a right destination. You do you.”
Why isn’t there a right place to land in deconstruction? The answer is that deconstruction is a postmodern process. What I mean is, deconstruction isn’t about objective truth. It’s about personal happiness. In one sense, the destination of deconstruction is like the destination of a vacation. Whether you end up in Hawaii or Jamaica or somewhere else, it’s all personal preference. It would be silly to say Hawaii is the “right” vacation destination for everyone.
Notice how deconstruction assumes there is no objective truth when it comes to religious beliefs. That’s why it doesn’t matter how you do it or where you end up as long as you’re happy.
Now contrast this with Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.
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Find a faithful, Biblical, and local church to be a part of. Interview it well, understand their doctrine, treat that process with sobriety and wisdom, and when you have found the place you can be committed to, commit to the glory of Christ! Be active, faithful in worship, and engaged in the life of the Church. Help that Church grow to accomplish God’s mission.

Church Hopping and Serial Dating
When we think about the Church as the “bride of Christ,” we must remember how easy it is to bring our anecdotal images, ideas, and societal expectations to bear. For instance, how does one get married in twenty-first-century America? Sadly, the ethics of dating in the Church do not differ drastically from the ethics of pagan culture.
In this culture, you generally meet someone who gives you a mystical spark. Then, after no time at all, you have fallen head over heels in love with that person as they develop an unhealthy emotional obsession with you. Then, the two of you bypass good old-fashioned common sense for a season, only to find out you are not who you thought each other was. So you break up, rebound, and move on, rack up a few dozen of these relationships until you find “the right one,” Then you enter into marriage with more baggage than a fully loaded 747.
Not only does that sound like a recipe for disaster (and a major contributing factor to high divorce rates among Christians, rampant infidelity even among believers, commitment issues, carnal expectations, and a host of other marital toxins) it also explains why so many Christians have a low view of the Church and a base view of commitment to the body of Christ. If the Church is Jesus’ bride, and we have ignorantly bought into the lie that brides don’t come about until the tenth or eleventh lover, then trends like church shopping, church hopping, and church dating make all the more sense.
But we have to ask ourselves the question. Is this culture of “dating the church” a good thing? Should we “try before we buy?” Should we play Church until we are ready to make a commitment? And does that behavior produce the kind of men who will build Christendom or the ones who will pursue their preferences and lusts? Does it create the type of women that raise the next generation of saints? People, who love the Church? Are faithful to the mission of Jesus Christ?
I plan to explore that in this short little article, and we will do so by drawing a comparison between hookup culture and church hopping.
The Plague of Serial Dating
As a man or woman stockpiles intimate relationships, the expectations for a perfect spouse will increase, while the likelihood of finding a suitable partner will inevitably decrease. For instance, Person A may have had the best eyes but no personality. Person B had a great personality but wasn’t all that attractive. Person C was mean to you but was sexually gratifying. Person D was smart but had the body of a muffin top. Person E was witty but tremendously self-absorbed. On and on this cycle goes.
And guess what? The longer this list of relationships becomes, the more certain two things will be to happen. First, you will never find someone who meets all your carnal preferences. You will have created a “perfect spouse” like your own personal Mr. potato head that is the amalgam of all the “best” parts from all your previous lovers when no such person exists. I want to be optimistic that Christians are not dating and treating relationships this way, but I have seen far too much carnage in this area to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Second, when you hold onto such a superficial standard, you will either remain single forever, leaving you discouraged, or marry with significant sacrifices, feeling like you have “settled.” Again, this could have been avoided if we had prepared ourselves (and our children) for dating Biblically.
If we treated dating as the Bible does, then romance, intimacy, and pleasure would follow deliberate platonic assessment. We would not give our hearts or bodies away until we were with our covenant spouse. We would not use erotically charged dating methods to discover if someone had lifelong potential. We would not move in with them and play house to see if we could be married. Instead, we should discover those things first by interviewing them, examining their doctrine, inspecting every nook and cranny of their life, and inviting the parents and our churches into the process.
If that is how we approach things, men and women could freely and joyfully enter into the sexual, relational, spiritual, and emotional intimacy they long for within covenant marriages as God designed. And they could do so without all the scars, wounds, and baggage that come from following the world. If we treated potential suitors as our future spouses, or at the least as brothers and sisters in Christ, we would enter marriage Biblically prepared, with no regrets, no unrealistic expectations, and an overwhelming sense of security, satisfaction, pleasure, and joy.
The Example of Adam
Think about the first man and husband, Adam. Here we have a man who was prepared for his wedding day in a way few could ever dream. He had never seen a female body, so he had nothing to compare her to and nothing to be disappointed with. Her body was exactly what he wanted because it was all he had ever known. He did not have a thousand expectations of waist size, leg length, hair color, nose shape, or anything else clinging to his prefrontal cortex.
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The importance of the intellectual preparation of the student for the ministry is the reason of the existence of our Theological Seminaries. Say what you will, do what you will, the ministry is a “learned profession”; and the man without learning, no matter with what other gifts he may be endowed, is unfit for its duties. But learning, though indispensable, is not the most indispensable thing for a minister. “Apt to teach”—yes, the ministry must be “apt to teach”; and observe that what I say—or rather what Paul says—is “apt to teach.” 

I grew up in an evangelical culture in which many depreciated the life of the mind, pitting “head knowledge” against “heart knowledge.” Those of us drawn to apologetics (a healthy and flourishing element in many of these same churches), found ourselves up against the accusation that striving to defend the faith or study Christian doctrine was the quest for “head knowledge,” allegedly connected to the sin of pride. It was charged that such an emphasis inevitably led to to “dead faith” and a cold heart. I recall a noted evangelical pastor laughing at those who went to “cemetery” (using a rather feeble bit of word-play to mock “seminary”). Of course, he was not theologically trained and this is often evident in his teaching and preaching.
When I first encountered B. B. Warfield’s tract, “On the Religious Life of Theological Students,” first published in 1911, I was greatly relieved that someone of much greater intellect and stature than I made a compelling case for uniting mind and heart. Prayer and theological study go hand in hand, or they should. This was required reading at Westminster Seminary California when I was a student and still is.
But this tract is not just for seminary students—although that is the primary audience. All Christians who love to read and study theology ought to give it a careful read. It can be found here: The Religious Life of Theological Students.
Here are a few brief excerpts, but please read it in its entirety.
The Purpose of a Seminary

The importance of the intellectual preparation of the student for the ministry is the reason of the existence of our Theological Seminaries. Say what you will, do what you will, the ministry is a “learned profession”; and the man without learning, no matter with what other gifts he may be endowed, is unfit for its duties. But learning, though indispensable, is not the most indispensable thing for a minister. “Apt to teach”—yes, the ministry must be “apt to teach”; and observe that what I say—or rather what Paul says—is “apt to teach.”

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