Written by Michael J. Kruger |
Tuesday, January 18, 2022
The fact that the church is the beloved bride of Christ is not a reason to care less about her shortcomings, but more. Indeed, the church is the most important institution on the planet. So, if someone raises good-faith concerns about the state of the church, let’s be quick to listen and slow to speak.

The last few years have been a rough stretch for the evangelical church. Plagued not only be a complex and intractable health crisis with COVID, the church has also faced an increasingly polarized cultural-political environment as well as numerous internal scandals involving abusive leadership.
Perhaps it is not surprising that this same period of time has seen a rise in so-called cases of deconversion—people who once claimed to be fairly run-of-the-mill evangelicals but then, for whatever reasons, decided this was not the life for them. And they walked away from the faith.
The high-profile cases of deconversion stories are well known: Rob Bell, Rhett and Link, Joshua Harris, etc. And for every high-profile case, there are countless ordinary folks who are also leaving Christianity behind. There is even a recent book devoted to this phenomenon: John Marriott, The Anatomy of Deconversion: Keys to a Lifelong Faith in a Culture Abandoning Christianity (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2021).
At the same time, something else has been happening in evangelical Christian circles—some believers are engaging in the task of deconstruction.
Now, understandably, that word also has its own negative connotations—largely due to the work Jacques Derrida. For many, deconstruction is a dismantling of the Christian worldview so that core Christian beliefs are subverted and undermined.
In other words, some use deconstruction as a functional synonym for deconversion. To say “I deconverted” is the equivalent of saying, “I deconstructed my faith.”  Thus, it’s a rejection of historic Christian beliefs.
But that is not always how the term “deconstruction” is being used by evangelicals today. For many, it simply means that we should ask hard questions about whether the version of Christianity we are following is consistent with the Scriptures, or with historic Christian beliefs through the centuries.
In this sense, a call for deconstruction is effectively a call for reformation. It’s saying there just might be things in the church that are seriously broken or problematic. And the church should work to change these things when they’re discovered.
Essentially, this is what Martin Luther did. He inherited a particular version of Christianity, namely medieval Roman Catholicism which included the veneration of the saints, the selling of indulgences, and the moral corruption of the clergy (just read about Luther’s 1510 visit to Rome).
Of course, what happened next is well known. Luther began to have serious doubts about the Christianity that he was presented with. But—and this is key—this did not mean he doubted Christianity itself. The two should not be confused.

The Bible also teaches that our hearts are born in corruption (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12), thus the members of the family—both parents and children—ultimately need to have their problems solved from the inside out. That brings parents back to the Great Commission. The fundamental need of discipleship is a new heart cleansed from sin. Only Christ can accomplish this work. 

No text of Scripture speaking to discipleship deserves more attention than the Great Commission. That commission, or commandment, is given to disciples (Matt. 28:16) to make disciples (Matt 28:19–20). And Jesus gives the how: Christian baptism and biblical teaching. Before a parent does anything to discipline a child, he does well to pay attention to Christ’s plan for making disciples. Christ’s discipline must characterize our homes. That surely involves the discipline of children in the terms we often think (Prov. 13:24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13–14; 29:15–17), but it also demands much more of parents.
Without a thoughtful reading of Proverbs in the context of the whole of Scripture, we can (and often do) fall into behaviorism, a secular psychological approach that views human learning as merely a matter of conditioning responses. But Christ teaches us that we and our children are more. We have hearts, spiritual centers of our being, from which our behaviors flow (Prov. 4:23; Matt. 12:33–35; 15:10–20; Luke 6:43–45). The Bible also teaches that our hearts are born in corruption (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12), thus the members of the family—both parents and children—ultimately need to have their problems solved from the inside out.
That brings parents back to the Great Commission. The fundamental need of discipleship is a new heart cleansed from sin. Only Christ can accomplish this work. The Lord, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel, declares, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, . . . give you a new heart, . . . and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezek. 36:25–27). The connection to baptism in the Great Commission is obvious. Whether someone affirms credobaptism (believer’s baptism) or paedobaptism (infant baptism), everyone agrees that baptism is something done for you, not something you do for yourself. It’s an outward sign pointing to the necessity of the Spirit’s work. Christian parents must know this: no true discipleship comes apart from heart change. The starting place of discipleship for our children can’t be separated from baptism.
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We do not live in a perfect world. Every household will make decisions based on their life circumstances, and Christians should avoid being overly prescriptive about matters that are truly secondary. God is honored when Christians prayerfully consider how to best pursue their God given priorities. Even though motherhood is diminished in the world, the church can uphold its glory and dignity.

Motherhood is Life
I recently rewatched “Saving Private Ryan” for what must have been the 10th time. Saving Private Ryan tells the story of a young man whose three brothers were killed in combat in WWII. Private Ryan was the only brother to survive D Day. When military officials realized this, they dispatched a special regiment of eight soldiers to track him down, somewhere in France, to retrieve him and bring him home.
Saving Private Ryan is a masculine movie. It’s all about brotherhood, war, duty, honor. But when I watched the movie this time, however, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before—mothers. Many of these young men, who were fighting for their lives on another continent, were thinking about their mothers back home. In a particularly disturbing scene, a soldier lies on a beach in Normandy, clutching his bloody stomach that had been blown open, crying out “mama!” while he died.
The mission to save Private Ryan was deemed urgent because the military command wanted to spare his mother the overwhelming grief of losing her last remaining son. One scene depicts the awful moment just before she learned the news that she’d lost her other three sons. She is standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes as she notices a military vehicle approach. A man dressed in a military uniform exits the front passenger side of the vehicle, turns toward the back door of the car and opens it. A chaplain steps out. She knew immediately. She falls to her knees in grief, knowing that she’d lost one of her sons. Surely her mind is racing with questions. “Which son? How did he die?” But the audience knows the situation is much worse. She’d lost three of her sons in one day, and the fourth was still missing.
Scenes like this show the power of motherhood. When strong, young men in war are in the throes of death, their hearts are naturally drawn to the safety, comfort, and love of home. They long for the woman who gave them life. Mothers embody everything they hope for in dangerous times. War is death. Motherhood is life.
The World’s View of Motherhood
Many young women feel the need to suppress their maternal instincts because they’ve been culturally conditioned to devalue motherhood. They’ve grown up watching shows and hearing stories celebrating how “girls can do anything boys can do.” A friend once noticed a poster in a school highlighting girl’s potential in a series of pictures associated with different careers. One was a doctor, another was a business executive, a third was an astronaut. Of all these images inspiring young girls about what they could become in life, none of them depicted mothers.
During a small group discussion with some Christian friends, one young woman sheepishly admitted that what she most wanted out of life was to be a wife and a mother. She was hesitant to acknowledge this, because she felt that this was somehow aiming below her potential, wasting her gifts, and settling for second best. All her life, she’d heard about how exciting a career can be, but she’d heard relatively little celebrating the fact that she can create and nurture new life. In pop culture, pregnancy is depicted as a hurdle to overcome. But the testimony of scripture is that children are a blessing and motherhood is a glorious vocation (Ps 127:3-5). This is not to say that women should not get an education or have a job. For our purposes here, it’s simply a matter of priority. Motherhood is highly valued in Scripture but devalued in modern culture.
Motherhood has never been an easy calling ever since it came under the curse of sin (Gen 3:16). Nevertheless, throughout history, societies have always valued motherhood as a social good to preserve and nurture civilization. As the industrial revolution radically changed the household, some feminist thinkers began arguing that the traditional household was outdated, oppressive to women, and needed to be changed. It was holding women back, enslaving them to their husbands and children. But women could be liberated from this bondage by seeking careers outside the home the way men did. They assumed that women could be more free, more fulfilled, and more valued in the marketplace than in the home.
Even though most Christian women would quickly recognize the error of this thinking, the basic assumptions and desires of feminism can nevertheless seep into our unconscious minds, training us to devalue the vocation of motherhood. Women are being subtly conditioned to believe that the marketplace is immanently desirable—where true happiness and fulfillment can be found. Motherhood is a secondary endeavor if a woman chooses to succumb to her own biology. Homemaking should rarely be the top vocational choice, unless she’s going for a trendy, boutique, trad wife flex. This thinking is ungodly. Nevertheless, the feminine nature has a way of asserting itself. It cannot be so easily denied. Women are naturally and instinctively inclined to make homes.
The Feminine Design
I have pastored many women through infertility struggles and have personally seen how devastating this trial can be. For these women, their missing motherhood can feel like a personal failure. Why is missing motherhood such an emotional weight for so many women? Because it’s their design. Motherhood is the goal (or telos) of the feminine design. Women are physiologically oriented towards it. A woman’s menstrual cycle is a monthly reminder that her womb was designed to bear life, and her breasts were designed to feed and nurture life. This astoundingly powerful ability to create life should be affirmed and celebrated, not minimized or dismissed.
The Scriptures present motherhood as one of the greatest blessings a woman could receive. Similarly, a barren womb was one of the greatest trials she could endure. Womanhood cannot be properly understood apart from her potential for motherhood. It is the unique design of her body. When God created Eve, he was not merely solving a loneliness problem, but a reproduction problem. She was God’s answer to man’s inability to fill the earth on his own. This is why Adam named her “Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (Gen 3:20). God gave him much more than a wife. He gave him a potential mother.
A common word Scripture uses to describe motherhood is “fruitfulness” (Gen 1:28). This word appears in the Bible over 200 times, covering a range of interrelated meanings from gardening to sexuality. Fruitfulness is multiplication. Just as the Garden of Eden was meant to grow, expand, and multiply to cover the earth, Eve was meant to be fruitful and grow, like a garden. Women are uniquely equipped to multiply and amplify things. A woman’s body can take a single sperm from a man and knit together a new human being from it. Just as her name suggests, Eve truly did become the mother of all living, giving birth to the whole human race. This feminine ability goes beyond physical childbearing. Femininity represents the ability to expand what is received. As author Rebekah Merkle put it, “When God gave Eve to Adam, he was handing Adam an amplifier… Adam is the single acorn sitting on the driveway which, no matter how hard he tries, remains an acorn. Eve is the fertile soil which takes all the potential that resides in that acorn and turns it into a tree, which produces millions more acorns and millions more trees.”
The Vocation of Motherhood
Women are natural homemakers. Marriage is all about making a home, and wives will naturally devote themselves to it. The question is not whether she’ll do it, but to what degree she’ll prioritize it. Every household will need its cabinets stocked with groceries, meals prepared, and laundry washed. Beyond this, the children will need to be fed, nurtured, clothed, disciplined, and educated. Typically, the mother takes the lead in handling these chores. She may do them all herself, or she may outsource some or all of them to others. For example, a well-trained and qualified nanny can be hired to come into the home and perform all these tasks. A nanny may be a better cook, better housekeeper, and better teacher of the kids. This being the case, why not hire them to do as much as possible? Some families see this as the wisest option, since, after all, the nanny is the professional. She’s the expert. But homes need more than domestic expertise; they need a mother’s presence.
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