The secret to happiness, some have wisely said, is to want what you already have.

How many of us can truly say with C.S. Lewis’s character in Shadowlands, “You know, I don’t want to be somewhere else anymore. I’m not waiting for anything new to happen . . . not looking around the next corner and over the next hill. I’m here now. That’s enough.”

Instead, unhappiness finds us wanting a life we don’t have. If this, this, and this happens, then I’ll be content. The easiest loves are the ones we don’t have. Our neighbor’s grass grows greener as we keep staring at it. If our desires could remain on our own property, we would be happier. We would better love the life we have.

This secret to happiness is not a new one. Centuries ago, puritan Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646) wrote in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment that “A Christian comes to contentment, not so much by way of addition, as by way of subtraction” (45). He meant that the Christian achieves happiness not by adding more to life to satisfy his gaping desires, but instead by subtracting from his desires, bringing them down to the situation God has placed him.

Paul practiced this when he sought to curb young Timothy’s desires for money, reasoning that we come into the world and leave it with nothing and that many have apostatized by this love. The apostle gives us a window into his own happiness, saying, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:8). With just the basics of what we need for an adequate human existence, Paul will find what many kings with lavish palaces could not: contentment.

You Shall Not Covet

Long before Burroughs, the great Architect of man’s happiness wove this happiness principle into creation itself. He etched instructions for his creatures’ gladness in stone, saying, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17). In other words, keep your desires at home, want what you have, not what your neighbor has.

And he reiterates this word to the Church, yet adds something we cannot afford to miss. The writer of Hebrews begins with the command,

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.” (Hebrews 13:5–6)

Here again, want what you already have. Don’t slave to make your bank account rise to match your desires, but bring your desires down to match what God has put in your bank account. He reminds us that the answer to happiness is not bigger and better, but simpler and more grateful. “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have.”

Be Content with Who You Have

But the verse continues:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)

You might need to read the verse again. Did you see the shift?

God changes the focus for the Christian from what he has, to who he has. God tells us to do more than match our desires to our circumstances; we reconsider our circumstances based on the promise of enduring relationship with our God: I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Dissatisfaction has a voice. You should have that car. . . . You would be happy with his job or her husband. . . . If only you made double what you make now. . . . To this internal proposal, God means to add his own voice: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When discontent suggests, Your current job is okay, but you would be happier to have one that grants more recognition. . . .

God says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Your car does fine, but imagine how you would look if you had that one. . . .

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

This church is technically faithful, but the pastor could be more entertaining — and the children’s program . . . .

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Why don’t I have a husband or children like she has?

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

When we hear temptations to desire more and better, which voice do we listen to?

Shallow Wells

Now, getting a new job, a new car, or even a new church — or longing to be married and have children — these are not the issue. The issue is the internal restlessness and misguided search that leads us to climb from hill to hill expecting happiness just atop the next one. As we ascend the hill called “prestigious career,” or “beautiful wife,” or “bigger house,” we keep climbing, keep mumbling, keep searching for what we haven’t found.

“God gives himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more.”

And while the world, the flesh, and the devil tempt us to chase and chase, God offers himself as the end of our satisfaction. He gives himself as the grand punctuation to end our search for more. Wonder of wonders, God does not merely say to his child, “The secret to happiness is to want what you already have.” He says, “The secret to happiness is to want what you already have in me.”

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus promises, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:13–14). The only search that remains is to go deeper in communion with him.

All We Could Want

As sons and daughters of Adam, we ache under the dim memory of a forgotten past. A time when man walked with God, communing with him in perfect fellowship. Of gardens full of fruit, of a mission bestowing purpose, of pleasure and delight and satisfaction — none more than in the King of that realm.

“God says, ‘The secret to happiness is to want what you already have in me.’”

And though we have exchanged such knowledge and such glory for mere trifles of earth, for a life elsewhere, it has not worked. We look this way and that in vain for the kind of happiness our sin and Satan promised. In such condition it is not enough to scale back our desires to our circumstances. The darkness, the thirst, the sense of something else, the lost stare out the window will not subside on their own.

Jesus himself must be the Vine to withering branches, Living Water to parched places, Bread of Life to starving souls, Resurrection to lifeless bodies, the Way to lost wanderers, the Truth to deceived minds, the Shepherd for missing sheep, our Light in this present darkness. The secret to happiness is to be in union with this Christ, forgiven by this Christ, welcomed and forever belonging to God in this Christ. A Christ who promises that he will never leave us nor forsake us nor ever tire of being all we could ever want.

“Deconstruction” is a term that has increasingly been used in evangelical circles, especially over the past decade. But it is a confusing term, because there’s no single or simple definition for “deconstruction.” It has different meanings in different contexts. It has technical meanings in certain academic contexts and various informal meanings when current and former evangelicals use it to describe their (or others’) faith experiences.

It’s not surprising that many are asking some form of, “What does ‘deconstruction’ even mean?” It’s an important question and needs clarifying answers — certainly more answers than I can adequately cover here. But I hope to provide something of an introductory overview.

First, we’ll examine briefly where the term, “deconstruction,” came from, so we can, second, understand the primary ways evangelicals are using the term today.

Where Did ‘Deconstruction’ Come From?

In the 1960s, a French philosopher named Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) began to advocate for a postmodern philosophy of language and its relationship to our conceptions of meaning that he called “deconstruction.” It is an abstruse philosophy and notoriously difficult (some say impossible) to summarize. In fact, Derrida himself refused to summarize deconstruction, claiming that his whole life’s work was a summary of his philosophy.

Nevertheless, I’ll take a shot at summarizing it as I currently understand it — and stick with me, because knowing something of where “deconstruction” comes from will hopefully give us insight into why some Christians have adopted and adapted it to describe their experiences — and why many find it confusing.

A fundamental assumption undergirding Derrida’s philosophy is that humans, through biological evolution, developed the capacity to impose psychological constructs of meaning upon their world as a survival mechanism. In other words, meaning — as in the ultimate meaning of things — is a human psychological creation, not a discovery or divine revelation of absolute truth.
Therefore, deconstruction asserts that human language at best communicates, not absolute truth, but how a certain individual conceives of truth at a certain moment in time, in the contexts of his cultural, political, religious, environmental, and experiential influences.
Therefore, deconstruction asserts that philosophers (or theologians) consult written works of the past in vain to discover absolute truth or meaning, since all they’re encountering are other authors’ constructs of truth or meaning. And not only that, but the more distant a reader is culturally, linguistically, and historically from an author, the less the reader will understand what the author actually had in mind when he used terms like truth, justice, good, evil, etc.
And therefore, the philosophy of deconstruction asserts that in an effort to understand as much as possible what an author actually meant by the language he used, sophisticated methods of textual criticism must be employed to deconstruct the author’s words in order to decipher the conceptual constructs that shaped that author’s understanding of truth and meaning.

Let me try to simplify it even more. If I understand Derrida correctly, deconstruction is

A literary philosophy arguing that we’re wrong to assume that by merely reading an author’s words we can understand something about absolute truth, since our conception of truth — our constructs of what everything means — will be significantly different from the author’s; and
Deconstruction is a method of literary criticism that takes apart and analyzes an author’s use of language in effort to discern his construct of meaning.

For Derrida, there is no meaning outside the text of a philosopher’s written work — no absolute truth that the writer is shedding light on for the reader. There’s only the writer’s construct of meaning, of truth, represented in the text he wrote.

Which means that there is no absolute truth inside the philosopher’s text either. Just a reflection of how the author interpreted what the world means. Which, according to Derrida, is what meaning is for all of us: a human psychological construct shaped by multiple influences.

Why Have Christians Adopted ‘Deconstruction’?

So, why have Christians adopted the term “deconstruction” from a philosophy based on principles of philosophical naturalism? I think we can make a connection from something theologian Kevin Vanhoozer has written about Derrida:

The motive behind Derrida’s strategy of undoing [deconstruction] stems from his alarm over illegitimate appeals to authority and exercises of power. The belief that one has reached the single correct Meaning (or God, or “Truth”) provides a wonderful excuse for damning those with whom one disagrees as either “fools” or “heretics.” . . . Neither Priests, who supposedly speak for God, nor Philosophers, who supposedly speak for Reason, should be trusted; this “logocentric” claim to speak from a privileged perspective (e.g., Reason, the Word of God) is a bluff that must be called, or better, “deconstructed.” (Is There a Meaning in this Text?, 21–22)

Over the decades since Derrida introduced his philosophy of deconstruction, the term has worked its way into the common vernacular where it now has come to generally mean “a critical dismantling of tradition and traditional modes of thought.”

In other words, “deconstruction” has become a kind of shorthand term that, in addition to critically questioning traditional ways of thinking, also implies a refusal to recognize as authorities those who see themselves (or are perceived to see themselves) as ones who “claim to speak from a privileged perspective” about what truth is.

In the Christian world, this translates to critically questioning traditional modes of Christian belief, and often refusing to recognize as authorities those perceived as occupying privileged Christian institutional positions who “supposedly speak for God.”

Now, because this is only a brief overview, that explanation is unavoidably reductionistic. Christian experiences of deconstruction are complex and often very painful. But viewed from 30,000 feet, these characteristics — of questioning traditional Christian beliefs and rejecting supposed Christian authorities — are, I believe, why some have adopted the term.

What Evangelicals Mean by ‘Deconstruction’

And, I believe, it’s why some evangelicals (and former evangelicals) have also adopted Derrida’s term. Perhaps we might say it like this:

Deconstruction is a critical dismantling of a person’s understanding of what it means to be an evangelical Christian, and in some cases a refusal to recognize as authorities those perceived as occupying privileged evangelical institutional positions who “supposedly speak for God.”

But this definition still leaves plenty of room for confusion because the “dismantling” can look quite different for different people. For instance, here are four primary ways I hear evangelicals applying the term deconstruction.

Dismantling Harmful Cultural Influences

A smaller group of evangelicals use deconstruction to describe ways to protect historical evangelical doctrine and healthy practices. For example, in the final episode of the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, Paul Tripp says,

We should all be deconstructing our faith — we better do it. Because our faith becomes a culture, a culture so webbed into the purity of truth that it’s hard to separate the two. And we better do some deconstructing or we’re going to find ourselves again and again in these sad places. (Aftermath, 36:57)

“Deconstruction is a critical dismantling of a person’s understanding of what it means to be an evangelical Christian.”

If you listen to Tripp’s full quote, it’s clear that what he means by “deconstruction” is a critical dismantling not of historical orthodox Christian beliefs, or rejecting the oversight of New Testament-endorsed faithful, godly, spiritual leaders (Hebrews 13:7), but of cultural influences that distort and redefine the faith in unbiblical, harmful ways.

Dismantling Doctrines

A larger group use deconstruction to describe ways they have arrived at the conviction that certain historic evangelical doctrines must be adapted or altered. For example, in his book, Deconstructing Evangelicalism, Jamin Hübner writes,

Deconstruction simply refers to the process of questioning one’s own beliefs (that were once considered unquestionable) due to new experiences, reading widely, engaging in conversations with “the other,” and interacting in a world that is now more connected and exposed to religious diversity than ever before. (Deconstructing Evangelicalism, 20)

In the full context of his book, it’s clear that what Hübner means by deconstruction is “a critical dismantling” of evangelical beliefs that experience, education, and scientific discoveries have rendered obsolete or harmful. Hübner, like many, does not reject the Christian faith altogether, but claims that evangelicals in general distort the faith. And he refuses to recognize as authorities those he considers spokesmen of the “American-evangelical-industrial-complex” (18). I believe it’s fair to say that this generally is the position of numerous former evangelicals who now identify as “progressive” Christians.

Dismantling Christianity

A significant number of those who formerly professed an evangelical faith use deconstruction to describe their departure from Christianity altogether. This is probably the most frequent way I see the term used on social media. And it’s the use I prefer the least because it tends to conflate deconstruction with deconversion.

Now, likely most people who refer to their “deconversion” from Christianity (evangelical or otherwise) as their “deconstruction” went through a process of critically dismantling their understanding of what it means to be a Christian that resulted in their abandoning the Christian faith, and that’s what why they label it as deconstruction.

“Deconstruction is a process; deconversion is a result.”

But because they use deconstruction and deconversion synonymously, when some evangelicals now hear “deconstruction,” they immediately assume “deconversion.” But deconstruction is a process; deconversion is a result. And it’s only one possible result. Others go through a deconstruction process that results in a strengthened, invigorated faith.

Constructive Dismantling

In 1951, Francis Schaeffer, having recently moved his family to Switzerland to launch a new mission, suddenly found himself plunged into a spiritual crisis.

As Schaeffer contrasted the New Testament’s description of Christian love with the suspicious, angry, separatistic culture of American Protestantism he had been a part of for the previous two decades, he was “torn to pieces by the lack of reality.” He questioned whether Christianity itself was real. For agonizing months, he dismantled his beliefs and reassembled them piece by piece. As a result, Schaeffer emerged with a greater confidence in the core truth claims of Christianity and a deep, life-changing, ministry-shaping conviction that Christian truth and love are inseparable.

Schaeffer’s experience is not uncommon and so serves as a good illustration of the sort of “deconstruction” that represents the experience of many who still call themselves evangelical. However, the term most people recognize for such an experience is a faith crisis.

Responding to Deconstructing Christians

So, what does deconstruction even mean? It means different things in different contexts. It is a postmodern philosophical label that has been adopted by current and former evangelicals to sometimes mean navigating a faith crisis, to sometimes mean identifying harmful cultural influences that distort the true gospel, to sometimes mean questioning and rejecting traditional evangelical doctrines and authority figures, or to sometimes mean departing the Christian faith altogether.

How should we respond to deconstructing Christians? I hope to return in a future article to delve into this question in more detail, but the short answer is, we should respond as faithful Christians have long responded. In the typical ways evangelicals use the term, deconstruction isn’t new. Since the church’s earliest days, some have endured faith crises, some have been harmed by sinful cultural influences, some have questioned traditional doctrines and church authorities, and some have departed the faith. And to each person, whatever their struggle, we are called to extend the grace of Christ.

What does that mean? Well, the grace of Christ will have various manifestations and measures in various contexts. For as we see in the New Testament, grace comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s tender; sometimes it’s tough. We are to “give grace” in whatever way “fits the occasion” (Ephesians 4:29). Which means, what form of grace a particular struggler needs is an issue of prayerful discernment.

But it’s helpful to keep in mind that a deconstructing Christian is often someone in significant pain. Anyone, like me, who has gone through a faith crisis (or multiple ones) knows that it’s not some abstract academic exercise. Questioning our foundational beliefs and wrestling with doubts about them often feels like we’re being, in Francis Schaeffer’s words, “torn to pieces.” If you read more in-depth about Schaeffer’s faith crisis and reconstruction process, you will see how disturbing, disorienting, and frightening it can be to experience (or to watch a loved one experience).

So, as we seek to extend the grace of Christ to someone experiencing deconstruction — however passively or actively, however privately or publicly — it will be important to press in carefully, ask clarifying questions, and listen well, to inform how we do or do not respond, so that our love may “abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment” (Philippians 1:9).

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