Christians have a glorious promise and a wonderful hope that they can cling to and take comfort in. Whether we are near the end of all things – at least the end of all old things – is not crystal clear. But whether the Lord returns in 2022 or some other time, we have a huge wedding to look forward to. With that in mind, we can repeat the prayer of John: “Come Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). I sure am ready – are you?

I had several things in mind to write about this last day of 2021. But as I was reading the closing chapters of the Bible, I decided that a quick look at Revelation 21:1-5 would be the way to close out the year, as it discusses how God will close out life on earth, and start a new heaven and new earth.
Let me say at the outset that this is a book full of mystery and wonder, and those who claim to have it all fully understood are far more confident – some might say arrogant – than I am. The extensive use of symbolism and imagery alone makes this a very difficult book to properly and conclusively interpret.
As such the advice Peter gave in regard to the writings of Paul seems even more appropriate to John, the author of the Apocalypse: “There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:16).
But one thing that is clear is that a primary message of the book is that in the end God wins and his enemies lose. God is victorious. Regardless of how bad things have been for so long, God is the Victor and no one and nothing stands in his way. That is good news indeed.
And it is God the Son who is especially highlighted in this book. As the sacrificial lamb, prefigured so often in the Old Testament, Jesus is the all-conquering hero of the book. And we should not let the figure of a lamb (something Christ is called around 30 times in this book) mislead us. He may have come to earth the first time as a gentle sheep, but he returns as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, wreaking judgment on all his foes.
So he is both lamb and lion. With all this in mind, let me look a bit more closely at some of the closing words found in this book. The first five verses of the penultimate chapter of Revelation say this:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Those words alone should be of such tremendous comfort to all who have suffered so greatly during the past year – indeed, during the past 21 months. This global virus and various state responses to it have made that past year or two some of the most difficult that many of us – at least in the West – have ever experienced.
In the light of such tough times and dark days, the words of John in this book are a sweet comfort indeed. And Revelation is written not just for our benefit today, but for all God’s saints who have suffered so much over the centuries.
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The qualifications of a ruling elder are of two sorts. Some are personal and relate to his way of life as a Christian. Others are official and relate to how he rules as an office-bearer in the household of God.

If it is dangerous to any church to have ministers who are not called and qualified for their office, we must be equally concerned to have qualified elders. Zeal for the Lord’s honour and the gospel, love to souls and fear of the Lord’s judgment will make this a priority. One of the key elements contributing to discipline, peace and orderliness in congregations (and the wider community) is an effective eldership. Yet many elders are either unaware of the responsibilities of their office or not conscientious about fulfilling them. To address this, James Guthrie wrote a treatise on elders and deacons. The following excerpt from a recent edition of his treatise presents his explanation of the qualifications of a ruling elder.
The Qualifications of a Ruling Elder
The qualifications of a ruling elder are of two sorts. Some are personal and relate to his way of life as a Christian. Others are official and relate to how he rules as an office-bearer in the household of God.
His personal qualifications, or the duties of his way of life are the same as the apostle requires in a minister (1 Timothy 3:2–7; 1 Timothy 6:11; Titus 1:6–8). In these passages, under the name of episkopos “overseer,” Paul includes all the office-bearers who have the oversight and charge of souls, and sets down what manner of persons they should be in regard to their walk and lifestyle.
It is beyond question that the ruling elder ought to have a blameless and Christian way of life. However, to make it clear what the Holy Spirit requires of ruling elders, I shall show from these passages, first, what Paul says they should not be, and secondly, what he says they should be.
What a Ruling Elder Should Not Be
A ruling elder must not be given to wine. He must not be a lover nor a follower of strong drink, nor go to excess in reckless debauchery, nor tipple away time in ale-houses and taverns.
He must not be a striker nor a brawler, nor given to quarrelling and contentions.
He must not be covetous, nor greedy of filthy lucre. The love of money is the root of all evil: which while some covet after, they err from the faith, and pierce themselves through with many sorrows (1 Timothy 6:10).
He must not be a novice, or one newly come to the faith, lest he be puffed up with pride, and fall into the condemnation of the devil. The spirits of novices are not yet well ballasted, nor have they been brought low enough by frequent exercises of the cross, and so they come to be more easily puffed up. The ruling elder needs to be an exercised soldier of Jesus Christ, someone who has been taught by experience to know the wiles of the devil, and who is able to endure hardship.
He must not be self-willed. He must not adhere obstinately and unreasonably to his own opinion, refusing to listen to the views of his brethren, even when their views are sound and wholesome.
He must not be soon angry, either for real or perceived causes of provocation.
What a Ruling Elder Should Be
The elder must be blameless. He must be someone who walks without offence towards God and others.
If married, he must be the husband of one wife. He must be the kind of person who shuns all immoral lusts, satisfying himself with, and keeping himself within the bounds of the remedy provided by God.
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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.

“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.”
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