Why I Changed My Mind about Deconstruction
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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Let Us Continually Offer Up a Sacrifice of Praise | Hebrews 13:15-19
In our very text the author told us how sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise can now be offered continually by acknowledging Jesus as the Christ before all men and by doing good to our brothers. But there is maybe no greater display of this heavenly mindset in the author than this final command: pray for us. We find prayer so difficult precisely because it is spiritual work that can only be done by faith. Yet because prayer is appealing directly to God and calling upon the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, who is also our Father through Jesus our Lord, to act on our behalf, what can be more important?
Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.
Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things. I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner.
Hebrews 13:15-19 ESVAs we have been observing, this final chapter of Hebrews is largely a series of quick closing exhortations. Of course, these commands do not stand in a vacuum but are predicated upon everything that the author has labored to explain over the previous twelve chapters. Indeed, although the rest of the book also contains plenty of pointed exhortation, the purpose of this chapter can be captured in the question: How then shall we live?
The first verse, which I believe to be thesis of the entire chapter, called for us to continue in brotherly love. Such love for our brothers and sisters in Christ will be shown through our hospitality, our caring for the imprisoned and mistreated, our honoring of marriage, and our contentment with our earthly possessions. Such love cannot grow up out of strange and diverse doctrines but can only be rooted in our faith in Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We concluded our previous passage with the author reminding us of the reproach that Christ bore to deliver us from our sins and calling us to also bear the reproach of marking ourselves as His disciples.
In the passage before us, the author explicitly binds the public confession of our faith in Christ to the love that we ought to show to one another, calling these pleasing sacrifices of praise to God. We will then see how submission to godly leadership is a safeguard against being led astray into strange and diverse doctrines and the importance of prayer as the greatest good that we can show to one another.
Pleasing Sacrifices // Verses 15-16
Particularly in the center of the book, the author of Hebrews labored to show that Christ is the absolute, perfect, and final fulfillment of all sacrifices for sins, according to the Old Testament law. Indeed, he noted that the chief benefit of the sacrificial system under the old covenant was to constantly remind God’s people of their sins and of their need for a perfect Redeemer.
Yet we should also remember that sin offerings were not the only kind of sacrifice that could be given. “Others were required as acts of worship denoting praise and thanksgiving to God and denoting the consecration of the worshiper to God. Of such kind were the burnt-offerings and the thank-offerings. The question naturally arises: The sin-offerings of the old covenant have been set aside by the offering of the reality to which they pointed. Have the offerings of praise and thanksgiving to God and denoting the consecration also been set aside? Does God still require his people to appear at the temple to perform sacrifices of worship and consecration as under the old covenant? Or with the superseding of the old covenant system is this also done away with?”[1]
Indeed, we can easily imagine that becoming a line of argument from some Jewish Christians: “We aren’t making sin offerings; we know that Jesus did that once for all. We’re only making sacrifices of thanksgiving.” What then is the answer? Have such offerings ceased, or are they still required of God’s people? The answer is yes and no. Yes, God’s people are still to bring to Him freewill offerings of thanksgiving and praise. We read that explicitly in verse 15: let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.
However, making physical animal sacrifices has ceased. Just as the blood of animals in the sin offerings pointed toward their perfect fulfillment in the sacrifice of Christ, so the blood of animals in thanksgiving offerings also pointed toward something greater to come through Christ. You see, as long as these offerings of praise were bound to the animal sacrifices, they were severely limited. They were limited to being made only the temple. They were limited by the availability of the priests. They were limited by the resources that each person had.
Our sacrifices of praise no longer have such limitations under the new covenant. We are able to offer them continually… to God because they are no longer being made through the blood of bulls and goats but through him, that is Christ. All of our freewill offerings of praise and thanksgiving to God are now made through Christ, who forever sits interceding for us in prayer before the Father. Therefore, we can give continual sacrifices of praise to God because Christ is continually interceding for us and we have continual access to Him as our Mediator and great High Priest.
But what exactly do such sacrifices of praise look like today? The author himself clarifies what that ought to look like: that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. Continually acknowledging (or confessing) the name of Jesus is the sacrifice of praise that God now desires from His people. We certainly confess Christ’s name each Lord’s Day as we sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to Him. But since author just commanded us to go to Christ outside the camp and bear His reproach, we should think of this more in terms of not being ashamed of Christ before those who would mock Him or (as is more common with us today) who we fear may mock us because of Him.
Of course, even within the Old Testament, there were explicit declarations that confessing lips were more pleasing to God than the blood of animals. Consider David’s great prayer of repentance in Psalm 51:12-17:
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,and uphold me with a willing spirit.Then I will teach transgressors your ways,and sinners will return to you.Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,O God of my salvation,and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.O Lord, open my lips,and my mouth will declare your praise.For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it.you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,a broken and contrite heart,O God, you will not despise.
With David’s prayer in mind, Richard Phillips is right to note:
Far more valuable to God than any outward religious display we offer, is that we should sacrificially devote our speech to him. This is something we should seek in prayer and cultivate as a Christian duty. Ask God to sanctify your lips, that they would be servants of his will and a source of pleasure to him. Of course, this will require the sanctification of your heart, which is the whole point. In large part we measure our heart sanctification by the sanctity of our speech, as gossip and coarse joking and cursing and complaining give way to encouraging, edifying, wise, and God-praising words.[2]
Such sacrifices of praise imitate the faith of those who have finished their race before us and glorify Christ as our altogether lovely Savior. Verse 16 presents another means: Do not neglect to do good and share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Just as acknowledging Jesus’ name has cost many Christians their lives and has heaped scorn upon many others, so too is doing good and sharing what we have with others always sacrificial. Because we live in a world that is still broken under the curse of sin, sinning is always easier (at first) than obedience. More specifically to the author’s point, it is also always easier to neglect doing good to others, just as it is always easier to neglect hospitality (v. 2). Yet in doing so, especially to the household of faith, we are also doing for our Lord (Matthew 25).
I think it is worth pointing out again that the author specifically has doing good to and sharing with our fellow believers. Although this may make me sound rather Scrooge-y, I believe that the general emphasis in many churches upon large mercy ministries is often not worth the time or financial commitment given to them. Like large outreach events, I certainly acknowledge that good and even salvations have come through them. However, mercy ministries often (again, a large generality that does not apply everywhere) seem to bear the fruit of Christians feeling good about serving the poor and perhaps the poor who were served thinking, “What nice people.” If our focus was primarily upon radically doing good and sharing with one another and with those connected to us, we would better present a community that people would actually desire to be a part of. Remember that the world (that is, non-Christians) will know that we are disciples of Christ (Christians) by our love for one another. If would do the best good for the world, we must give a glimpse of Jerusalem to those who have only ever known Babylon.
such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Recall from Hebrews 11 that this idea of having please God is connected to our being commended by God, which is the highest joy that can ever be known. As Lewis called it, it is the joy that the inferior takes in pleasing the superior. And what greater delight can there be for any creature than to know that the Creator is pleased with it. It amazes me to see my seven-month-old already trying to impress with whatever she is doing, but that is the natural inclination of a child to its father. A mother’s love is a child’s security, but a father’s approval is their confidence. If that is true of flawed, earthly fathers, how much more with our heavenly Father?
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The Genius of Christianity Breaks the Snare
Written by C.R. Carmichael |
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
This is the stunning genius of Christianity, that we have obtained the true Spirit of freedom which is only found by faith in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:17). “For freedom, Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1), for “having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:18). Therefore, “live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God” (1 Peter 2:16), knowing that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).Jesus “unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”” — Luke 4:17-21
It is no accident that Jesus kicked off his earthly ministry by reading from Isaiah to proclaim He had come to “set free those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18). This was a staggering pronouncement that would take direct aim at a downtrodden, sin-soaked world that had experienced years of judgment, captivity and political oppression at the hands of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, and even the wayward leadership of the Jews.
Not only was Jesus’ prophetic fulfillment “good news” to the poor, the blind, and the brokenhearted looking for relief from their various oppressors, but it was the unveiling of a new spiritual disposition of freedom that would show the depths of God’s love and mercy through His Son, Jesus Christ. As John Angell James once succinctly put it, “The very genius of Christianity is a spirit of freedom, and all its precepts are opposed to tyranny.”
The Gospel, you see, has bestowed upon believers, not only freedom from the tyranny of sin and death through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ (Romans 6:18; 8:2), but also a deep and intimate understanding of the mechanism of demonic oppression that outwardly drives this world. We know, according to God’s word, that we spiritually wrestle against “the rulers of the darkness of this world,” and yet we are also mindful of our need for deliverance from “unreasonable and wicked men” who thrive in that oppressive darkness (Ephesians 6:12; II Thessalonians 3:2). Because of this knowledge, we as Christians are of all people the most capable of seeing the necessity for Christ’s “spirit of freedom” to guide us in our temporal affairs as much as in our spiritual duties (John 8:32).
The “genius of Christianity,” as noted by John Angell James, is in spying out and eluding the traps of this oppressive world. This dynamic spiritual intellect which comes with the “renewal of the mind” (Romans 12:2) has prepared us to rightly oppose tyranny in all its forms whenever it infringes upon the abundant life given to us by our Creator with His great expectation for all people, made in the image of God, to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28; 9:7). Hence, we join with the psalmist in asking our gracious Lord, “Redeem me from the oppression of man, that I may keep Your precepts” (Psalm 119:134).
Historically, this Christian “spirit of freedom” was the driving force which transformed Western society, triumphed over the tyranny of Rome, spread the Gospel to every corner of the world, and presided over the rise of thriving urban centers, organized free-market commerce, universities, hospitals, and the establishment of liberty and justice through the guiding influence of God’s word. Indeed libraries are filled with books detailing the achievements of men and women whose lives were forever changed by Jesus Christ and how they impacted the world through ideas found in Scripture in a wide variety of disciplines that greatly serve humanity. And all of this was done in the fertile ground of a free society cleared and tilled by the redeemed stewards of Eden to bring forth good fruit for the glory of God.
The Great Dumbing-Down
These days, however, this genius of Christianity seems to have become dumbed-down by professing Christians who have forsaken their God-given vocation as trusted guides to true liberty. Too much comfort and idleness in Western society has created an “ease in Zion” where some disciples have grown fat and happy with their luxuries, amusements, and friendship with the world. As a result, the grace of God has been recast as a cover for unrepentant sin, even within church building walls where mere professors have “crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness…” (Jude 1:4).
Sadly, the most recent statistics from pollsters like Barna Group and Pew Research Center indicate that American Christianity is, to some degree, a “salt that has lost its savor” (Matthew 5:13). The number of people who still identify as Christians, gather consistently for worship, or regularly read the Bible has now fallen to under half of our country’s population. Because of this noticeable drop in Christian influence, the type of liberty being pursued by many citizens is no longer guided by God’s revelation and the Holy Spirit, but is one that seeks to break free from God altogether, leaving Him out of our cultural and societal equations and our day-to-day living.
Individuals nowadays have been given full authority by the American “oligarchy” to determine their gender, sexual orientation, or personal level of fleshly excess: gluttony, drunkenness, slothfulness and the like (Galatians 5:19-21). It is the age of a self-serving freedom where people can engage in all manner of sinful pursuits, or as A. W. Tozer once specifically named them: the self-sins of “self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them.” According to Tozer, this idolatry of the Self has been nurtured by the triumvirate of “secularism, materialism, and the intrusive presence of things” which has “put out the light in our souls and turned us into a generation of zombies.”
Ironically, this growing aspiration of our American society to provide people with complete freedom from the moral constraints of God’s will is creating the perfect climate for the rise of a true tyranny. Having rejected God, or more specifically, the easy “yoke” of Christ, these self-focused zombies seem oblivious to the fact that they are escaping from the perfect “rest for their souls” (Matthew 11:29-30), and running headlong into the waiting trap of the ultimate slave-master: Sin, and the oppressive world which traffics in it (John 8:34). As Warren W. Wiersbe put it, “The worst bondage is the kind that the prisoner himself does not recognize. He thinks he is free, yet he is really a slave.”
Common Sense Aligns With God’s Word
This understanding about the devilish trap of personal freedom isn’t exclusive to Christianity, by the way. Even secular thinkers are beginning to see the problem with this mad pursuit for unmitigated self-focus and self-determination. Psychologist Barry Schwartz, for example, suggests:
There is a dark side to all this freedom from constraint, to all this emphasis on individuals as the makers of their own worlds, their own destinies. It leaves people indecisive about what to do and why. Freedom of choice is a two-edged sword, for just on the other side of liberation sits chaos and paralysis. Thus, there is a price for freedom—danger.
In a worldly sense, Schwartz has come to an insightful conclusion: the price for one’s unrestrained pursuit of freedom, autonomy, and self-determination is “chaos, paralysis, and danger,” or as he specifies elsewhere, the loss of a sense of safety and security when one is left to his own devices in a world of “too many choices.” In this instance, says Schwartz, total freedom can suddenly be “experienced as a kind of tyranny” that leads to “dissatisfaction with their lives and in clinical depression” as the weight of the world now rests solely on their shoulders.
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A Famine of Discriminatory Preaching
Preach in a manner that none of your people can stand before the Lord on the judgment day and complain to the Lord that you did not confront them with their personal need to receive Christ and to consider their standing before the Almighty.
Introduction
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.—Samuel 12:7
I recently listened to a sermon on the free offer of the gospel on SermonAudio. As the minutes rolled on, I could not help to note that the sermon was rather detached and lecture-like. When the sermon was more than 3/4 of the way through it struck me that it was unlikely this minister was going to press his congregation to see if they had freely received Christ for themselves. He did not preach as if Christ had been crucified among them (Galatians 3:1). The assumption seemed to be that the congregation only needed to understand the Bible’s theology better.
This happens all too often in Reformed pulpits but what made it more jarring was this was done during a sermon on the gospel itself. A sermon with no exhortations to close with Christ (John 1:12). Sadly, I hear the same kind of thing from many students that preach in Presbytery trials, they simply do not do what Bible preaching demands—to search out the hearers. After preaching that salvation is of the Lord, few today will take the next step and ask their hearers the simple question: “have you yourself, seen that you are a sinner, and have you cast yourself entirely upon Jesus for salvation?“
And so, it is the case, sad to say, in addition to a famine of practical preaching, there is a great famine of discriminatory preaching in Reformed Churches. Discriminatory preaching does not discriminate as we use the word today to show bigotry between ethnicities or sexes or something of that sort. Instead, it is a discrimination between sheep and goats—the true Christian and the non-Christian or the “almost Christian” (the same as the non-Christian).
Because such discrimination is not sought in preaching—the outcome is that hypocrites are never confronted with their sinfulness and will hear on that last day, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). Sadly, many covenant children apostatize because their minister has never preached in a way that exposes their sinfulness and their own need for a Savior.
Confront the Hypocrite
Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?—2 Corinthians 13:5.
This need for searching in preaching is seen in 2 Corinthians 13. The apostle Paul confronts the Corinthians to see if they are in the faith or are reprobates.
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