Ian Harber | Walking Through Deconstruction: A Guide for the Church

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Ian Harper. Ian is a writer and a Christian media producer, and he's also the author of Walking Through Deconstruction, How to be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith. And so today we're going to be talking a little bit about deconstruction and his perspectives on it and really what he wrote in the book and just have a good conversation around deconstruction and how that's impacting the church today. So, Ian, welcome. Thanks for being on the podcast. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on, James. I'm excited to be here and ready to talk. Let's do it. All right. Hey, why don't we just start? What prompted you to write about deconstruction? Yeah, it was a few things. So, so first of all, it's just part of my story. So this is just where I've what I've been through, you know, deconstructing, reconstructing my faith. This is a process that took me over 10 years. And so it's just really personal to me. And the book is not a memoir, and that was important to me to not write a memoir. You know, obviously, I couldn't write this book without sharing parts of my story. So, you know, I had to set the context and do that. But it's not about me. But it is very personal to me and part of my story. And there was a few things that kind of happened at once. I had this about five years ago, about five years ago right now, where I had almost a fluke, I guess it depends on your theological persuasion. But, you know, this fluke circumstance where I was able to share some of my deconstruction and reconstruction story on the gospel coalition. And that I did not think too much of it when I wrote it. I mean, I was excited to do it, but it wasn't, you know, I had never written for them before. And that article went very viral at the time. Now, it was a week before the pandemic. So everybody forgot about me a week later. But for the moment, that article had a significant reach, which I was just not expecting to happen. And so that sort of well, catapulted me personally into the deconstruction conversation. And I just started hearing from so many people, from people who are deconstructing, from pastors who were trying to walk with people through deconstruction, with parents and friends in the same position. And so I just started hearing from a ton of people. And there was a long time where I thought, what am I supposed to do with this? You know, this is not what I expected to happen. So as time went on, I started, you know, just I'm sort of in the deconstruction conversation. This is, you know, pandemic time. So it's kind of coming to the forefront for a lot of people. A lot of people started deconstructing during the pandemic for, you know, reasons that maybe we'll get into. I'm not sure. And so there was there was that. And I started hearing people talking about deconstruction in all different kinds of ways. And to me, it just sort of felt like everybody was partly right and partly wrong. It's not that everybody was entirely wrong. It's just that there was a really big piece of the puzzle missing. And so, you know, on sort of the more, you know, well, I guess it kind of just depends. Like some people would say that deconstruction is a really good thing. You know, so some more of the more progressive people would say that deconstruction is great because you're dismantling all of these unjust and abusive systems and just frankly, false beliefs. And so deconstruction is really good. There's some people who, and I respect a lot of these people on the more conservative side, who would even partially agree and say deconstruction is really good. It's just asking questions. It's untangling or disenculturating your faith. And so, you know, what's not to like about that? That's a good thing. That's, you know, refining, purifying your faith. I think there's truth to both of those things. And there was some, there was some other people on the more conservative, I would maybe push them, you know, to the fundamentalist side of things that would say deconstruction is very bad. You know, mark, avoid, danger, danger, stay away from it. Deconstruction is really bad. It's just if it's not apostasy, it's one step on the way to apostasy. So be careful, mark and avoid. And again, I feel sympathy with that because a lot of people deconstruct and they do leave the faith. That's just factual, you know. And that's more or less part of my story as well, is kind of having a period where I no longer identified as a Christian or twisted my beliefs to such a point where they couldn't recognizably be called a Christian. So again, even then I sympathize with the problem that I really started to see was that everybody who was talking about deconstruction was was talking about it in more of an intellectual register that it really was just this wrestling with theology or wrestling with culture and asking questions and doubting. And yes, I agree with all of that. But what people didn't seem to understand is that these things are intellectual in in nature, but they they're not fundamentally intellectual. They come from a more existential place. And deconstruction is more fundamentally an existential spiritual process before it's an intellectual process. And all of those intellectual things, the questioning, the doubting, the culture, the theology sort of happens under this existential spiritual umbrella that people don't understand. And so really the best way to characterize deconstruction before anything else is simply as a crisis of faith. And a crisis of faith is experienced much differently than just sorting through theological issues or disenculturating cultural things because a crisis is scary. It's experienced as a very terrifying thing to do because a lot is lost if you actually come to the end of that questioning and realize that you don't actually believe any of those things anymore. And those things aren't you don't you don't think they're true. And this is all it's catalyzed by a whole host of different things that we could probably get into. I'm sure. But people were missing that crisis existential aspect of it. So what I wanted to try to do is not write to people who are deconstructing, even though I think if people who are deconstructing read my book, they would find it helpful. There would just be some places they would they would run into and think, oh, that's not for me, you know, which is fine. But I didn't really want to write to them. There's lots of books written to people who are deconstructing. Some of them are really good books. But I really wanted to write to the church and just say, hey, you have people in your congregation, in your family, in your friend group who are deconstructing and you are probably really scared and just have no idea what is going on. Let me explain this process to you as best as I possibly can from as many different aspects as I possibly can. And then not so much give you a roadmap to reconstruction, because I don't think that's actually possible because only God is in charge of our faith and our reconstruction, not anybody around us. But equip people for a variety of different conversations and objections that people might have, not from an apologetic standpoint of here's all the right answers when somebody asks you this theological question, but more just let's shift the paradigm on some of these things so that we're thinking about it differently in a way that might actually be helpful to somebody who is deconstructing. Interesting. So when you when you look back and I'll kind of try to unpack a few things I heard you say. So when you look at the spectrum of people who are saying, you know, deconstruction is good, deconstruction is bad all the way to the, you know, those those poles and then everything in between. One of the things I found when I was looking into some of this is that when I got down to the more what you're calling like the fundamentalist folks, the people who say deconstruction is all bad. What I find is they really root deconstruction more in that Derridian, you know, Jacques Derrida, the postmodern approach, the constant questioning and constant unsettledness. And when you root it there, you sit back and you say, well, that that then carries all the weaknesses of that system along with it. And it doesn't always square with what we do when we're when we're looking at Christianity, when we're looking biblically and theologically at things. There's certainly room for questions, but there has to be an underlying surety that God is trustworthy. And so there there's a there is a sympathy I have for those folks who just say it's all bad. But at the same time, I don't have any illusions that people are going home at night reading Jacques Derrida and fullness and going, oh, I need to deconstruct. I mean, I just don't see that happening. It's very difficult to read and I don't think many people are going to have the patience or be required to read it as I was, you know, right. And so it's not something you just pick up. Is that part of what you found as you're dealing with that spectrum of people that as they rooted it more and more into an intellectual system like a Jacques Derrida

This process of deconstruction as an analytical process is different than like, let's say, the scientific method, where you sort of have these steps that you go through, you know, having a hypothesis and doing tests and repeating the tests and observing and, you know, all these kinds of, all these sort of things to reach a conclusion, a thesis. Whereas deconstruction for, even for Derrida, was much more a process that is ongoing, and it's more something that you step into rather than you begin and end. And I think that does map on to the deconstruction process, just experientially, right, of, it's not that somebody, and this is essentially what you just said, and I agree with you, that somebody just wakes up one morning and thinks, I want to figure all this stuff out for myself, you know what I should do? Deconstruct my faith. I think that's what I should do. Like, that's not it. It's much more something that they step into. It's something that happens to them. And I think that's why, actually, you know, the church until recently has had a language for this sort of process, and they've not called it deconstruction. That is more of a modern word for it. But whether that's calling it, you know, the dark night of the soul from St. John of the Cross, or a long dark corridor, or, you know, even Augustine in Confessions talks about having a crisis and going through a crisis of faith. And that honestly maps onto this very, very well in a lot of ways. This is not new for the church. For some reason, I think evangelicalism has sort of lost this category, and they've just called it other things. You know, they've either written off as simple apostasy. They've called it backsliding, which is not a term that, you know, is normative in church or the Bible. And so I think this is really, it's just sort of what deconstruction is in terms of its application to our faith. It's just sort of a new expression of these older things. Now, I think what catalyzes it can be culturally unique, and some of the challenges that come with it can be culturally unique. So I don't want to say it's all old. You know, the things that Augustine was wrestling through are not identical to the things that we're wrestling through, and the catalysts are not identical either. But I think, you know, sort of the flavor of deconstruction that we have today is more sort of the child of the emergent church movement, which has basically gone away in terms of an ecclesial movement, but it still largely exists as a media movement that's underground that people don't see too much. And it still exists in terms of people connecting to each other online and online communities. So it's just gone from, you know, basically, as far as I understand, all or most of those leaders have left the institutional church and not the faith entirely. And it's really just become an online media phenomenon now. And so I think that's what's influenced a lot of this deconstruction and the flavor that it takes. But as a spiritual process, there's really nothing new here. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. It's interesting when I hear you describe it as sort of this existential crisis. I came to faith late in my life, or later in my life, sophomore in college, and I was really hard-headed. And I just describe it, the easiest way to say it is, I was too cool for school. And so when I became a Christian, I was positive that I loved Jesus, but I wasn't sure about any of his people. And so I did not fit well in campus ministries or churches or anything like that. And I think I wrestled the same sort of existential crises that you're describing sort of in the middle of your faith, let's say. I think I experienced most of that at the beginning. And it's interesting that we have, it seems like the stigma of experiencing that at the beginning is nowhere near what it is experiencing it in the middle. But I think, I don't know, it's hard for me to find Christians who I've talked to, and I've talked to a lot of them now with the podcast, that don't have some moment in their lives, some period in their lives where they're having this crisis of faith. Now, it doesn't always manifest in the same sort of questioning maybe that like I did or you did or whomever, but it almost always results in, like they can identify it as this is my period of crisis. Some people describe it as a desert. Some, you know, metaphors vary, right? But I'm wondering what you think just culturally, situationally creates the animosity toward deconstructing one's faith now? Is it the language, this sort of confusion with the philosophical side, you know, the postmodern boogeyman? Is it the fact that people are actually questioning more deeply certain doctrines? Is it the emergent church connection, like some conglomeration of those? Can you kind of put your finger on a couple of things? Yeah, it probably depends who you're talking to and what environment you're in, which one of those things it would trigger. Going back to our original point, I just don't think the average person, even pastor, much less, you know, congregant, is, oh, this is Derridian deconstruction philosophy. You know, that's not really what is happening in mass. I think there are a number of factors at play here. Again, going back to what I was just saying, I think in evangelicalism, we've just lost any sort of category for the hiddenness of God and going through things like this, right? And so there's that. Let's just say that as one aspect and put that on the table for it. I think there's more. I think there's more than that. So there's sort of been two streams of evangelicalism that I've been able to identify that are separate, but they also have places where they intertwine, right? And so on one hand, you have sort of a, I don't even know the right word for it, but it's a strand of evangelicalism that is more intellectual or wants to be intellectual, or maybe the more cynical side of me would say pseudo-intellectual, where what they want to do is project certainty, especially in a postmodern world. And some of this comes back to the fallout from the fundamentalist modernist debates of 100 years ago and wanting to defend the inerrancy of scripture and the fundamentals of the faith. And I have some sympathy for that. I don't even think that's all a bad thing. But what you end up basically doing is ceding ground to a more materialist worldview that wants to try to create a sense of certainty on the Bible and the biblical narrative and our faith and these core doctrines on that more scientific grounds rather than really revelatory grounds of just receiving it from God. I don't think these things are entirely in contradiction, but it's basically what is your starting point and what is your foundation for proving these things? And so if that's what you're trying to do, if the, if the, if you're really, the thing that you're anxious about, let's use that word anxiety, because I think it's a helpful word. The thing that you're anxious about is these attacks on your faith from a materialist modernist perspective, then you're going to shore up your evidence on that line and try to defend your faith, which means the thing that you need in your faith is certainty. You need to be certain that these things happened, that they existed. And that leaves little room for doubt, little room for questioning. And if you're uncertain, then in this paradigm, you're sort of floating back over into that, that the critiques, the modernist critiques there of our faith. So there's that. The other strand, and again, I, I'm drawing a hard line, but I don't think there's a hard line, is this cultural Christianity line of, really, it's actually not trying to do any of those things. It's not, it's not even very concerned with those things. It's really just this moralistic therapeutic deism, this phrase that Christian Smith coined about 20 years ago, to talk about the default religion of Americans, especially at the time. And I think what's funny is I don't hear people talking about moralistic therapeutic deism the way I used to. And part of my concern is that it seeps so into our churches that we're not even thinking about it anymore. We don't even notice it. It genuinely is the default. And so, you know, Christian Smith, when he coined that phrase, he kind of gave five characteristics of moralistic therapeutic deism. The first one is a God who created everything and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth. And obviously we would agree with that. It's the next four that we start to get in the trouble. So the second one is God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most other world religions. It's like, well, I

And our faith might result in that, but it's not the gospel itself, and we're not just trying to make bad people good. That's Pelagianism. We're trying to, like, Jesus is trying to bring dead people back to life. That's the gospel. That is not taught by other world religions. The third thing is the central goal of life is to be happy, to feel good about oneself, which is obviously fundamentally opposed to Jesus' teachings, who said, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me. The fourth one is that God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem. Again, not true. God is God and King over all of our life, and he is always involved, not just when things are not going our way. And the fifth thing is that good people go to heaven when they die. Good people don't go to heaven when they die. Saved, alive people, united with Christ, go to heaven when they die. And even then, that's not even our end state. We're not even getting into new creation, new heavens, new earth, the resurrection, and restoration of all things. So we have a very, you know, at best, a stunted theology that's happening there. But it is even then as heresy because of the good people part. So I think that has in a lot of ways, maybe even more than the first sort of intellectual strain that I said become more dominant in our churches in America, is this moralistic therapeutic deism, which I would just sum up and say cultural Christianity, which is these people who don't functionally believe these things. They might say they do. They might say they believe what the Bible teaches. And, you know, there was a state of theology that came out, and I'm gonna get the number wrong, but it was a shocking number of people who would say that Jesus is God's first and greatest created being, which is a heresy. God is, Jesus is eternal, Son of God. So they don't actually believe the fundamental tenets of Christianity. They don't actually believe what Scripture says. Christianity becomes more of a therapeutic tool in order to loosely, vaguely order their lives around. And so these two things together, and I've gotten so far off track, I feel like I forgot the original question. But both of these things together, I think, kind of create this space where they create anxiety. They create this anxiety in both people. Because if you're questioning in the intellectual space, then you're kind of, you're just like this liberal drift backsliding, right? But if it's other thing, if you're questioning in the faith, these people have these religious beliefs, these Christian, quote-unquote Christian beliefs, but they don't actually have, they're not making any practical difference in their lives. And so all they feel is like, oh, you're not identifying with the same cultural group of people as me, which creates some relational distance, which, you know, they don't have enough theology to figure out, like, what that means for that person's relationship with God, either. And so it's just fear, you know. I know somebody who, when he talked to his dad about, hey, I think I'm having some doubts, and, you know, all this kind of stuff. His dad just said, well, do you know where you're going to go when you die? And my friend was just like, man, that's the only, that's all you got? Like, I'm telling you, I'm wrestling with my faith, and the only thing you got is, you're wondering if I know where I'm going to go when I die? I have some other questions to talk about, you know? And I think that's that cultural Christianity of just not knowing how to handle that, not having any sort of categories for what to wrestle with, I'm just like, but you're going to go to heaven, right? Sort of that fifth point. It's like, you're missing the point here. So the long, to sum up what I'm trying to say, I think it creates anxiety in both of these camps of just people not knowing how to handle it. And then that anxiety ultimately results in, it can result in a range of actions, but one of them is definitely animosity, like a desire to reject the people who are creating the anxiety. The easiest way to get rid of it is just to get rid of them to some degree. I will say it's interesting you bring up moralistic therapeutic deism. I ran back into that. I was doing a lot of work on, and this is kind of how I got into the deconstruction conversation more recently. You started seeing all the, I was writing a lot on politics, and you see this working itself out in politics. There is a pragmatic stance taken, conservatism and Christianity were being sort of molded together. You had Christian nationalism, which is a really odd movement. A lot of theological problems inherent within that. But then you're seeing people on the exvangelical side really looking in and saying, well, how can evangelicals do this with supporting X, Y, or Z candidate? And it didn't really matter which side it was. It was more, how can they support the conservative or Republican candidate than it was the Democratic. But still there was this, the problem, as I diagnosed it was, it was the merger. What you were seeing wasn't a fully fledged, robust theology of this is how we interact with the world and try to participate in government to restrain evil and provide some semblance of order. But this is no way, shape or form salvation. It is in no way, shape, or form. It has to fit within or be nested within what we really do, which is discipleship, right? We teach people to live under the authority of Christ. It wasn't that. It was these two had become synonymous. And it was, it was an odd sort of reworking of that moralistic therapeutic deism in the political realm. And when I'd read the people who were deconstructing and citing those political moves on the more conservative sides, I will say I very much sympathized with them even as I thought to myself, man, it would have been awesome if they had dove deeper into theology to solve this problem as opposed to reacting against the culture and just swinging the other direction. I think that was sort of where I started to see the dynamics starting to break down. If we want to understand what it is to be more crucially Christian, we need to go deeper, not further away. Now, I'm going to try to be as sympathetic there as I could. And I get why people did it. I just found the whole conversation very, very interesting, but I think I was identifying some of the dynamics you're really pointing to there. Yeah, what's funny is you're really putting your finger on what is kind of a turning point, even in my story, where I don't know if, it's kind of hard to say exactly when, but it was around this time where I just would say my deconstruction bottomed out. I don't know another way to say it. And it was in 2016 when Trump became president. And again, I sometimes hesitate to be political on here because it's so charged and obviously we're on the other side of him becoming president again. But for me, especially in 2016, there was, I just had this weird moment of cognitive dissonance where I heard of the progressive critiques, and in many, many ways, I agreed. I felt the exact same way about where we were going, about the things that I was seeing, a lot of agreement politically. But what struck me was that the progressives that I was sort of around and were who concerned were talking about conservatives in the exact same way that conservatives, with how I was around growing up, would talk about the progressives and Democrats. And I just thought, man, I kind of thought I left all of that to get in a place that was more tolerant, more loving, more inclusive, more diverse, more open to other viewpoints and opinions. And then when actually presented with something that is very contrary to that worldview, it's met with the exact same fundamentalism that I left. And so I was like, so you used the word pragmatic or pragmatism, and I think that is in a lot of ways the dominant story at a minimum. You could say dominant sin of both sides of elevating this pragmatism of what works over the spiritual realities of these things and actually making our enemies flesh and blood instead of the powers and the principalities that are behind them. And just trying to, well, in both ways, putting their hope in the person that's in the office, not actually in Christ. And so once I kind of saw that, okay, this as an ideology bottoms out at the exact same spot that this other place did, clearly this is not it. And so, you know, that for a lot of people, that 2016 election going into 2020 was the beginning of a lot of people's deconstruction. But I had been deconstructing for years before that. And so that's why I sort of, I sort of had again, a lot of sympathy for people who were expressing their opinions, but really almost the opposite experience of, oh, this is not what I thought it was. And if it's not this and it's not that, I need to kind of go search out and find out what it is. What it is, yeah. Yeah. Interesting. No, I got to look into the exvangelicals a little bit, which they're associated with the deconstruction movement in some way, shape or form. But that was sort of my conclusion was that they're identifying some of the real problems that exist within the evangelical community. They're identifying where the evangelical community has decided that they don't need to sit underneath the word of God, reform themselves and really change.

the dynamics of the movement, but they're responding to that by not sitting underneath the word of God themselves. And so they're just deciding a different agenda that they want to follow that's going to be decoupled from God's word and God's authority in the exact opposite direction. And so as someone who wasn't deconstructing at the time, wasn't really, you know, having a crisis of faith, what I was more looking at was going, why are we doing this to ourselves, right? Why is it that we're so unwilling to be faithful, even if being faithful means losing? You know, why can't we just emphasize that faithfulness? Why can't we just be the community we're called to be, repent when we need to repent, do the right thing? You know, why can't we do this? But that's definitely not what I was seeing. And so, interesting, yeah. And so 2016, Trump gets elected. Then you fast forward, what is it, 2020, when we have the pandemic. You mentioned in passing the pandemic. What was it about the pandemic, do you think, that created even more existential crisis? I think I have a vague idea of what I might say, but what would you say? Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah, well, I'm curious what you would say, too, so maybe you answer after me. But, you know, there was a just general breakdown of trust and any sort of concept of truth during that entire time. To be honest, I still personally have no idea what to think of 2020, because it was just so insane. Like, I don't have a good opinion on, I don't even know what I think anymore. Because it was just, there was facts, quote-unquote, for everything. For everything. And so, you know, I think what people, what was happening then was you just saw, you know, similar to the Trump thing in 2016, where a lot of people saw the people that they trusted, their pastors and parents and friends and so on, in evangelical environments, support somebody that is just, you know, put his politics aside for a second, just on a personal level, is fundamentally not an exemplary Christian man, you know. I think had a similar experience in 2020, where initially what was being asked was this very, you could say, modest, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve sort of situation. And then it kind of obviously escalated from there. But there was a, you know, the narrative at the time was, you know, stay inside, mask up. This is an act of loving your neighbor as yourself, trying to care for the lives of the vulnerable. That's a very Christian message, obviously, you know. And there were many conservatives, many evangelicals, who not just didn't buy that, but who were very loud and proud about not doing that. In fact, about defying those orders. I'm not trying to make a statement on what we should and shouldn't have done. Again, like I said, I don't know. I really don't know. I'm not an expert on any of those things. But I know the attitudes of the people going through that. And then you add on top of that, sort of people, and I know people whose family members fell down the QAnon rabbit hole of things. That was just an absolute truth distortion zone bender. I don't even know what to call that. Right. But it was just crazy. And so these people who had sort of been these trusted spiritual authorities all their life, all of a sudden did not seem trustworthy of much at all, especially the farther down the QAnon rabbit hole they went. And so that, you know, once these individuals are no longer trustworthy or institutions in some cases are no longer trustworthy, then that casts doubt on everything that they learned from those institutions. And now you have the breakdown of faith and a crisis on your hands. And so that's how I would answer it. I don't know. What would you say, James? I'm curious your answer. I think we're probably close. I mean, what I saw was, again, you know, we've lived within this American narrative that is America as a Christian nation. And that meant something, even though many of us probably wouldn't be able to define it. Maybe let's say minimally it meant we live according to a Judeo-Christian ethic of some sort. There was a wholesomeness to America that we all grabbed on to. And I think that had been eroding for some time. I think to your point, 2016 was a critical point where you start to see that what do we mean by holiness? What did it mean to be a Christian nation? How is it that this person represents that ideology, that ethos? And so I think a lot of people were questioning it. And by the time you hit 2020 and all of this stuff just starts to erode, you do see the conservatives really pushing back on some of these things. Nobody can discern what's going on anymore. I think what you had was the collapse of a cultural Christianity that had been probably, and I say this really carefully, falsely sort of buttressing people's faith. They were sort of Christian because they were American to some degree. You know, it was almost the default answer. And so I don't know, Ryan Burch has done a lot of research on the nuns and that explosion of the nuns. And so my sort of minimalist take on that would just be to say, and he would go into greater depth, but what I would say is when you start seeing the collapse of cultural Christianity, there's no reason to claim to be Christian any longer. And so my guess is all of those dynamics shook up people who were questioning in the first place, maybe didn't have as sure a foundation as they thought they did. And it all just sort of spiraled out from there. I think you add to that the fact that many churches weren't meeting. You add to that the, what I would call the uncareful commentaries from nationally broadcast and really popular Christian pastors and teachers. And I think what you get is you get so many mixed messages and mixed signals that you can only hope to become tribal. And that tribalism is ultimately going to leave some people out in the cold. And so I think there were all those dynamics within the pandemic that created real, real problems for people. It decoupled us locally. It pushed us globally. And the global voices are just, they're not consistent. They're, you know, they're, they're giving broad messages and pretending that those apply everywhere when maybe they only apply to their specific situation. That's what I mean when I say they're uncareful messages being crafted. So I think you had the sort of American story that was starting to crumble. I think you decouple people from any sort of community they might have been a part of that would provide support and help and maybe even have accommodated some of that questioning. And then you add to the mix really vocal, loud Christians who are then portrayed in various media forms that start to overshadow the wisdom that maybe a local pastor could have given on any given topic because obviously your local pastor can't have enough, can't have as much wisdom as some of these big wigs on the radio or on, you know, major podcasts and broadcasts and that kind of stuff. Yeah. But I think at least those three components really influenced it. Yeah, I completely agree with you. And you sort of hinted at it, but I think just to double click on it, that's kind of funny actually. But like, you know, the, the role of social media really can't be overstated because again, there's not, it's not like a switch flip. This is happening. But really the pandemic when we were all forced inside for over a year is sort of the moment where we officially transitioned out of a local communal institutional epistemology into an algorithmic epistemology, which is totally different. And we've never really lived, we've never lived in an environment like that before where we are all, I mean, you know, this is all very well documented. We're all siloed into these algorithmic bubbles where we are just fed feedback content based on what our interests are, what we already believe. And so it pushes every individual farther and farther and farther down the rabbit holes for every person going down the QAnon rabbit hole. There was somebody going down the trans ideology rabbit hole and we're all just fracturing off into these other places. And so, you know, you, you, you bake that in for over a year. I mean, we're still dealing with it. We're not out of that. That's

That's just normal now. Yeah. And so making that flip from a communal institutional epistemology into an algorithmic epistemology, I think is huge. And I mean, I think that we, I don't know how to undo it, but I know we have to figure out how to live in this environment and relocalize ourselves because the fact of the matter is if you allow the algorithm to be the chief architect of your plausibility structures, we are just no longer living in reality. Right. No, I agree. It's a lot of what I've talked about a lot on the show is even at the beginning of mass transit, that's where we started to lose it, you know, because any time I could go to a church that's 20 minutes in the other direction to avoid accountability or to maintain anonymity to some degree, I have decoupled myself then from the authority structure of the local church. And so there's a way for us to sort of church shop is, I suppose, usually what we'd call it, but there's a way for us to have like a return policy. Oh, I don't like what you're making me do. I don't like what you're suggesting. I don't like the way you're preaching or I don't like worship or whatever it is. And now I can go and be part of a different community as opposed to really working within that one community. Social media amplified that dynamic. And and I think it also allowed for, again, just sort of influential voices that are more popular to start shaping the understanding of of Christian culture through what I would say, most of the things that I would identify are like sermons, right? Or even interviews like this, right? Where if you really want to know about walking through deconstruction, you need to read the book. Like, we're not gonna scratch the surface in 45 minutes or an hour. You know, we're, we're going to provide some good information, but it's not an in-depth lecture. It's not getting at, you know, everything that you cover in your book. And I think that when pastors go out and they're, they're doing more sermonizing, sermonizing has its place, but it is not good for helping to shape public opinion or to drive nuance because a sermon is inherently more sure. It's providing some level of surety. It's providing directives and application as opposed to a conversation or a lecture where you might actually have a broader dialogue with different perspectives without resolving those. So I think all of that sort of plays into this. Yeah, well, and you're absolutely right about the mass transit with the church and, you know, decoupling locally and how social media amplified that. And I think this is one of the reasons too, why, you know, there, there's many reasons, but one of the primary reasons why the seeker movement of the church just feels more and more irrelevant by the day is because of this dynamic, because what the seeker movement fundamentally did, I don't think they realized they were doing this because it, this sort of happened pre-social media, right? But what they fundamentally did was transform the church into a content machine that really was there for the sermon and some good songs. And that was it. But when everybody can get, when this, I hope this podcast is good content, you can get good content anywhere, right? And it's like, and it's in your pocket. It's one search or algorithmic serve away. Then you don't need the church for content reception anymore, intake anymore. And so, you know, there's been a lot of ink spilled about sort of the resurgence of liturgical, like why more people are going to more liturgical churches, why they're going becoming Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. You know, my church is, you know, theologically Baptist, but we are very liturgical. We rip off Anglicans like crazy, you know? And I think there's something too that we have a ton of young people in my church. And again, my pastor is phenomenal. I think he's one of the best preachers out there. Nobody knows who he is and he's, he's amazing. But it's not, it's not the, you know, it's not the sermon that speaks to me every single week. Sometimes it's a Psalm reading or it's a time of confession or it's the Lord's supper that's reminding me of who I am in Christ and my union with him. Or it's just the community. I mean, I just, because I, you know, I have a, I have a 10 month old son. And so I had to, you know, step out of the sermon just this past Sunday to, I don't know why that happened the thumbs up, but, you know, step out of the sermon on Sunday in order to take care of him and just ended up talking to a few people who also had to step out or you know, try to get some things done. And so being able to recenter kind of a thicker liturgy and also the communal aspect, we have to do that as a church or else, you know, I think, I mean, not every single one, but most of the deconstructions that I am personally aware of come from some sort of church that either was deep in, deep in the seeker movement or influenced in some ways by the seeker movement. And I think that lends itself to that cultural Christianity where it's just like, I just don't, there's nothing thick or deep or real or meaningful here. We're not actually allowing, we're not actually allowing the spirit to minister to us. We're just sort of performing, which is something I get out of my book. These performative churches that exist to just platform people, including the congregation. So, yeah. So when you think about walking through this with people, what are some things you'd suggest? I don't know that, well, I'll say it like this. When most people, most people who are directed to me or come to me with questions, they're usually expecting more of the geek answer, right? Because that's just my background. I'm, you know, more academically minded. And so, while I try to be generous and, and sort of as pastoral as I can, I'm not a pastor. And so, you know, I'm more helping people understand what the Bible says, what theology is, helping them in those ways. But there's surely more to it than that. And so, yeah, talk a little bit about, give us some practical tips. People are questioning, what should our approach be? What should our posture be toward them? Yeah. Well, and I would say too, like those intellectual conversation and questions, even though I've, you know, I go to great lengths to situate them under this existential and spiritual umbrella. They matter. We need to be having those conversations. I don't want people to feel like they need to shy away from those conversations either, you know, and, and avoid them because they do matter. And I think if we understand our doctrine and theology properly and its role in the Christian life, then even our, our doctrine is therapeutic. And I think that's important for us to understand is, is that our beliefs, these beliefs are not just intellectual exercises. They are, they matter for how we make it day to day through life, which is part of why they're important for people deconstructing to wrestle through. Um, So I say that, but I also don't think somebody has to have all the answers. In fact, I think a lot of times when somebody is deconstructing, they go to somebody with all these questions. It is a stress test for their faith too. Trying to, uh, they probably are feeling overwhelmed by the questions. They might be feeling anxious themselves about the questions. And that's a lot of why I wanted to write the book of just saying, first of all, let's put salvation and somebody's faith back where it belongs, which, which is with the Holy Spirit, not with you. You know, you don't have control over this. You're not going to stop this person from deconstructing. You're not going to bring them back to the faith. Like this is, this is God's work and God has a place for you in here. But let's just take that pressure off of your shoulders. You don't have to have this all figured out. You don't. You don't. Take a deep breath and just be really, really comfortable saying, I don't know. Can we, can we, you know, go down that rabbit hole together and figure this out. And I'll do some reading and you do some reading and figure that out. So, I think there's that aspect of it, of just remaining calm, not being scared, not being anxious, being patient with the person. Everybody I know who's deconstructed, this has taken years, years for them to go through. This is not a month to month thing. So just being able to have patience with them as well and stay calm in that relationship. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. 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Newbigin, the famous missionary, and he talks about how somebody can only doubt or question something on the basis of something that they are not questioning or doubting. Anytime we're saying, well, I don't know about this, or I have questions about this, we're implicitly comparing it to something that we're not questioning. And so there's always a thing under the thing. There's always an assumption that's not being questioned. And so what we need to be doing is looking for that, too, because, yes, somebody can have questions about gender and sexuality, for example, but what they're often not asking is, what is a human being? What is a human? And how do we know what a human is? And what is the biblical vision for humanity versus a more secular vision of what humanity is? And just tell the stories. Tell the stories of what Jesus thinks a human is and what secular society thinks a human is. And then which story do you think is more true, good, and beautiful? And just wrestle with that. Wrestle with that assumption. Because we're often not questioning those kinds of assumptions. We're not questioning, going back to earlier in our conversation, we're not questioning the level at which pragmatism has made it into the way that we view the world. How much do we assume really capital P progressivism, not like as a political movement, but just as a way of viewing history and time as this inevitable progression towards something good and better? And we just have to hop on the train and get on and go with it. You hear this when people talk about being on the right side of history. As if history has a mind of its own that is just going to keep doing its thing and you just got to go with it. This is where it's going. And so we don't question these things. Being able to address the questions about biblical authority and gender and sexuality and God and Jesus and the resurrection and all of these things. But also sort of getting at, well, okay, let's go with what you're saying all the way down. Where does that take you? And I think a lot of people, and again, you know, everybody's different, so there is no, there is no guarantee to any of this. But what I have found is if you take people all the way down, it is not actually a very good place to be. It's a very, it's not the good, the true and the beautiful. It's interesting, you bring up that there's always something else underneath. I had this experience when I was an academic dean and I believe it was right around, well, I know it was right around the time when Woodman gay marriage was just made legal, right? And so many of the students were celebrating that decision. And I had faculty members coming and kind of saying, you know, the students are going liberal. This is crazy. What are they thinking? And I remember standing back and thinking about it and going, maybe they just don't understand how politics and faith work together. It doesn't have to be that they're going liberal. It could just be that they have this, they haven't thought through everything and that, you know, this is a point where maybe, you know, we need to help them navigate and understand what is a biblical theology of governing authorities and how does that align to your point with the good, the true and the beautiful that God has established. And, you know, how should we be thinking about some of these matters? But it was really interesting. There was just a contingent of faculty that only wanted to see the position. They didn't care what was underneath it. They just wanted the position to change. And as I was reading through a lot of the deconstructive stories, you know, some in your book, but others, you know, some in others. There was that dynamic that kept coming out that there was this sort of hard no side that was saying, no, it has to be this and it can't be anything other. Not from a theological perspective, but more on cultural and social and political issues. Right. And then there's the other side that's really just has more innocent questions or doesn't understand as deeply what's going on. And there's not a, I wouldn't even say it's a tolerance, an unwillingness to explain, to actually walk someone through and go deeper with them. It's like there was an authoritarian bent to so much of it that it was just like, no, believe it because I'm saying it. And once that ceased to be sufficient, what are you left with? You're left with confusion and misunderstanding. And so that has to be that sort of pastoral register. I think that you're talking about, like walk through this with someone patiently, help them think it through. Don't just be the authority in the room and expect people to agree with you. Help them understand what's going on here. Wrestle through it with them and let them come to their own conclusions. That sort of feel to it. Well, and going to your point, let's stay on the gay marriage thing for just a second because I think this is a really good example of the way that we implicitly allow pragmatism to seep into how we understand things. Because look at again, look at both sides. We're going to take equal opportunity and offender here. You know, on the progressive side, on the progressive side, you hear that pragmatism when you hear something like love is love of like, well, it doesn't matter who, what, you know, it just, it's very pragmatic. Love is love. So what's the, what's the big deal? Very pragmatic. On the conservative side, you hear, well, we shouldn't, it goes against God's laws and God's commands, which is true. But again, it's a very pragmatic answer of just right there in black and white. Can't you see it? God says, don't do it. Don't do it. There's, there's truth to that. I don't want to diminish that too much, but very pragmatic. Whereas I think what we sometimes don't understand is that not everything that God commands, even though you can make a pragmatic case for, for, you know, heterosexual marriage, traditional family, you know, whether that's a preservation of the family and reproduction of kids, procreation, you know, different things like that. But still, that doesn't always the best thing. If we're, if we're making certain assumptions about who God is, let's say even God is Trinity, right? And that God is God purely a pragmatic being or does he reveal himself in the very nature of things? And if God reveals himself in the very nature of things, then some things don't just have pragmatic value. They also have symbolic value. And that's something that Paul is getting at in Ephesians 5. When he says he's talking about marriage between a husband and a wife. And then he says, this is a profound mystery. I was just talking about marriage, but actually I'm not talking about marriage. I'm talking about Christ and the church. And so this, the marriage itself doesn't have only a pragmatic value to it. It has a symbolic value to it and how it reflects God's character and his nature in our very bodies and our relationships. And that every marriage, every family is a divine theater that is putting the play of God's character and nature on display for the world, which is why we make a covenant with each other the same way God makes a covenant with us. And so when you realize that, Hey, not everything you do has to be explainable pragmatically, even if it can be. Some of the things that we do that God commands are explainable symbolically. And that's not diminished. That doesn't diminish its importance in some ways it elevates its importance. Yeah. I mean, we see this, I'll just say two things there. One, we see this in probably the clean and the unclean laws. There's a woman named Mary Douglas, who's argued that part of the reason certain animals are unclean is because they don't fit cleanly within the order that God established, that they do things that are off in some way. And, and we see this sort of distinctions and boundaries creating problems in something like even as strange as Genesis 6, 1 through 4, where the sons of God, whoever you identify those as then mate with the daughters of men. And this is a blurring of boundaries that were intended to be distinct. And so those distinctions are really important. Like they, they matter in a lot of ways, but they're not always as transparent as we'd like to think they are. You know, we're trying to live into an order, which we've only gotten a glimpse of and we have to learn and understand. But I would say the other side is a lot of times what I see, you were talking a little bit about, you know, this pragmatism of, well, this is against God's law. And so it should be encoded in us law and upheld. We see this with probably gay marriage first and then probably with the abortion sort of situation. And you sit back and you're like, well, yeah, I get, I understand that. Like I can get there. I understand that would be an ideal situation for us. But the reality is that if you look at the way law functioned, it didn't function that way. Even when Jesus talks about divorce with the Pharisees and they say, well, what was God's, you know, what about divorce? And Jesus is like, yeah, they were supposed to be together forever. One flesh. And then the Pharisees come back and they're like, well, why did Moses tell us to offer a certificate of a divorce? And Jesus says it was because of the hardness of your heart. In other words, the laws are holding back more devious and perverted things that you would do if the law wasn't there. There has to be an order and it doesn't always speak to the ideal. Often it responds to the unideal. It responds to disorder and tries to restrain it.

It's really difficult, right? It tends to get polarized and far less nuanced than it really needs to be. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that relationship with the law, yeah, because it's huge. The law is, the purpose of the law is to restrain evil, but it can't produce goodness, you know? And so only the Spirit can produce goodness. And so if you're relying on laws for goodness, then you've put your hope in the wrong thing. Right, right. Well, man, we've gone almost the entire time. I kind of want to ask you this last question. This is a question I usually surprise my guests with, so if you haven't listened to the podcast, you won't know it's coming. But I ask all my guests, what do you think the church needs to be thinking about today in order to be and make disciples more faithfully? What are we missing that we need to start getting? I would say two things. Okay. And I don't think I'm unique in either of these takes. So if I would say there's maybe two things that we need to recover, one of them is, gonna sound really basic, they'll both sound basic, one of them is just a really strong ecclesiology. What is the church? What is it? Why do we do it? Why do we gather on Sundays? Why do we, like, what is this thing that we're doing? It's weird how, as nuanced as I try to be with Scripture at this stage of my faith, how literally I have started to take the language of the body of Christ as it relates to the church. When Paul is on the road to Emmaus, oh, it's Damascus, sorry, wrong road. There's multiple roads. Road to Damascus, and he meets Jesus there. Jesus says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And Saul's like, he had never met Jesus. Jesus had already ascended at that point. Paul is persecuting the church. And Jesus says, why are you persecuting me? Jesus identifies so closely with his people that if you're persecuting a church or Christians, it's as if you're persecuting Christ himself. He identifies with us that closely. And so being able to recover a theology of a church, I have a pastor friend, Brett Edwards, who's coming out with a book here in a few months called The Reason for Church. And it's phenomenal. And I think it's going to help in that. So I'm plugging him because I think he gets it better than most. That's great. So recovering what is the church for a lot of the reasons that we talked about in this conversation already. I need that. And then the second thing is a doctrine of humanity. What is a person? Which I guess we've covered a little bit, too, in this conversation. But you have, whether that is some of the more progressive ideologies around gender and sexuality that we've talked about already, that's one way that we need to talk about this. But another way is technology and AI and biohacking and transhumanism, the quest for immortality. I mean, these things sounded crazy probably five, six, seven years ago, and they are just not crazy to talk about anymore. And so you combine those two things. Christians have to be the people who have a very strong understanding of what a human is. And if Christians in the future are the last people to die, that needs to be part of our witness. And I'm not saying we're ever going to actually achieve immortality because I don't think we can. But we are going to see some crazy things, I think, over the rest of our lifetime. Agreed. And we need to be very comfortable being men and women. And we need to be very comfortable with death. And those are conversations that are sometimes happening in the church, but I don't think are happening to the degree or as well as they need to. Very cool, Ian. I love those answers. Yeah, we're right on the same page with those. Those are the two answers I would probably give. Technology and humanity is something I've wrestled with. And then just thinking through, why are we continuing to do church? Why do we need it? What is this? Yeah, definitely great answers. Well, man, really appreciate you being on today. Thanks for talking through these issues with us. For everybody who's listening, I'd recommend walking through deconstruction. Great book. Check it out. And Ian, just thanks for being here, man. Thanks for your perspective. And thanks for writing the book and sharing your story and your insights. This has been a fun conversation. I appreciate it, James. Thanks for having me on. All right, everybody. Well, we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Thanks for being with us. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and... Need more of God's power in your life? I'm Christina Patterson, host of the Teach Us To Pray podcast, providing practical tips on how to grow your faith through prayer. Subscribe at lifeaudio.com.