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By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,\xa0their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person\u2019s work. \xa0If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved\u2014even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Corinthians 3:10-15)

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Today, we\u2019re talking about deconstruction.\xa0 The term has been around in a popular form for a while, but over the last five years, and especially since COVID, it\u2019s really taken off.\xa0

Most people or most of us, when we use the term aren\u2019t using it like the academics.\xa0 That is, to refer to the post-modern philosophical work of Jacques Derrida that sought to get behind the context and structure of texts, language, and the assumptions of the Western world.\xa0

I think more people are latching onto the term in a popular sense, to describe a journey of questioning their assumptions and beliefs in questions like this: \xa0How does one know what\u2019s true?\xa0 How do we know if there is a God?\xa0 What about race, power, privilege, gender, and sexuality?\xa0 How can we trust institutions, including the church, that repeatedly let us down because of things like broken promises, their defence of injustice and inequality, and these ever-present scandals of abuse?\xa0

There are a lot of doubts that arise these days stemming from just these sorts of questions.\xa0 And, perhaps that\u2019s why I\u2019ve been hearing this term \u201cdeconstruction\u201d around a lot more in the last few months from pretty much anyone and everyone under the age of 40.

It can feel like this is a new phenomena in the church and the Christian faith.\xa0 It can feel like people are tearing down the foundations of everything that holds up their faith, world, and notions of the truth.\xa0 And that\u2019s a scary, isolating feeling.\xa0

But, I don\u2019t think this notion of deconstructing one\u2019s faith is necessarily a new idea.\xa0 Christians have been doing it since the beginning.\xa0 In the past it\u2019s been called by names like \u201cdoubt,\u201d or perhaps even better, \u201cthe dark night of the soul.\u201d\xa0 A time when everything in our faith seems to get stripped, or burned away, as Paul says it in 1 Corinthians.\xa0 It can feel like even we ourselves might get swept away in the inferno as the walls of our beliefs and institutions collapse.\xa0

But there\u2019s a promise hidden in this passage, and it\u2019s been echoed by long centuries of Christian experience in those dark nights of the soul.\xa0 And it\u2019s this: that even if everything in our faith and world was constructed with shoddy forms, heretical beliefs, and abusive leaders and influencers.\xa0 Even so, at the end of the deconstruction or burning away of everything we once knew and held dear: we will find that if our faith was built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, it will remain and we with it, even if it is just as one escaping through the flames.\xa0

This, I think, is what it means to cling to the cross of Christ through the dark night of one\u2019s soul.\xa0 When everything else dies away, burns up, or is taken from us we discover ourselves right there with Christ on the cross crying out: \u201cwhy have you forsaken me?\u201d\xa0 But on that cross facing the death of everything we know: we are not alone.\xa0 Jesus is right there, saving us.\xa0

And upon that solid foundation, the only solid foundation, we can seek to rebuild again. \xa0Deconstruction is not the end of the journey.\xa0 The Christian faith is generative: it always ends in new Creation.\xa0 New Construction.\xa0 Life.

One last note: if you know someone that\u2019s struggling through a journey of deconstructing their faith, pass this on to them.\xa0 I\u2019ve breezed through a really hard journey in a couple minutes in this podcast, which is obviously not how it goes in real life.\xa0 It can be an agonizing season that spans years of one\u2019s life.\xa0 But I also believe that this is what pastors and the Christian community are for: to journey with one another through just these dark valleys in embodied community so that the questions of our darkness find their way into the healing light of the day.\xa0 Don\u2019t leave someone to the social media algorithms\u2019 solutions: walk with them.\xa0 And if this podcast has described your own journey at all: I\u2019d be happy to talk and ask the hard questions with you too.\xa0 Reach out.\xa0 Let me know.

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