We’re In a Generation That’s Deconstructing Its Faith. Will The Church Help Reconstruct It?

When the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye announced he was no longer a Christian, the articles came thick and fast. Headlines about purity culture, marriage and Christian celebrity were filling up my feed, as Josh Harris’ actions were discussed and debated.

But there was one aspect of the announcement – a minor detail – that also caught my attention. It was in Josh Harris’ characterisation of his “fall away from faith”.

Harris put it like this:

I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is “deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away.”

Deconstruction… also known as “falling away”? Pardon me?

I am sure Harris didn’t use the term lightly or ignorantly. Was there theology here that made him feel like he couldn’t be Christian any more because he was questioning?

I don’t know the answer, and my purpose here isn’t to dissect Harris specifically. But it did reinforce for me that deconstruction is still controversial – even misunderstood – in Christian circles.

So often, deconstruction is characterised as something for progressives who are lukewarm on Christianity. Or it’s 100 percent rebellious, something the church needs to oppose and defend against. But is it?

The Christian community needs to take a closer look at deconstruction if we’re going to reach a new generation.

Deconstruction, of course, has evolved as a term from its roots in literary criticism.

Like so many things that the internet takes and run with, it can mean lots of things to different people. But for the purposes of this article, I’ll use how deconstruction is commonly framed: A term for pulling something apart, exposing its tensions and analysing the power dynamics in play.

Recently, the term has become popular with Christians regarding their faith life. A person accepts a series of values and beliefs as part of Christian faith, but, as their beliefs collide with an unbelieving world, they have to look critically and dissect those beliefs.

The subsequent process of analysing their assumptions and Christian beliefs is popularly referred to as deconstruction.

Getting the answers can mean a long time of sitting in ambiguity, knowing that you love God and believe in Jesus’ claims, but just not knowing exactly where you sit on questions like, “Do I really believe that God sends people to eternal, conscious torment?” or “What does sexual morality look like in a culture where we get married much later in life?”

This can be a long process of exploration – and Christians around you may or may not be supportive.

Sure, asking a question here and there isn’t a problem in most churches. But it’s as though some questions are okay (“Does God really love me?”), while many are off-limits (“Is Paul’s prohibition of same-sex attraction just a cultural thing of the time?”).

And while this generation is comfortable with ambiguity, many Christians are not. At best, your lack of certainty makes your church friends nervous. At worst, your lack of certainty will be rebuked or characterised as a lack of trust in God himself. (Believe our stance on LGBTI issues, or you are not one of us.)

And it’s everywhere. I see Sunday school answers to complex questions, an insistence on a “plain reading” of a text that’s been translated through the ages, or major Christian websites saying that “doubt is slander against the Almighty”.

That’s a problem, because this is a generation that lives in ambiguity and learns through questioning.

We deconstruct everything, from public holidays to race relations, and we don’t swallow whole life scripts easily, instead analysing and interpreting them for ourselves. We are comfortable with ambiguity and not having black and white answers, and we don’t tend to accept the explanation “It’s always been that way, so believe it.”

But despite what you might hear, many of us are genuinely interested in religion and spirituality. We just are deeply skeptical of institutions and cultural trappings.

It’s little wonder, because that’s the world we’re growing up in. More and more of us are growing up in a secular or post-Christian West, and evidence suggests this generation is under more pressure in post-Christian societies than we’ve seen in a long time.

So, sure, we may be asking questions that will raise your blood pressure. But don’t assume we’re doing it to be heretics. These are Christians who need to be nurtured in their faith, to “make it their own”.

That’s why it’s so frustrating to me when we, as a church, talk about deconstruction like it’s just a gateway drug to disobedience.

That’s simplistic, at best. It can appear disingenuous, as though our faith is too brittle to withstand scrutiny. And it is (unnecessarily, in my opinion) sending a message that this generation can only have faith on the church’s terms.

It’s no wonder that this is a generation that’s leaving church in droves.

That’s what concerned me about Harris’ characterisation of deconstruction. Even if Harris misspoke, the truth remains that we, as Christians, can fall into an “all or nothing” view of faith. Either you take it all on and agree with it all, or you can’t be “one of us” – as though we’re not all in an ongoing process of learning all the time.

And when we have a kneejerk reaction, that deconstruction is some progressive nonsense, or that it’s a sign of weak faith, we can unfairly teach Christians that wrestling with God is not okay.

Isn’t it?

What if it’s genuine questioning in a world that’s very different to the one we saw fifty years ago? What if it’s trying to integrate the deep intellectual and moral queries of our time with a faith that’s dynamic and alive?

What if deconstruction is just another word for something that can and should happen in an active faith all the time?

My point isn’t that deconstruction is always right. My point is that it’s not always wrong.

The uncomfortable reality is, my generation will deconstruct their beliefs, whether the Christian community supports them in it or not.

What we need is a church that won’t reject us for that. We need a church that will see us as seekers, not just as rebels. And we need a church that will help us construct those beliefs well in the first place – and will help us pick up the pieces when we need to rebuild.