Deconstructing the Faith?
There is a kind of pseudo-intellectual process called deconstruction, where people supposedly analyze their Christian faith and choose to modify it or apostatize. There are performers in the Christian music industry who have "deconverted", but this kind of thing is also done by people who are not celebrities.
Several times in my own experience, I have heard of and even encountered people who claimed to be former Christians or ex-creationists. When they talk about what they left behind, they show an appalling lack of knowledge, indicating they never were Christians or creationists.
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| Unsplash / Danny Howe |
In many cases, deconstruction and deconversion are based on inadequate understanding of the faith (or of biblical creation science for those "ex-creationists"). Other times — I have to be blunt — some of these professing-atheist-former-Christians-former-creationists are lying. They aren't "used to be", they're "never were." If they ever said a little prayer from the back of a tract and walked down the church aisle in the first place, they were most likely uninformed false converts.
Misunderstandings of what has been renounced can come from poor teachings of theology (especially in liberal churches who have disdain for the authority of the Word of God), but also from laziness on the part of the deconstructor. There are numerous online ministries that believe the Bible and young-earth creation who are willing to do their best to answer honest questions. There are books available, and also knowledgeable Christians that can be consulted. Some of these apostates and compromisers claim that nobody could answer their questions, but when they describe what they doubted, the answers do indeed exist.
I must add that since professing atheists have a habit of lying, I lack belief that they ever gave serious consideration to what the Bible really teaches. Again, they demonstrated that they know little to nothing of Christian doctrine.
"But I was a Christian, Cowboy Bob! I went to church!"
Well, if you lived in a garage, would that make you a car?
People with serious questions need to make an effort to get answers, and not just get boilerplate rhetoric from sites promoting atheism or liberal churchianity. That's just confirmation bias. You with me on that, pilgrim?
As Christians, we should first and foremost look to Scripture to see what God has to say about how our faith should be constructed. We read that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Job 28:28; Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7, 9:10, 15:33)—meaning that our faith impacts not only what we believe about God, heaven, and morality, but it touches every aspect of our lives, from what we wear to who we marry to how we examine claims of competing belief systems.
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When we understand that God created the universe and us and that the world he created “very good” has fallen into sin, we can reconcile what our conscience tells us should be from the often “very bad” reality of life in a fallen world. And when we understand that God has been on a campaign of salvation in Christ that will encompass the entire creation in the new heavens and earth, we can find our place in that order.
The parable of the house built on the rock versus the house built on sand is applicable here (Matthew 7:24–27). If our faith is founded on a mature belief in and understanding of God’s Word, it will withstand the challenges we face in life. If we are only located within Christianity because that is what has been easiest to a certain point, as soon as something else becomes easier, our faith will crumble like the house built on sand.
To read all of the article, see "Deconstruction and the House Built on Sand."