[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of the Stumble where we're having meaningful conversations from a Christian perspective about faith, doubt, and how the heck those two things can live together in your life. My name is Sam Tennell. I'm your host and before we get started, let me take a second to thank today's sponsor, Emmanuel Fellowship Church in Ellisville, Missouri. Menu Fellowship is a church that believes the Gospel of Jesus is good news for all people. Everyone is welcome to come belong because we believe that Jesus Christ loves us and meets us exactly where we are and also loves us enough to make us more than we are. As we get further into this series, I want to give you an invitation. For the rest of 2025. I am personally going to be setting aside time to sit in person with people who live in the St. Louis area who are working through their doubts and struggles. Not for the purpose of recording for an episode of the podcast, but just to give people a safe place to process what they're going.
If you're listening to this and it's still 2025 and you're in the St. Louis area and you'd like to have just a voice on your team to help you work through and process whatever's going on in your faith, I'd encourage you to reach out. You can reach
[email protected] and we'll schedule a time to get a coffee and sit and talk through what you're going through. Again, you can reach
[email protected] and we'll get out at Grab a coffee. I'm excited about today's episode. We're going to be talking to Alex Lee, a local church planner here in the St. Louis area, about the Deconstruction movement. Some thoughts on where this movement came from and what are the ways we can process it as people who want to have faith at the core of our person. We say this every week, but the reality is faith and doubt go together hand in hand. Doubt is a normal and unavoidable part of the life of faith, and if you want to be a person who lives your life with faith somewhere in your core, you're going to have to learn how to be comfortable with the intellectual experience of doubt if that's where you're at today. Especially if you're someone who's been intrigued or engaging in a lot of the discussions on social media around Christian Deconstruction, I think you'll find this conversation interesting. So let's jump right into it.
Okay? I am here with Alex Lee. Alex is a Local pastor, church planner here in the St. Louis area. You have involvement with some parachurch ministry that has, like, you have some history with creative arts and revival ministry, like college campuses and stuff. But more than that, the reason I asked Alex here today is that he has just a personal pastoral passion around apologetics. And in our topic today around deconstruction. So, Alex, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, Tell us about your ministry, tell us about invite church, and we will go from there.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Awesome. Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited about this. So, yes, I grew up as a church kid and then also as a missionary kid stateside in Michigan, as my dad was a part of a, and still is part of a revival ministry.
And I've had a lot of friends over the years walk away from their faith and wrestle with their faith, even though our upbringings, at least on the surface, were very similar. And hearing them talk about what led them away from faith really challenged me, and it breaks my heart, honestly. And so I think that as a church planter now and as a pastor, one of my desires is specifically to target and kind of go after those who are deconstructing or are wrestling with their faith or have experienced some sort of disappointment or unanswered question in their pasts growing up in that Christian bubble culture. Right. That some of us experience and helping them find the truth and answering those questions and creating a space where they feel like they can be okay with not being okay and not have it all together. And so that's something that I'm really passionate about.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that gets us straight to the topic today. And so the, the doubt that kind of came up in our survey, I mean, pretty much one of the top ones that we're talking about today, it really is all about this idea of deconstruction of faith. This practice is seemingly at least so commonplace. And so I really think it raises a valid good question, which is, if Christianity is true, why do so many people walk away the way I've kind of been phrasing it? Because we collected together all these different answers to the survey. So the way I've kind of been putting it all together is essentially just, does the proliferation of deconstruction delegitimize Christianity as a worldview?
And that's a really broad way to start the conversation. But why don't you just give me some of your initial thoughts on the broad question and then we can start to zone in.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: So Dr. Frank Turek, who is a fairly well known apologist, talks about this analogy where essentially if somebody plays Beethoven poorly, a kid is plunking out something that Beethoven scored poorly. You don't listen to that poor imitation or representation of Beethoven and say, well, I hate Beethoven. Right. But instead you actually go to the source material. And I think that that's one of the reasons why we experience or we see a lot of people deconstructing is unfortunately they've been given a false impression or a poor impression of what Christianity is.
Maybe it's a cultural Christianity or, or it's a deeply politically motivated Christianity or it's a, it's a nominal sort of, I grew up in the South Christianity. And so we go to church and we love God and we do these kinds of things. And so what happens is, I think the reason we're seeing a lot of this deconstruction is for two reasons. One is, is what I call incompletions. And then the other one is really what I would say would be over, like, simplifications. And so I think in an attempt to that second one, you know, try to distill these really complex ideas about God and the gospel and scripture, sometimes, you know, what's been taught to us is, is actually only part of the story.
Right. And so then when we grow up and we just know Noah's Ark and David and Goliath and that God loves me, like, we get out into the real world and go like, this isn't working, you know.
[00:07:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: And then I think the other thing is that, you know, theology is often like, caught more than it is taught. So sometimes it's not even what your pastor said or what that person preached or what that curriculum was trying to drill down, but rather it's what was implied. And so we pick up, you know, different implications as well.
You know, I, I think a lot about different sins as an example. So I grew up in a Baptist tradition. And so obviously, you know, there seems to be an emphasis on drinking and why we shouldn't drink, but there's less emphasis on gluttony and why that sin of excess is also dangerous and destructive. And so we kind of come away with these implications and these incompletions and we, we have a theology that's been caught and it's not a full blown story. And it doesn't stand up to the, the hard questions we face when we get out into college and so on and so forth. So I'll just stop there. But that's kind of my, that's kind of my, you know, thought process.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: There I, I know I just asked you to answer broadly before we dig into specifics, but man, you just, you just piqued something interest wise for me.
What I heard you saying there is basically that you feel like at least a good chunk of kind of the deconstruction movement we're seeing is just based around the idea that people have gotten a really poor picture of Christianity.
I guess my question would be, how much of the deconstruction movement do you think is coming from that perspective of just they got a poor or incomplete picture of Christianity, kind of a throw out the baby with the bathwater kind of thing?
[00:09:00] Speaker B: Well, I think that even going back to the Bible, when the Apostle Paul is writing to Timothy at the end of 2 Timothy, as he's penning what's his last letter essentially to Timothy, he says, you know, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort. And he says to do this with complete patience and teaching because, you know, a time is coming when people will no longer, you know, endure sound teaching, but will accumulate teachers to suit their own passions. So it almost seems like even 2,000 years ago, Paul knew this was going to happen, that people would start to look for other voices and worldviews. And his remedy is that if we're not complete in our teaching and we're not complete in our patience with people and their questions and their struggles, like, this is what's going to happen. So I think, just like theologically, I think that's already in play, right? Is that even Paul is saying, like, hey, it's the complete teaching, like, go all the way. Like, you know, and it's also complete patience. If you don't do this with a sense of love and charity and long suffering, you know, it is hard. But then I would also say that I'm not an expert on deconstruction, but it's a passion of mine to study it. But those who have, I think overwhelmingly those who have begun to dig into this topic and publish works on it and teach on it, what they say is that in, in almost every deconstruction story that they hear, there was some sort of hurt that that can be that the deconstruction is traced back to. And so I think that says a lot about that incomplete picture, right? Or that, or that misrepresentation. And I think that that's really interesting.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: So you're.
I'm really zoned in on something I'm interested in here, but I feel like I'm getting ahead of the conversation a little bit. So. So let me back up.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Sure, sure.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Before we get too far down this road, let. Let's just start with this. Deconstruction as a term is basically everywhere, right? Like, it's a whole category of social media influencer at this point.
Can you take a second and maybe just define for us what this term means in the context of the life of faith?
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, there are people that have spent significant time researching this topic, interviewing those who would say they've deconstructed. One of those people is a lady named Elisa Childers, and she might be familiar to some of us as a singer in the early 2000s Christian pop group Zoe Girl.
And then she actually. I know, right?
Come on. And then she actually went through her own deconstruction after, you know, the success of being a Christian pop star, essentially. And so now she is really passionate about deconstruction and. And progressive Christianity. So she recently partnered with Tim Barnett, who also is an apologist, and they wrote a book called the Deconstruction of Christianity. And they talk a lot about that on their different channels and avenues. And one of the things that they actually said is that when you define deconstruction, they said, at least Elisa did. She said, you know, I used to say, oh, there's good deconstruction, and then there's like, bad deconstruction. And she said, but the more that I did research for this book and the more that I've dug into this, she goes, almost always when people that have truly deconstructed talk about deconstruction, there's a pattern that arises.
And. And the way that she defines it is it's a postmodern process of rethinking one's faith. But here's the key thing. Without relying on scripture as the standard, so sometimes we talk about healthy deconstruction. And she actually said that she no longer even likes to use that phrase because she's like, deconstruction typically always looks one way from her experience. And instead, maybe using a word like reformation might be a. Might be a more helpful word for somebody who is trying to wrestle through their faith. I'm not saying that that's necessarily my view. I think that there's ways to nuance that either way. But I think ultimately it's about rethinking your faith. And I do think that oftentimes it is about rethinking those ideas. But you're not. You're not necessarily, in most cases, going, hey, I grew up believing this. What's the Bible say? It's usually, I grew up believing this.
What's everybody else saying? And I think that that is an interesting distinction.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: I think you're zoning in on here. Something that's really important. You said earlier, it's so much of theology, our personal theology, is caught rather than taught. And so especially for people who grew up in some kind of faith tradition, they almost certainly inherited a lot of beliefs and cultural practices and doctrinal convictions without ever actually thinking critically about them. Right. Like, if you grow up in a Baptist church or a Methodist church or fill in the blank, there's just certain beliefs and practices that you just kind of take in.
And so I like this idea or the way you're talking about it. The deconstruction is that moment of stopping and going, well, let's pick through these.
And this, you know, obviously the connotation that goes with deconstruction, generally, the way the term is used in our culture right now is that for the most part, it's picking through them to get rid of them. Right. Like, it's taking them apart not for the perspective of or for the purpose of examining them next to Scripture and building up our own convictions, but just for the purpose of getting rid of them. It's interesting that you use the word Reformation because that's essentially the story of the Reformation, right? Like, a group of Christians looked at some doctrinal practices and convictions that they had inherited and said, hey, these don't line up with Scripture and they reform. That's. That's a. That's a nuance of language that I hadn't considered before. I really like that.
Alex, do me a favor, and this is a little personal, but I hope you don't mind, like, why don't you take us back a little bit through your own experience of faith. You grew up in the church. You grew up engaging this stuff.
Have you ever had any periods in your faith that you would describe as deconstructive or maybe reformative?
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.
I mentioned. So let me see.
When I was a kid, I grew up going to all kinds of different, you know, discipleship ministries, one being Awana.
And if you know about Awana, I had the vest, I had all the badges and the awards and all that. But Awana was designed to help kids memorize Scripture. And just because of the way my brain worked, I really, like, latched onto that and really excelled and enjoyed memorizing a lot of scripture.
And I've always joked that if I didn't become a pastor, I would have become a lawyer. And sometimes my wife and I commiserate that I would have made a lot more money as a lawyer.
But I've always kind of thought that way. And so like, what's always fascinated to me is this idea of like the Bible first and foremost, I think is a story of God's love and redemption. But then also there's all this incredible practical truth in it. And so for me, when I was really even young, being able to say like, hey, what does the Bible say about that? Like, was really important. And I remember one time when I was probably in middle school, maybe pushing into high school now. Yeah, pushing into high school, I sat with a young friend of mine and his dad was also in ministry and preached. And he grew up in a much different soteriological.
You know, he grew up like Five point Calvinist. Okay, So I grew up, didn't even know what that was. And I, I know we're not here to talk about Calvinism and Armenianism and all that, but it was such a foreign concept to me because I just, I had never heard of this concept. And he began to explain to me, you know, essentially tulip, right. I don't remember if he used the acronym or not, but he starts to walk through free will versus, you know, God's sovereignty. And, and I'm probably 13, 14 years old and my mind is being blown because he knew what he was talking about, you know, And I was like, I have never heard this before and I don't know what to do with it.
And it really kind of rocked me. And I remember spending a lot of time like going to the scriptures and actually going, okay, just because I grew up one way, like, is that actually is actually true, you know what I mean? Because he, because he came at me with the same Bible I have, right, and had all these, you know, opinions and ideas. And so ultimately, you know, that was a big moment for me. And then I think around that time, the youth group that I was a part of, we were going through Francis Chan's book Crazy Love. And it had just come out, I think, and that was kind of a big book. And I remember him in one of those little, you know, videos that you watch before the discussion, he kind of used this analogy of if you were washed up on a, on a desert island and you're washed up with the Bible, you know, and you had never, you know, heard anybody talk about the Bible or church or Christianity or whatever, and you just read it by yourself, you know, what Would you come to the same conclusions about God and faith and Christianity that you hold now?
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Dang.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: And I was like, damn, I don't know. Yeah, right. So, yeah, I feel like a lot of my high school, like, all those happened around the same time. So a lot of my high school was actually me going, I feel really strongly about this, but how much of it do I actually know for myself versus it's what I was taught. So I feel like that that was high school for me in a lot of ways.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: You know, I. I had a really. I had a pretty vivid. This experience of. Of deconstruction in my faith that was actually really healing really good for me. I grew up in a Christian home and was discipled in a very conservative evangelical Baptist family and church.
My high school years were, I think, just a lot less seeking after the Lord than maybe what you're describing, dude. Like, I was much more the stereotype of the nominal Christian who went to youth group and did those things, but was just living my life chasing after the things I wanted to chase after. And it wasn't until right after I graduated high school that I really began to dig in and grow in my faith and take it seriously. And through a series of events, I was attending a local university here in St. Louis, Linnewood University. And I actually ended up.
I won't tell the whole long story, but I was wrestling through a call to ministry, and I actually changed my major to Christian Theology at Lindenwood. And Lindenwood is not a Christian university, but at the time, they had this weird hybrid evangelical Christian ministry theology program where you would. At a secular university, you would take CMS Christian Ministry Studies classes from evangelical pastors and theologians. But then as part of it, you also had to take rel courses, just religion courses, because it was a liberal arts college and these were standard secular liberal arts rel courses. And so I would have these experiences where I'd have a semester where I would be taking, like, the theology of the Gospel of John from a Methodist pastor or a Baptist pastor. And in the same semester, I'd be taking Theology of the New Testament from an atheist, because one was a CMS course and one was an REL course.
And I loved it. That was actually really good for me, except for. I mean, I think it was my freshman year. I think it was maybe my second semester. I took a philosophy of religion course from Dr. Alan Myers, who I still know, who's awesome, but Dr. Myers is a pretty progressive Presbyterian minister who holds to a lot of pretty standard progressive Christian doctrinal. Ideas. And, man, this course, philosophy religion, again, taught from a pretty secular, academic perspective.
I just watched it rip my friends, these young Christians working through call to ministry. I watched it rip them all to shreds. They're going through the different philosophical proofs for God and arguments against them and this and that, and even some discussion about the reliability of sacred texts and all these different things. And it was messing. It was just really messing with me. It really put me on my heels in terms of my upbringing in faith and in my church and the pastors who I had trusted and mentored me. And I'll never forget, dude, I sat with the youth pastor who was mentoring me at the time, and I told him, like, I'm just. I'm really wrestling with stuff. Like, I don't know what to do with this.
I feel like I need to just like, tear down a bunch of the stuff, beliefs, thoughts, convictions I've been handed. And he basically just goes, dude, you do, you do. You're in a place right now where you need to be intellectually honest and you need to work through this stuff. And he goes, tear it all down.
Pull every brick down and pick it apart. He goes, just promise me that if you're going to deconstruct, you will do the hard work of reconstructing some kind of faith, that you won't tear it down like a kid breaking his Legos and then just say, this is too much work and walk away. If you're going to deconstruct, promise me that you'll do the work of rebuilding a faith on the other end of it. And he walked through that with me, like, over the next year.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: Because I wrestled through the faith I had been handed. And what was so nuts about that for me is that on the other end of it, I was like, whoa, I'm a Christian. I'm confident that I'm a Christian. And I'm not even just that. I'm confident that I'm a Baptistic Christian.
It was that level of specificity in terms of working through stuff, But I know it's not everyone's experience.
That's obviously not what deconstruction looks like for the vast majority of people.
I guess my question then would just be this, dude, like, why do you think deconstruction is so prevalent right now? Like, what is it? What's going on in our society that makes this, like, you know, it's trending, you know what I'm saying?
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Well, I think some of it is TikTok and instagram reels.
Now, I sound like an old fogey, but go with me here.
In Proverbs 18:17, it says the one who states his case first seems right.
And so the other comes and examines him. And so I think we live in a culture where you get on TikTok and in a minute's time you have a lot of these influencers setting up a straw man or an incomplete version of Christianity, and in a minute they just obliterate the view.
[00:24:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: And because there's no cross examination and because I think in a lot of cases, Christians haven't been taught how to grapple with questions and haven't been able to even ask their own questions, they see this content and go, oh my gosh, I don't even know what to say.
Yeah, kind of like what you were talking about with that class, you know, but this is happening constantly online now.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Just the, the prevalence of that particular medium of social media, of these short term short form videos. Right. Like, yes, you can, you can take in a lot of content really fast without taking the time to necessarily dig through it. You just kind of. There's something about the medium of short form videos where you just kind of suck it in. I mean, so I have a couple thoughts here, but like, would you expound out? Because I feel like we're at this place of just kind of perfect storm culturally where there's probably four or five things coming together and that's probably the icing on the cake of the social media culture we're in right now makes this kind of content incredibly accessible and platforms it a ton.
But it's also coming from somewhere. Right. Like the deconstruction hashtag exvangelical. Like influencers are there because they're already experiencing this. They're already in a place of deconstructing. What are your.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: So I think that in the last 25, 30 years, there's been a ton of behavior modification discipleship.
And we saw that with the purity movement. And while obviously the Lord calls us to be pure and to live in modesty, some of the way that got handled. Okay. I think contributed to this problem of not dealing with the deeper matters of the heart. So I think that that burnt people out and frustrated them.
Then I think you also have, in addition to that, a seeker sensitive movement where I saw this thumbnail of a YouTube video come across my feed the other day and it said the youth groupification of church.
Right. And basically every.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: But I know exactly what it's talking about.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Every big hot church right now. Actually looks like what we were doing in youth ministry 15 or 20 years ago.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: And so there's a heart behind that. And I've been guilty, okay. As many of us have, of trying to say, how can I reach as many people as possible and keep this simple and yet not actually engage enough of the Bible to really help them understand why I'm going and I'm doing this.
It's great that God loves me and I should go love others. But, like, why?
How, you know, what's that mean? Mean and look like? So I think you had both of those things happening at the same time and then. Or back to back, even maybe. And then I think also you have the social media content that's coming out. And then I would also say, and not to get too in the weeds here, but I also think that cultural Christianity and nationalism has also muddied the waters, because then people are also saying, well, if that group over there, that's very loud, if they are representative of Christianity, I don't want anything to do with that.
Okay.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: And we're not able to, you know, nuance anything anymore and say, well, what about that might be good and what might of that not be good? And so I think that that's kind of what we're left with. And I don't want to get ahead of us, but I would say, I think one of the biggest problems that we have is we are engaging with straw mans or straw men, I should say, instead of steel men. And in my experience with people that have deconstructed, if you actually ask them, have you taken those questions back to the Bible?
I think oftentimes it's no.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: And so what they're doing is they're not even recognizing that the thing they have ought with isn't even Jesus anyways.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
So I think you're hitting on a couple really interesting factors here. If we look at kind of the state of the at least American evangelical church.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: For the last 30 years, there is a whole bunch of stuff that came together. The growth of the seeker movement, where we're saying, how do we get as many people in the door as often as possible?
The growth of the youth group movement of saying, hey, we want to reach teens for Jesus. And a lot of that did come together in kind of this. Man. If you go back to the late 90s and early 2000s, at least in our area, a lot of churches were really stinking good at getting a whole bunch of teenagers in the room for events and for worship services.
But when you have that many people who aren't actually grounded in a Christian faith. Like, it's, it's really easy to slip into just going, well, let's do more. Let's do good moral teaching. And that kind of used to be the model for kids in youth ministry of going, let's moralize.
And then if and when they develop a sincere Christian faith, they'll already have this basis of Christian ethics.
But that's just that, I mean, I remember reading a stat, and I'm going to get this wrong if someone wants to look it up and correct me. But it was something ludicrous. It was talking about millennials, specifically. There was something ludicrous like 60 to 70% of American millennials spent at least six months of their high school years plugged into an evangelical youth group.
Which, that's crazy.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: That is.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: But also not that surprising to me. Like, youth ministry was at that point. It was like at its high point in terms of effectiveness and outreach and those sorts of things.
And I think you combine that idea that a whole stinking bunch of people in one generation got a base level incomplete exposure to a certain brand of Christianity, right?
And then you put that next to the fact that in a larger society.
And this is the two pieces I wanted to kind of add into this is we had the growth of postmodernism as a basic tenet of thought, which is essentially this idea that most truth is subjective to individual experience. Your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth. And that's fine if they don't correlate. Right? There's a lot of ways that postmodernism is really helpful.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: But, Sam, society, is that true?
Sorry.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Postmodern thought can be really helpful when you're talking about appreciating art or things like that. Right.
We can have a long discussion about which set of Star wars movies is the best. And a postmodern thought process is the best way to have that discussion. Right? Like if you like the original trilogy, the prequels or sequels, like, there's a whole lot of subjective, internal human experience that goes into that experience. And so I'm not dismissing postmodernism, but. But it really has wormed its way into our, our larger cultural understanding of truth and education, all these things. And then you put that next to in the early 2000s, when a lot of millennials were in middle school and high school is when the new atheist movement exploded, right?
And now all of a sudden you have some of these at the time, like really well known famous thinkers writing whole books and doing podcasts and conferences about all the reasons Christianity is dumb and stupid and what you grew up with is. Is unintelligent, and it's also destructive for society and hurts people who are sexual minorities and all this different stuff. And I just kind of go, yeah, like, all of that is a recipe for what we're seeing in deconstruction and what we're seeing on this end now with the social media influencer side, it's like, yeah, but that's just the apple growing on the branch, growing on the tree from the root of this thing.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: Bubbling the last 30 years.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Yes. And if I could say really quickly on that note, when you have kids that grow up learning what I would call these stories. Right. And even that right there caught versus taught. I was saying this the other day in a sermon. We teach these stories like that. We say, this Bible story, here's this Bible character named David. It's like, no, this is history. You wouldn't teach history this way. You wouldn't refer to historical figures like Abraham Lincoln this way.
Right. So they grew up kind of hearing that. And then, like, for me, I didn't even understand fully how the Old Testament and the New Testament even connected with. Until I got to Bible college.
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Because it was so not. You know, then you go to youth group, right? So you get the Bible stories, and then you go to youth group, and then you get, here's how to be a good person for Jesus.
Right. And then you get out in the real world and. And you're hit with the New Atheist movement, and it's like, oh, my gosh. And the only apologetics that I was familiar with when I was younger was like, you know, it was. It was all. They were the creationists, you know, and they. They were coming at it from this scientific perspective, not an ethical or philosophical or moral perspective. Right. That we're seeing debated now more in the public square. And so apologetics was like this thing that really, really smart people did.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: I'll tell you, dude, you know, it's. This is a little bit of a rabbit trail. But I actually think, because I agree with you, I had a similar experience where we're close enough in age that we were hitting a lot of this stuff around the same time. My understanding of apologetics when I was in college was like, creationists, Young earth creationists. That's what apologetics is. And that almost that stuff's interesting. And if you geek out of that stuff, I'm glad you do. But I feel like in A lot of ways that set up this unnecessary false dichotomy.
Because I feel like a lot of the guys like Richard Dawkins would point to that and go, really? Like, that's the stuff you're gonna believe in, like this 6,000 years and blah, blah, blah.
And the problem was, from my experience, at least, a lot of the creationists and a lot of the apologetics guys were like, yes, a hundred percent.
If you don't believe this specific view of creation, then you aren't a Christian.
And it was like you were hearing that on both ends. And then you're 19 and you go to college and you take a Biology 101 class and you go, wait a minute. So I have to reject everything I'm learning in this class in order to affirm Christianity? Like that. That's.
That's a whole nother mess, that.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: But. But I look at that and I'm like that. It makes me really sympathetic to why so many people were experiencing these kind of doubts and working through their deconstructions.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you've got guys like John Lennox and William Lane Craig who are not on that train and are brilliant, and they've engaged people like Dawkins and some of those who were part of that movement. And you go, wow, like, I didn't even know.
I didn't even know that this was a thing. You know what I mean? And so just, you know, so that's been really interesting for me.
Absolutely. Also, I wanted to say this too, because you mentioned it earlier. I, like, Sam also am probably misquoting things, so fact check me. I feel like I should say that because, you know, sometimes I reference something like, hey, yeah, this book, you know, I don't know. I just want that on the record.
Go ahead, go ahead.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: So do this for me then.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: We've talked about maybe, like, why this is such a common experience right now and why it's an understandable experience.
But obviously, dude, I mean, both of us sitting here talking, we've grown up in this culture in this context, and we didn't walk away from our faith. Right.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: More have.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: So what is it, Alex, about your theology? Or even just like, what you know of the Bible, the biblical narrative? Like, what is it about that that helps you maybe validate periods of doubt and questioning and these sorts of things? And how have you. How have you actually processed this in your own life?
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Wow, cool. I think for me, thankfully, like, this is God's grace, but I felt like I started with the Bible, like, in Other words, it was like. It was almost like, okay, so if I have this question or this frustration, it's like.
It's like, is it actually, like, thankfully, by God's grace, somewhere along the way, and I told you that story earlier, it always, for me was like, well, let's start here first, and let's make sure that I really understand what this is saying for myself and not what I heard.
And then it. And then if I feel like I've got a good handle on it, not that I understand everything, because I don't.
Then if after that it's not working, then, okay, then we have a problem. And I think a lot of people just miss that. And that goes back to, like, strawman arguments versus steel man arguments. You know, Christians are guilty of this.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: Can you explain those two terms real quick?
[00:39:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So a straw man is a man you can easily take down because he's made a straw. He's not real. And so that's, you know, essentially in debate or in discourse, a straw man argument is a poorly understood or fabricated imitation of the real belief.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: You know, so you present your opponent's belief in a way that is easily beatable.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: Even if that isn't a good representation of their.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Yeah, and sometimes that's done intentionally, but I think a lot of times it's done unintentionally because we. The thing that we actually, again, like, the thing that we have ought with, we don't even realize isn't the real thing. Like, okay, so I think that that happens a lot. But the steel man is. Here's the best version of this argument, and I want to engage that. And so to me, it's like, if you're gonna. If you're gonna wrestle with. If you grew up in the faith and you're gonna wrestle it to the ground, it's like, go to the source of the whole thing first.
Like. Like, wrestle with Jesus. Like, you know, I mean, I had a friend who had deconstructed, and I was always challenging him. Like, hey, I just. Would you just do me a favor? Read Jesus for himself.
Yeah, like, because I think. Because you, you know, you're telling me a lot of things about what Christians believe and what they teach. And I'm actually trying to say to you, I don't think that's Jesus, but there's so much hurt, I think, honestly, and disillusionment, that engaging the Bible is almost, dare I say, in some cases, traumatic for people.
So even that whole concept of, like, engaging Jesus for himself feels like too much and that's where I think we can kind of come in and help people that are experiencing that in the way that we, you know, when we're talking is we're bringing scripture in. And so that, with that particular friend, that's a lot of what I've done is actually, can I tell you something? You know, yeah, sure. You know, and being able to say, here's actually what Jesus said about that, or have you thought about this? You know, so I feel like that's been like, by God's grace, really helpful for me. Is that, like, for me, it was always like, let's go back to make sure I really am getting this from the scriptures, then going, okay, does it work or does it not work?
Does that answer the question?
[00:41:29] Speaker A: I love you sharing that, man. It makes me think of, I've heard evangelists and apologists before use this framework where they basically say, tell me what you don't like about Jesus or about the God of the Bible.
And when someone describes that stuff, if it becomes evident that they are oftentimes unintentionally describing a strawman, oh, well, I don't like that Jesus is bigoted and judgmental and this and that. It's really beautiful then from a biblical perspective, to be able to say, hey, actually, as someone who's trying to understand Jesus in his own words from Scripture, I can tell you I don't believe in that Jesus either. That can be done in a way that feels like a gotcha. But I think that can be done in a way that feels really loving. To go to a farm and go, yeah, what you're describing sounds pretty terrible.
[00:42:17] Speaker B: I'm not on that train either.
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I wouldn't want to follow that God either. I also wanted to really quick just get this out there. I'm not trying to crap on Richard Dawkins, but I think people might be intrigued to read about this.
One of the big critiques. Dawkins is the most famous of the new atheists. And one of the big critiques of his book, the God Delusion, is that he uses strawman arguments, that he uses these arguments against Christianity that most Christians who are educated would be equipped to engage pretty heartily. And so one of the ways that has come out in a way that I just, me being confessional, I find humorous, is that William Lane Craig, the Christian philosopher and apologist, has multiple times put out invitations to Richard Dawkins to debate and discuss the arguments from his book.
And he refuses to. And so there was apparently, I don't remember what Year it was, I mean this is honestly probably like 10 years ago or something at this point. But he did this thing where he invited Dawkins to a public debate in London and had it scheduled and had the whole event set up and was just like, show up, we'll talk. We're literally just gonna talk about the points you're making your book. And he didn't show up. And so they had an empty chair and pedestal on the stage and he just went through William Lane Craig went through the main arguments in the book and ripped them to shreds. Which would have been way better if it was a dialogue and a back and forth. But it speaks to that piece of going. If you're going to argue against something like represent your opponent in a way they would agree with in a way that they would be, you know, argue against the strongest version of the.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: Yes. And I think one thing that I would help you is when you are wrestling through, you know, your own deconstruction or reformation or whatever you want to call it. One of the things too that I think is helpful is, is when a, when you hear a video or you, you see a teaching from an atheist or somebody who's, you know, walked away or who's now agnostic or what have you actually ask yourself the question, like, do I even grant the premise of your question?
You know, so like one of the famous ones there is like, you know, well, everything, you know, everything has a, has a beginning. So like who created God and, and, and what most of the, the well versed apologists will say is by definition God is a being that we, we don't believe. He's. He never started, he never stops. Like you're, we reject the premise of your question because you're actually fundamentally misunderstanding what we mean when we say God. You know, and we can get way off into the weeds on that.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: But anyways, some of that Christian philosophy stuff is very interesting, but like you said, it's heady. You are getting into the weeds. I'll say, man, to kind of back us up.
One of the things for me in my own story that was insanely grounding and helpful in my experience of doubt and deconstruction was the biblical narrative in and of itself like the theology piece.
I have a master's degree in theology, I love theology and I love to geek out on that stuff, but 20 year old me was not there, right.
And I was by God's grace, I think, doing a lot of what you're doing or just going, well, I'm Just going to read the Bible and see what makes sense to me. And I'm much more a story narrative driven person than I am like a fact thought type person. And so I've always been drawn to the narratives in Scripture. They're what really bring, I think, gospel truths to life to me. And one of the themes I saw throughout the whole Bible from beginning to end was the fact that it seems like in scripture God actually welcomes people's doubts and frustrations and deconstruction. That's, to me, one of the most wild pieces of the biblical narrative is that, you know, this is a dumb way to say it, but if I were in God's shoes, I think I would be like, hey, dude, I made you. I'm in charge. Like, figure it out. And yet what you see in Scripture is that when people question God, when they are sorrowful, when they're hurting, when they're looking for his goodness in the midst of suffering, when they're trying to process their own betrayals and hurts and sorrows, it just seems like over and over and over and over and over, God meets them with compassion and understanding. And it's just like, yeah, I get why you feel that way and I'm, I'm just going to be with you in that. And there was something so freeing about that to go, I don't have to be worried about God being mad at me because I'm working through doubts.
Like he welcomes my questions and doubts and gives me space. And I felt that in a very tangible way through this discipler who just said to me, dude, let's work through it together.
Which I guess brings me to, I love where you started about nuancing the language between deconstruction and reformation. But man, I would love to think about from your perspective, what are some ways that deconstruction or reformation can actually be a healthy spiritual process and to kind of tick off of that, what does it look like to actually reflect, rebuild a functioning faith when someone goes through this process of picking apart the spiritual culture they've been handed that they, that they took on without any discernment and they need to break it down? Yeah, what does it look like to rebuild something that works that, that you can be comfortable with, but that also actually creates space for vitality and intimacy with Christ?
[00:48:03] Speaker B: That's good.
Psalm 119, 160 is one of my favorite verses. It says the sum of your word is truth.
And I love that because you know, some sum, like the total of your word is truth. And I think that, like, I've started with, you know, we've got these fragmented ideas from scripture about God and about Christ. And oftentimes in those TikTok videos, somebody's coming up to somebody else on the street and they're like, do you think slavery is bad? Yeah, slavery is bad. Should we ban books that are pro slavery? Yes, we should. Okay, well, guess what? The Bible's pro slavery. And then that person they're interviewing just looks like, well, you know. Right. Yeah, like, well, if we actually zoomed out for a couple minutes, that falls apart really quickly, like, in the way that it's being presented. You know what I mean? And so, like, I think for first and foremost, it is, it's actually getting the meta narrative of scripture and who God is, right? Because I think that again, something that we're kind of taught or, or what, maybe we're not taught this, but it's caught is like there's this angry God of the Old Testament, and he's always hacked, you know, he's always hacked off and passing judgment. And then, and then suddenly he's like, Jesus comes and he's all cool now. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? And it's like, you know, and that's kind of something you hear people kind of say. And it's like, have you actually read like, some of these Old Testament prophets where God is pleading with his people, please return to me. I, I, like, I, I, I would, I would, I would much rather you hear my words and turn from your wickedness than for me to have. But I will say I will, as a loving father, punish you.
And in my justice, I will punish evil. But how many times does God, even in the Old Testament, like, stretch out his hands, right? And, and so, and so I think, like, getting a fuller picture of the scriptures. And then also I would say when you do that, looking for this, God is, God is for you. And I think that that is, I know that sounds like trite, but I do think that it's not hard to come away from some of these Gospel presentations that we were taught. Like, I love the Romans road, right? We, we learned the Romans road and all these verses in Romans that walk through, you know, that we're guilty and that God saves us, right? But we kind of miss sometimes this whole other thing that's going on that God is actually, he wants to heal us and restore us and, you know, and we kind of miss that. And we've unintentionally or intentionally made the crux of our entire worldview not going to hell. And it's like, that's like not the point actually, you know what I'm saying? So, like, getting a fuller picture and engaging the whole text of scripture, I would say is a really good place to start.
[00:51:10] Speaker A: So what I hear you saying in that is that for some people listening, like some form of deconstruction may be really necessary.
Like you may have been handed a really poor representation of Christianity and we don't know that. Right. But depending on what, what you were handed for a faith tradition or how you've come to understand Christ and the gospel message, you may need to do some deconstructing. And if that's where you're at, the way to do that in a life giving way. What I'm hearing you say, Alex, is go back to what the scripture teaches.
Like, don't let social media or your background or your culture inform that before you. Let Jesus speak to you in his own words, right? Like, let him. Let him represent himself as he wants to. I think that's a really good thought, man. I used to use this phrase when I was a youth pastor.
I'm very obviously not against youth ministry. I'm very pro youth ministry. But when I was a youth pastor, one of the things I used to tell kids who were young in their faith is read your Bible, but read your Bible with this starting assumption, God is real, he's good, and he loves you.
Let that be your interpretive lens. Because a whole lot of the scripture and the Bible is a confusing book.
It is. It's a hard to understand book. It takes work to understand the Bible.
But if you start with that lens of. I know what the overarching teaching of scripture is. It's that God is real, he's good, and he loves me. And you let that be your interpretive lens, man. Like, you can find so much life and truth and safety and redemption in the teaching of Scripture. Yes, I love you sharing that, man. The one thing I would tap onto that is that I think in our cultural moment, it's really easy to think of faith and our doubts and our construction, reconstruction, deconstruction. Like, however we think about that realm of our life as something that is deeply personal and private.
And oftentimes I see people working through this stuff just entirely on their own.
And the encouragement I would give is that I really think biblical Christianity is personal and specifically isn't private, that it's meant to be worked out in community. And so I mean my own story, right? Like, I would not have found the life and joy and freedom in the gospel that I have found if it weren't for the mentor who encouraged me and coached me through my deconstruction, but also the community of peers.
I had four or five. Five friends that I was walking pretty close with in that season and just bringing them into. Here's. Here's my struggles, here's my doubts. Here's what I'm picking apart. Here's what I'm reading in scripture. Here's what. What do you guys think about this? Like, there was something about that communal experience of it that was.
That was really good for me. Are. Are there any elements or practices that you would suggest, Alex, are essential for someone who's trying to work through some deconstruction or reformation and maybe rebuild their faith in a healthy and meaningful way?
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say being plugged into, even when you're struggling, getting yourself plugged in to the degree that you're able and comfortable with a local church and a group, I think is really important.
[00:54:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: You know, in Jude, Jude writes, he says, but you beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith. So he's talking about building yourselves up, and then he says, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life, and have mercy on those who doubt. A healthy church environment is a space that's designed to help others build each other up, and that comes with also expressing those doubts.
There's a psychology term that talks about corrective emotional experiences.
And so when. When we open ourselves up to. And we're vulnerable with people who then accept us as we are with our doubts and with our questions, that can actually be a very healing thing. If we've actually experienced in our past a time where those doubts and those struggles were confessed and were not received well. And so that's a big step. And that's a. You know, requires a level of vulnerability. But when you find that, I think that's so huge. A few months ago, we had a group and we were talking about judgment and the parable of the talents and all that stuff. And somebody said, you know, I grew up literally believing that even as a Christian, when I got to heaven, like, there'd be a big screen up in heaven and they'd. And every bad thing that I ever did would play on this screen. Oh, man, this is true.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: It's from a chick track, man.
I grew up with that burned into my consciousness.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. So there's a woman in her 50s talking about this. And she's like, that's not real. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And then there was another lady who said same thing. She goes, yeah, see, I was taught that it was a big filing cabinet, like, wild. But see, they just believed these things because somebody in a position of, you know, authority or leadership over them, like, taught it with conviction, you know, and so, yeah, it's like, well, where do we actually find that in scripture, you know, and that's where. But. But because they were able to open up, it was cool because, like, the one lady had the one story about the. About the. The big screen, and the other lady had had a similar experience, but hers is a filing cabinet. And we could kind of laugh about it. But then it was really neat to actually unpack all that in a safe space.
[00:57:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:08] Speaker B: And actually say, well, what does the scripture say about that?
[00:57:13] Speaker A: What I would say to that man. You know, I mean, the fundamental premise of this podcast is that doubt is normal. If you are living a life of faith, doubt and struggle and worship, wrestling like that is a normative part of faith. I mean, right.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: Like, absolutely.
[00:57:33] Speaker A: Christianity stands on the shoulders of the Jewish story. Right. Like we are.
The New Testament's built on the Old Testament. Right. And what does the name Israel mean? It means one who wrestles with God. Right. Doubt and struggle and working through these heavy things is a normal and healthy part. Part of faith. It's not something to be worried about. And I would say. And this, probably this leads to maybe my last question, how we can land this at Alex. But I would say for those of you listening who are working through your own season of deconstruction and reconstruction, who are working through your own doubts, one of the primary encouragements I would give you is plug into a church that welcomes you, the doubt in question, and work through those things in safety. I. I think it's one of the primary markers of the kind of healthy church you want to be a part of is that they're dead set on the teaching of scripture and they welcome doubt and discussion.
[00:58:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:58:32] Speaker A: In that kind of vein, Alex, is there any specific advice you would give to the person listening right now who is in the throes of this? Who is. Maybe they read a book, saw a podcast, took philosophy religion class, heard whatever it was, Something has set them to this place of spiraling, and they're seeing these cracks in the foundation of faith they've built over the course of their life.
Is there any practical advice you would give to that person for. For what are Their next steps.
[00:59:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I think first and foremost, maybe, and this is informed by something you've already said a couple of times, maybe engage the Bible and actually look at the way the Bible and the way that God, through the narrative of Scripture interacts with, handles and speaks to doubters. Yeah, I think that that would be a really neat place to start.
[00:59:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:59:35] Speaker B: And recognize right off the bat that you're not God's enemy because you doubt. And then secondly, I would encourage you to read Jesus for himself, read the Gospels.
And then thirdly, you know, find that person and then find that, you know, family of faith that you can begin to open up with. And it might just be one person. You know what I mean? Like, maybe you've got a friend who you're like, I feel like they're Christian. I feel like I can be honest with them about this. Like, that might be the first step. Right. Like, you know, you're probably not going to just jump full bore into like opening up at a small group or youth group or whatever it is. Right. But, like, maybe starting with that one person that you can trust.
Yeah, that's what I would say.
[01:00:21] Speaker A: I love that, man.
[01:00:22] Speaker B: Cool.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: So I think, I think we can resoundingly say, going back to the original prompt of this, does the prevalence of deconstruction delegitimize Christianity as a worldview? Was Christianity inherently a flawed worldview?
I think our answer at this point is no. Is that. That's safe to say?
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't, don't blame the bad cover bands.
You know that, that, that's what I would say.
[01:00:49] Speaker A: Like, don't blame the bad cover bands. I love that. Dude, that's great.
[01:00:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:55] Speaker A: Well, dude, thank you so much for your time, man. This has been a really encouraging coverage conversation for me. I mean, even just like you've got me just thinking about my own story and I just in this place right now of just a lot of gratitude, thanking God for his faithfulness to, to stick with me over my journey. But man, I. I am. I'm just really blessed by this time. So, dude, I appreciate you.
[01:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, this is awesome.
You have saved us from the ones that we love.
[01:01:23] Speaker A: Yes. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
[01:01:25] Speaker B: They are not enough.
[01:01:31] Speaker A: Hallelujah.
[01:01:33] Speaker B: You have saved us from the ones that we love.
[01:01:40] Speaker A: Hallelujah.
[01:01:41] Speaker B: They are not enough.
[01:01:44] Speaker A: Okay, that was great, man. What a challenging conversation to land us out. Let me give us a reminder of our sponsor for today's episode, Emmanuel Fellowship Church in Ellisville, Missouri. And also the reminder of my invitation to you if you're in the St. Louis area and you'd like to sit with someone in person and process and work through your own doubts, please reach out to me hellofcstl.com and we can figure out a time to get a coffee and talk about the same sort of things we're talking about in this podcast. A big thank you to Travis Teal Page for the use of our theme song Family.
You can find him on all streaming platforms. Travis Teal Page and the Capital Club. I think that's all for now. We'll see you guys again soon.
Well, I'm sorry to say I'm back.
[01:02:49] Speaker B: But I've got some questions for you.
[01:02:53] Speaker A: If it weren't for that girl, I'd.
[01:02:56] Speaker B: Be nowhere near you.
