DOUBT, DECONSTRUCTION, & JESUS (Part 3): When The Church Breaks You
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PART 3 : WHEN THE CHURCH BREAKS YOU
(More Reasons People Deconstruct Today)
In our last article, we looked at reasons people deconstruct that are connected to the Bible. Now let's look at reasons that are connected to the Church.
Church related reasons for doubt and deconstruction can be placed into two categories:
Church Behaviours (Hypocrisy, unkindness, judgementalism)
Church Beliefs (Theologies and policies that seem unloving and un-Christlike)
So here is where we're headed:
Church Hypocrisy
Church History
Church Hurt
Church Teaching
Christian Nationalism
Theological Intolerance
Christian Exclusivism
Hell as Eternal Conscious Torment
Church Division
Here we go...
#1. HYPOCRISY (ESPECIALLY LEADERSHIP FAILURE)
When supposedly trustworthy Christians, especially church leaders, fail morally, many believers feel the betrayal personally.
So let's start with the elephant in my room: me. I'm a case study in what pushes some Christians toward deconstruction. For a season of my life, I lived as a hypocrite in a significant area of my life.
I was a trusted pastor. Then I was exposed for having sinned terribly - I had an adulterous relationship years earlier. Along with that exposure came a host of false accusations that were nowhere close to true, but that didn’t matter. What was true was enough:
I betrayed my marriage vows, hurt my wife and family, and shocked and disillusioned a lot of people, including myself.
How could someone who loved God and cared about people and wanted to follow Jesus do that? It made no sense. So all of our minds started doing what human minds do - reaching for explanations. The human brain wants to figure out the why behind the what. And the explanation for a leader's moral failure that we choose will affect our level of deconstruction.
BLAME THE SINNER: We brand them a fake and throw them out. It keeps the problem tidy, but it ignores the messy truth: broken people can genuinely love God and still fail catastrophically. Creating caricatures of sinners as villains feels compelling because it captures and contains the problem within a single person, like a hermetically sealed container, and then removes the problem by removing the person. This process can feel like atonement, like cleansing, since it is not unlike the scapegoat of Yom Kippur. But I have a problem accepting this completely and without nuance, and here's one reason why: because I know me, I experience being me from inside me, and I know that I really love and loved Jesus and wanted to do the right thing, even though I did the opposite in one area of my life. And I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure that out. And I'll share what I learn with you. For now, I want to condemn sin as horrible and hurtful, while at the same time do all I can to understand the person behind the failure. (I want to do this, by the way, for those who make up false accusations and for those who rush to condemnation without knowledge.) To be clear...
Can a person love Jesus and still sin grievously? Yes.
Should that person be held responsible and potentially lose a position of trusted leadership? Also yes.
But is that person beyond repentance, forgiveness, and spiritual recovery? Absolutely not.
BLAME JESUS: Even worse, was it a matter of Jesus being a fake and a phoney? Does this whole Jesus thing not make a tangible, recognizable, measurable difference in human lives? I mean, if that pastor guy or that Christian teacher or author or theologian's life was a mess, why should any of us even try? As an aside, I experienced this same sense of spiritual betrayal. I asked: Is Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit even real? Because I asked for his help, repeatedly, and I didn't get it. Or did I, and that's why I was exposed? (Be careful what you pray for.)
BLAME THE PAIN: In some cases, the disappointment was more emotional than theological. These people weren't trying to figure out who to blame as much as they were just hurt, so deeply hurt. And because that trauma was associated with their experience of faith, faith itself became a place of pain. Some people found a different church where the negative emotional associations were less potent, while other people quietly exited the church altogether in order to find an alternative way of healing.
BLAME SIN, HELP SINNERS: This is the Jesus way. Recognizing that the church isn't a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners, where even the doctors sometimes end up in the ICU. When we choose this approach, we not only help others, we help our own faith become more resiliant.
Before I move on, I want to say it again: I am sorry. I still meet with people one-on-one to apologize to their face, but in lieu of that, please hear my heart when I say how deeply I regret the pain and the resulting complexity I have caused.
There is a line in the Parable of the Prodigal Son I resonate with. When the prodigal son finally makes the decision to return home to his father, it says this about the moment everything changed inside him:
When he came to his senses... ~ JESUS (Luke 15:17)
The Greek behind this phrase is literally:
When he came to himself... ~ JESUS (Luke 15:17)
I experienced precisely this. A fractured soul, reintegrating. This is my hope for healing for all of us. For the prodigal son, this took losing everything and hitting rock bottom. I get you, brother.
But I'll tell more of my story in the next article. For here, it's worth noting that the hypocrisy within the church and the failure of church leaders is one of the most common reasons given why people begin to question their faith.
Why is this? Why does human failure wreck some people's faith, especially faith in the One who predicted human failure within his Church? As we talk about in this article, Jesus is the only moral philosopher who puts the ethical emphasis for his future followers on two things at the same time:
How to live a righteous life.
How to recover when you fail to live a righteous life.
In essence, Jesus is saying these two things:
Here's how I want you to live.
Here's what to do when you fail to follow everything I just told you.
Most moral teachers hand you an instruction manual.
Jesus hands you the instruction manual and the repair manual.
I find this amazing. Jesus had no utopian vision of his future Church. He believed all humans - even converted, Christian humans - would fail in some way and would need to know how to find recovery and restoration when they do. So he taught about it; a lot.
And yet, for some believers, when Jesus' prediction about human failure comes true, that becomes a sign that they should not trust Jesus. Shouldn't it work in the opposite way?
It seems that for some people, ministry leaders can become a kind of proxy for their faith. They live out their faith through another person and that leader's success or failure becomes emblematic of their entire faith structure. When the leader fails, their faith fails.
I understand how this can happen. In our last article, we talked about how the Doctrine of Inerrancy can become a stumbling stone for the faith of some people once they realize that the Bible has any mistakes, even if those mistakes are blamed on the transmission process rather than the original manuscripts. Preaching that we have a perfect Bible, an inerrant Bible, can rock someone's faith when they find out that we don't. Rather than appreciate how our perfect God works through imperfect things, they throw the perfect Baby Jesus out with the imperfect Bible bathwater.
And the same thing can happen when we project a version of the doctrine of inerrancy onto our spiritual leaders. Whenever we discover a significant wrong in Christian leadership, our faith feels false, because our faith was channeled through the leader rather than placed directly in the only perfect person we should put our faith in. (I'll give you three guesses who.)
Let me encourage you, don't let any human failure make you give up on the One who predicted that failure in the first place.
In my case, once I "woke up" from my ethical slumber, my faith in Jesus only increased, as I became living proof to myself that if we don't hear and follow his teachings, we are building our house on sand and we will experience collapse. This promise and prophecy of Jesus became vividly fulfilled in my own life.
But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. ~ JESUS (Matthew 7:26-27)
Are there lessons in all of this?
For me: I am trying to rebuild my house on Christ the solid rock instead of shifting sand.
For those whose faith has been shaken: I get you. And at the same time, whatever leader's sin that has most rattled your faith, please know that Jesus is no less true, and his way is the best way forward, especially if we are seeking healing and wholeness.
For those of you who have reached out to me or anyone else going through a hard time because of self-inflicted wounds with grace, mercy, and peace: Please know that you are making a difference in this world, one life at a time. Thank you for teaching the rest of us by your example. I am alive and learning because of you.
#2. CHURCH HISTORY
For many believers, when they study the history of their own movement, their faith goes through a kind of deconstruction. They may love Jesus no less, but their trust in the institutional church takes a hit.
Because I have written extensively on religiously inspired violence in The End of Religion, I will keep this section brief.
Any institution that has promoted wars based on beliefs, tortured people because of their opinions, and executed others because of their perceived lack of loyalty, well, that makes being a "heretic" seem more Christian than being a "Christian".
In some cases today, our secular culture reflects the values of Jesus more than the religion that bears his name. And thank God, since it was secular pressure that finally got the Church to lay down its sword. It was a combination of external Enlightenment critique, loss of ecclesial political power in an increasingly secular society, changing state structures, as well as reform movements within the Christian Church that all helped make coercive Christianity increasingly untenable.
The Church didn't lay down the sword easily or quickly. The last person condemned to death by a church tribunal in Spain was a school teacher, Cayetano Ripoll, executed for deism as late as 1826. The Church sentenced him to be burned alive, but the State overruled the Church's wishes and chose hanging as the more humane form of execution. After this, the State finally refused to execute people on behalf of the Church because of their thoughts. When secular people and institutions seem more Christian than Christian people and institutions, the world can feel upside down and deconstruction feels like turning things rightside up.
Finally, the movement founded by the Prince of Peace stopped promoting religiously inspired wars, torture, executions, and other forms of violence. But for many people, like the abolition of slavery, the Church's rejection of violence was too little too late.
#3. CHURCH HURT
In their 2023 American book, The Great DeChurching, authors Jim Davis and Michael Graham report that, among "exvangelicals" specifically, some of the top reasons for leaving the movement were:
not fitting in (23%)
not feeling much love in the congregation (18%)
negative experiences within the evangelical church (15%)
and no longer believing what the congregation believed (14%)
And here's the thing: Of this sample group who no longer attended an evangelical church, 97% said they still believed in Jesus as the Son of God, and a majority (79%) said they would be willing to attend church again one day, as long as it wasn't an Evangelical church.
Here's what I'm seeing: loss of belonging outranks loss of belief.
Christians experience "church hurt" through a number of channels. Besides immoral and unrepentant leaders, they also experience personal woundedness from:
Unkind Christians. Christians who are held up in their local church as being a mature believer, but who regularly demonstrate a lack of the fruit of the Spirit seem to be walking-talking evidence that the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is a myth. When it seems like your Christianity has made you a more judgemental person rather than less, you are doing damage to the faith of others. And this includes rudeness in evangelism. What some Christians call courage is what the rest of us perceive as jerkiness.
Authoritarian and judgemental leaders. Some hurt comes from being shamed by church leaders because of questioning decisions or beliefs. Other hurt comes from simply observing the harsh and angry dispositions of men (usually men) in the pulpit. I grew up listening to angry-sounding preachers on the radio and TV. It felt like "home". But as I grew up and learned more about what the Bible, and specifically Jesus, has to say about anger (never good), I started to become more sensitized to the common "preacher voice" of that day. Thankfully, I was able to reject the tone and the attitude without rejecting Jesus. But for many Christians, someting feels "off" without knowing why, and leaving the Church feels like the only option. (For more on anger, see this article here.)
Weaponized doctrines. Some beliefs have the potential to cause tremendous pain, shame, or at least disappointment. For instance, the idea that a lack of healing or financial blessing or other difficulties are because of our own weak faith increases the suffering of the already suffering. Or the belief that all things, including horrible events, are God's will, can potentially turn God into more of a threat than a loving Father.
In the 2015 horror movie, The Witch, a family's extreme Puritan Calvinism leads them to believe God unilaterally and directly causes all things, including the recent death of the baby brother, Sam. God also decides whether anyone, including the baby, will be saved or damned. In one scene, the older son, Caleb, asks his father for some reassurance that his baby brother has gone to heaven and not to hell, or for that matter, if he can know that he himself will go to heaven when he dies. The father responds:
"Look you, I love thee marvelous well, but ’tis God alone, not man, what knows who is a son of Abraham and who is not. Who is good and who is evil. Fain would I tell thee Sam sleeps in Jesus, that thou wilt, that I will, but I cannot tell thee that. None can." ~ William (The Witch, 2015)
God is seen as deterministic and indifferent to human desire or struggle. And in the end, the Devil seems to provide the only warmth in this cold universe.
Some beliefs don't cause people to disbelieve in God; they just make people dislike the God they believe in.
Now we'll look in more depth at a few more examples of beliefs, doctrines, teachings that turn the faith of some Christians sour.
#4. CHURCH TEACHING
Let's look at some representative teachings that have led to some Christians' deconstruction. We will examine:
Christian Nationalism
Theological Intolerance
Christian Exclusivism
Hell as Eternal Conscious Torment
CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM
Many "exvangelicals" today began their deconstruction journey after observing how politically aligned, politically animated, politically involved and politically lopsided their churches were becoming. As the separation of Church and State erodes, some Christians wonder how the heart-humble, other-serving, power-eschewing, peace-making Way of Jesus has been hijacked by a religious mentality that clamours for power.
How is this even possible, given our citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth emphasized by Jesus?
In the Old Testament, during the Old Covenant, Israel was a theocracy, led by God's chosen prophets, judges, or kings. The civil, ceremonial, and ethical laws are all equally from God and part of walking with Yahweh. Israel's religious, ethnic, national, and political identities were intentionally fused into one reality.
The Old Covenant always prophesied that this way of the religio-political Kingdom of God would be a temporary arrangement (Jeremiah 31:31-34). The Old Covenant was never meant to be permanent for God's people. And when Jesus came, he fulfilled the promise and inaugurated the New Covenant (Luke 22:20; 2 Corinthians 3:6; Hebrews 8:13). (See our first article in this series for more on Jesus' inauguration of the New Covenant.)
Throughout Church history, the Christian Church often tried to blend the covenants rather than walking fully into the New Covenant. And when it drew its teaching from a blending of the Old and New, it began to talk about whatever earthly nation it found itself in like it was Old Testament Israel, where politics and religion were intentionally fused.
The separation of Church and State is a New Covenant feature. It allows all Christians, even those who are citizens of hostile earthly nations, to consider one another sister and brother, citizens together of God's Kingdom on Earth. The early church lived this way for the first three centuries. Until, well, shift happened.
Historians call it "the Constantinian Shift". When Roman emperor Constantine the Great ended the persecution of Christians and made Christianity a religio licita (a legitimate, approved religion) with the Edict of Milan in AD 313, it must have seemed to the embattled Christians as though God’s kingdom had come to earth in a new, unexpected way. Think of it: the empire that killed Christ and many of his followers for hundreds of years was now becoming Christian. Wow. Who could have seen that one coming?
Constantine paved the way for future emperor Theodosius the Great to move Christianity from being a legitimate religion to becoming the official state religion of the empire with the Edict of Thessalonica in AD 380. Now Christians had the power. This fourth-century move from persecuted powerless minority to the persecuting powerful majority is one of the biggest plot twists and most damaging things that ever happened to the movement Jesus started.
From then on, the Church's interpretations of Jesus' teaching would be tainted and twisted by the pursuit of power. Concepts like territorial war, national defense, punishment for crime, and the value of coercive power all had to be justified from the Bible. These were no longer matters for the State alone (à la Romans 13) but now matters for the Church as well (à la Romans 12) since now the Church and State were commingling. This blending of Church and State changed how Christian leaders, now the powerful elite within the Roman Empire, did exegesis and theology.
Just reading and following the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, could lead to disciples becoming enemy-loving, nonviolent peacemakers. (Yuck.) And any nation that decreed its citizens needed to become Christian would not be able to raise and maintain an army under that teaching. So Jesus' teachings had to serve the State, and our ability to read and follow the counter-cultural way of the Sermon on the Mount became forever weakened.
But how could the now State-serving theologians re-interpret Scripture to support war? By pulling Old Testament principles into our New Covenant thinking and living. And it worked, to disastrous results.
There was a time in Church history when to be born in France meant you were automatically Catholic. England? Anglican. Germany? Lutheran. Scotland? Presbyterian. Ireland? Angry, and ready to fight. Becoming Christian automatically because of nationality is Old Covenant thinking dragged into New Covenant practice.
Today, as Christian Nationalism is on the rise in some countries, many Evangelical Christians are saying, this version of Christianity isn't for me. They may not have the biblical knowledge to argue from Scripture, but they can make a statement with their feet, walking right out the door. What a shame, since rejecting the idea of Christian Nationalism is a very Jesusy thing to do.
Just look at the different, non-overlapping roles God gives to the Church vs the State in one passage (within which I have added subtitles):
[ROLE OF THE CHURCH:] Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but [ROLE OF GOD:] leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. [ROLE OF THE CHURCH:] On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. [ROLE OF GOD THROUGH THE STATE:] Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. [ROLE OF THE CHURCH:] Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. ~ The apostle Paul (Romans 12:14-13:7)
A PARAPHRASE:
GOD: Dear Church, focus on love, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and peace, just as Jesus taught you in the Sermon on the Mount. And leave it to me to take care of punitive/retributive justice because vengeance is mine, not yours.
CHURCH: But God, do we have to wait until we die to see your justice at work?
GOD: No, open your eyes and submit to the State, because I will be working my justice/vengeance/punishment through the sword of the State. Submit to it, but do not join with it.
CHURCH: But God, where do we draw the line of submitting to the State?
GOD: Pay your taxes.
Christian nationalism tries to blend the roles of Church and State. And they justify this by pulling Old Covenant principles into our New Covenant lives.
This is similar to the Muslim idea of the caliphate, where earthly politics are governed by divine laws. A caliphate is an intentional fusion, not separation, of mosque and state. But the Kingdom of Christ is experienced and expressed through the power of love in our hearts and relationships, not through the power of the sword wielded by the State.
Maybe you've seen some version, even a mild version, of Christian Nationalism growing and it has discouraged you from participating in the Christian religion. My encouragement to you is - good, you're becoming more like Jesus. But now, don't give up on the Church, just find a way to stand with those churches that know what it means to embrace and extend the New Covenant Kingdom of Christ.
If this nationalistic Christianity is where your church is heading and you're not already deconstructing, I'd like to encourage you to get started. (For more on this, check out this article on Kingdom Theology VS Dominion Theology.)
THEOLOGICAL INTOLERANCE
Unlike the first-century Jesus movement, Christians today do not have a reputation of being shockingly welcoming and scandalously embracing. (Whaaaat?) And so, many deconstructors today may walk away from the church because they find Jesus' values better expressed outside it.
Jesus planted the seeds:
Radical inclusiveness of all people, including "sinners"
Total acceptance of everyone, including those we disagree with
The pursuit of truth no matter what, because truth sets us free
The moral courage to leave old ways of thinking and living (old wineskins) to embrace new ways of thinking and living
The full embrace of honesty and integrity rather than pretending and playacting
Love as the greatest reality of all and the value that makes our faith worth having
The Holy Spirit watered these seeds. And the early Jesus movement bore the fruit that came from these seeds. They chose the way of:
Love over legalism
Truth over tradition
Mercy over judgementalism
Universal embrace over tribalistic nationalism
Organic relationships over institutional preservation
As we discussed in our previous study, eventually these ideals became embedded in Western society. Today we value these things as a society because of Jesus.
And when our secular society practices these things better than the Christian church, many Christians jump ship. But what appears like mutiny is actually loyalty to the values of Jesus.
Jesus is much more inclusive, tolerant, and accepting of other ways of being "Christian"....
When the disciples of Jesus heard that a rival group was forming to do ministry in the name of Jesus, they reported the problem to Jesus. And he responded that they should not stop them. Then Jesus added:
Whoever is not against us is for us. ~ JESUS (Mark 9:40)
We don't know if the rival ministers were completely orthodox in every belief, but they wanted to help people in the name of Jesus, and that seemed to be enough for him.
In Romans 14-15, the apostle Paul helps the early Church learn how to embrace other Christians with whom they have significant disagreement. His main theme is, if we can't achieve agreement, at least foster unity by focusing on what we do agree on.
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. ~ The apostle Paul (Romans 15:7)
This is counter to the unfortunately common attitude of both conservative and progressive Christians:
You have women pastors? You must not take the Bible seriously.
You don't allow women to be pastors? You are obviously misogynistic.
You support the possibility of gay marriage? Heretic!
You don't support gay marriage? Bigot!
You voted for Trump? You obviously hate America!
You didn't vote for Trump? You obviously hate America!
Etc, etc, etc.
When theological disagreement makes Christians feel justified, even obligated, to pronounce anathema on one another, other Christians notice, and quietly look for the exit.
It should also be noted that sometimes it is the deconstructors who become theologically intolerant. They leave one form of theology to join a different school of thought and then invest large amounts of energy criticizing the thinking and practice of the group they left.
We cannot and should not police everyone's attitudes, but we can keep our focus on our central theme and central value, which should always be Jesus (Psalm 25:15; Hebrews 3:1; 12:2).
In the end, theological diversity could be our strength rather than our weakness, IF we fight for unity and embrace others as Christ has embraced us.
CHRISTIAN EXCLUSIVISM
When I began high school, I was leaving behind my lifelong Christian school experience for my first steps into the wild world of secular education. In my mind, I had already imagined most non-Christians to be dark and depressed, oppressed by the weight of their sin. I prayed regularly that God would keep me faithful and help me to be salt and light amidst a sea of peers I assumed would be constantly expressing whatever is the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit.
But then I actually got to know some non-Christians. Two of my closest friends were a lapsed Catholic and a committed Muslim. And they were both such lovely people. I had to let go of my assumptions that Christians are exclusively ethical and encouraging to be around. In fact, over time, I had to admit that some of my secular friends seemed more Jesusy than many Christian folks I knew.
I was both encouraged and discouraged somehow to learn that Christians were nothing special as far as compassion, kindness, and care is concerned. But at least I could comfort myself in knowing that we Christians knew the only way to be saved, and that counted for a lot.
It's an odd thing to want to believe that the majority of people now and throughout history will never have an opportunity to become God's child because they have not heard about or do not believe in the Lordship of Christ. Why, for a season, did that bring me comfort? Perhaps my developing ego still wanted to feel like I'm on the winning team, like I have a secret superiority that others just don't have.
What can feel like an emotional boost when we are young can begin to backfire as we grow older, develop emotionally, and have more life experience. Over time, the idea that my religion is the only right religion can feel increasingly out of tune with lived experience. Especially when we learn about and observe all the problems within our own religion.
At some point in the developmental process, some Christians begin to deconstruct simply because their own hearts are becoming more generous than we're told God is toward unbelievers. I was there. And I'll talk about it more in the next article.
For now it is enough to say, I have come to the point of being exceedingly exclusive in my focus on Jesus, while at the same time believing that Jesus is amazingly inclusive in his embrace of all people.
My strident, exclusive Jesus focus is leading me to be a more universally inclusive, embracing, and welcoming person.
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ~ JESUS (John 14:6)
In my Father’s house are many rooms. ~ JESUS (John 14:2)
ETERNAL CONSCIOUS TORMENT
(ECT --> It's like "etcetera" for dyslexics.)
John Stott was one of the most prominent theologians within the conservative Christian community. In his 1988 book, Essentials, Stott broke ranks with his Evangelical peers and declared that he was changing his mind about endless suffering in hell, or at least open to alternative views. The backlash was intense, including some questioning Stott's salvation. Eventually he apologized for the offence and went quiet on his changing views. But the train had already left the station. Stott made it possible for young Evangelicals to realize that we could rethink our beliefs about Hell without denying our faith in Jesus.
Since 1988, other faithful Christian leaders have come out as questioning what had been an assumed to be an unquestionable doctrine. And together they have given permission for more and more believers to say what they had been holding inside for a long time: the idea of a loving God keeping people consciously aware for eternity just to inflict punishing pain creates a level of cognitive dissonance that can only be tolerated through complete functional denial and/or emotional disconnection.
Christians who do not know of alternative ways of interpreting Bible passages on hell will assume that to be a faithful Christian, the idea of God sending the majority of humankind into eternal conscious torment must be embraced. And when the idea becomes intellectually or emotionally intolerable, deconstruction becomes inevitable.
But thankfully, faithful Christians have held differing beliefs about Hell since the earliest years of the Church, and this doctrine doesn't have to be the deconstruction catalyst that it is for some people.
Briefly, besides ECT (Eternal Conscious Torment), two other orthodox views of hell are possible:
The purifying view - Hell as a temporary burning away of sin in order to make someone ready for heaven. This is one aspect of Christian Universalism.
The soul destruction view (also called Annihilationism or Conditionalism) - Just as physical fire destroys physical things, so perhaps spiritual fire destroys spiritual things. After all, "destruction" or spiritual "death" are common ways the Bible refers to the final judgement of those who reject God. (Regarding this last view, I have in the past told my atheist friends that we both agree about their eternal destiny.)
God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light. ~ The apostle Paul (1 Timothy 6:15-16)
The topic of Hell is vast and worthy of a separate article, but this will have to do for now.
#5. CHURCH DIVISION & LACK OF UNITY
If Christian conversion is really a supernatural miracle - remaking our hearts, rebirthing our spirits, filling us with God's own Holy Spirit, and uniting us into one Body of Christ - then many of us are left wondering: why are we so divided? Why isn't the teaching of Jesus objectively and the Spirit's work subjectively drawing us together miraculously? Isn't this what Jesus was banking on for his future Church to demonstrate his truth to the world?
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ~ JESUS (John 17:20-23)
Whenever I read this passage, I am far less inclined to be disappointed with non-believers for not converting and deconstructionists for deconverting than I am disappointed with the Church for not showing the reality of our unity in Christ.
Our unity in Christ is an accomplished FACT (Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:28-29; Ephesians 2:14-16). And yet it is also our ongoing FIGHT, our responsibility to manifest and maintain:
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort [Greek, spoudazó = hurry! make this a priority of effort!] to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ~ The apostle Paul (Ephesians 4:2-6)
Not only are we called to acknowledge, experience, and express our unity, we are called to fight for it, to prioritize it, to make every effort to keep it. According to Jesus, this should be our greatest Christian apologetic.
Christians should be unity tacticians - always plotting how to win the war against the enemy of disunity and division.
And yet, well, you know the reality as well as I do. Just look at some of the back and forth between confessing Christians on social media and we'll see how dismally we are failing at this. And at a structural level, Christians tend to splinter away from one another over doctrinal, ethical, and even stylistic reasons. For some #Exvangelicals, this is both their reason for leaving the Evangelical church and their reason for being attracted to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy. These larger bodies have many branches and sub-schools of thought, but somehow they keep it all together better than the Protestants. Maybe that is reflective of a movement that began in protest.
But here's the thing: while it may be impossible to reunify different Christian denominations, we can reunify Christian hearts. And if we do that, our differences move from being a weakness to a strength. When the unity of the Spirit can happen cross-denominationally - even in the face of significant disagreements - we function more like one Church with many branches rather than competing churches.
We can be like different departments in the same department store, or different teams on the same football team (offense, defence, punting), or different sections of the same symphony orchestra. Cross-denominational unity of spirit is even more beautiful than unity within one same-thinking group. When we get along with people we completely agree with, nothing miraculous is on display.
And this can and does happen, at least among those believers who do that crazy audacious thing and keep Christ in the centre of their Christianity.
In real-world practice, this kind of multi-denominational unity will take maturity and commitment. Holding back on snarky comments, asking lots of questions rather than force-feeding our opinions, and highlighting points of agreement more than disagreement - all important.
There is so much to be said about this - and that will have to wait for another article. For now, if you are a Christ-follower, let's pray together:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
~ Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)
Here is my favourite rendition of this prayer in song...
CONCLUSION
In all these cases, deconstruction may be an act of faith, courage, and conviction not of doubt or disbelief. The question remains - if people leave the Church as an act of fidelity to Jesus, where and how do these de-churched people gather for encouragement and spiritual friendship? Is there a version of "church" that is less institutional and more organic? I'm grateful that I can say "yes" because I am experiencing it.
If you want more information about this kind of peaceable, gentle, healing, and loving church in the round, feel free to get in touch.
I just think it's encouraging that every day people are leaving the Church and going back to God. ~ Lenny Bruce (Stand Up)
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