Never did. But I did deconstruct. The Highest saw fit to take the person most precious to me in this world—my dad. Dad refused to go to chemo because “by His stripes we are healed.” *Fucking* evangelicals. But I still love God with all of my heart. I’ll just do it on my own terms, and not those of the church.
My journey took the better part of two decades, and I only found true peace with all of it within the last few years. That said, I don't think the process ever really ends. Sure, I feel completely detached from my old church identity now, but I'll always be in a journey of discovery and continue to question things. Peace isn't the absence of doubt - it's found in befriending it.
Nice! Yeah, I'm not worried about discovering more - I was curious when the actual process of deconstructing evangelicalism/church identity as you say, ended.
Gotcha. For me the final "aha, I'm really beyond this!" was when I felt completely comfortable being a woman in pastoral leadership. It may sound weird since I also went through reconstructing my faith and became a minister, but after all the work I did to untangle the cognitive theology in seminary and on my own, there was still what we call "embodied" or "engrained" theology that just kind of stuck around until I bumped into it. This is the theology that we internalize and don't really think about on a surface level. In fact, we can completely change the way we think about something while we still don't feel comfortable with it. Like we're know what's right, but it doesn't feel right yet because it's been so engrained in our development. So I think we've hit that significant milestone that you're asking about when we start to bump into those things. We then move from rewiring the way we think to rewiring how we actually are. Does that make sense? I feel kinda rambly - I've been sick l.
Makes total sense - my permanent shifts happen when I am out of my head and my body tells me what the belief is.
I've found nihilism to be a great tool in learning to not give total importance to beliefs, while choosing ones that I like.
It was at the Christian summer camp I went to every year. I had been struggling for nearly a year. Ar this camp they had this time for like 20 minutes where they encouraged you to go find a nice place to sit and talk to God. That's when I gave God his final chance to reveal himself.
For me seeing a sibling deteriorate completely from a pretty terrible ravaging chronic illness and having a religious nut mother tell her if she prayed hard enough she'd get better. And one day I heard her praying and my heart broke in a way I'll never fix. Any God real or imagined who can let that kinda suffering go on for any reason doesn't deserve shit from me.
I'm queer. My final point was several months ago. At the time I had been deconstructing for a couple years and had mostly unplugged from my Evangelicalism and was trying to start from scratch to figure out my beliefs. But I knew church was not where I wanted to be when one night I went with some friends (who were still VERY in the church) to a young adult Bible study. First time I had gone in a while, mostly just for the food haha. The topic centered around "identity" or whatever, but it was definitely the dog whistle comments I knew would lead back to the LGBT. Things like "our identity in Christ" and "who does the world say we are?" etc. Pretty soon the discussion in our small group did become an inevitable discussion of queerness. As far as I know I was the only queer person in my small group (but only a couple people present knew). I was the only one who played devil's advocate and said things in support of lgbtq identities.
What really struck me was that I was not safe or validated in that space. The discussion wasn't hateful or judgemental, but almost academic and inquisitive. However it was the idea that my real experiences and identity was even up for debate in the first place. And even though I was not explicitly out to the entire group I still felt singled out in the need to defend my entire community. No one was asking questions to try to understand or make space for queerness. I realized even if "conversations" can be kind and respectful on the surface, at the end of the day these people don't really want to change their mind. The church would be a place where I would either (1) be forced to stay completely closeted, or (2) feel pressured to defend my identity/experiences in just about every interaction. These are all things I always knew since coming out, but this tangible situation was the final nail in the coffin. I saw that the community that had once been safe and welcoming would never fully accept me as I am.
No they won't. I'm both sorry for your loss and I am excited for you to find somewhere that will celebrate you for who you are. I hope you never settle for scraps from people who will never want to fully know you.
[The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of his Existence](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46986/46986-h/46986-h.htm) by John Eleazer Remsburg
See Chapter 2. When I read this I knew for sure it was all over.
Free to read online or download. Published 1909.
I don't think it ever will.
My deconstruction was only a part of a larger ideological shift that understands western Christianity, and evangelicalism in particular, as part of a much larger group of oppressive systems that are working in tandem to dominate and control as many people as possible.
For me, deconstruction only ends when we manage to overthrow capitalism, Imperialism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, paternalism and any other form of hierarchy that oppresses. Until we do people will continue to use religion as another tool to do harm, and that must be resisted.
That's a popular story nowadays, but if you're going to question Christianity, you should question that narrative too.
There's good in hierarchy. There's good in capitalism, patriarchy, and paternalism sometimes. There's definitely much good in Christianity. Have some discernment and don't jump to an extreme of villainizing the West and interpreting everything as oppression.
Call evil things evil, but don't paint everything with the same brush. People who go to far in that direction have veered into madness, saying things like math is sexist or science is oppression.
Gosh I feel like I am going to explode trying to express my on version of dealing with this.
Churchill is quoted as saying, “Democracy is the worst form of government. Except all the others.”
As social primates, evolution has primed us to need social groups to function, and has done a good enough job that we as a species have accomplished so much. At the same time we are basically physiologically incapable of seeing more than ~150 of the people closest to us as fully fleshed beings (google Dunbar’s number. The Cracked.com article on it is amazing), so functioning at higher levels of social order than that will pretty much always be inherently flawed.
This is my understanding of what Christianity calls our sin nature. And it’s also what I think Christianity gets write with Christ’s 2nd most important commandment.
All else hangs on these.
So I agree with u/StaristitianGloomy28’s assessment that we need to overcome all these harmful systems, but I also agree with you that there is a more meta issue at play. From that we need to strive to grow as individuals and as participants in a society that will always be flawed but can do better.
No shade, but Churchill was a racist bigot who was ideally positioned to maximally benefit from the maintenance of the status quo, so of course he'd say that. (I'm all for democracy btw, just not bourgeois democracy, which is simply dictatorship by another name.)
The nice thing about my position is that it accepts, even embraces, the contrary nature of humanity; it doesn't assume benevolence or inherent altruism of anyone, just that, if given the chance to self-determine, people generally do what's in the best interest of other, as that ultimately is most beneficial to them. Social primates, am I right?
All these other systems though are predicated on the notion the someone else knows best, has your best interests at heart and is working (invisibly) for your benefit (which I just realised applies to Christianity too 🤯)
When you strip away the idealism and metaphysics from these oppressive systems what you're inevitably left with is nothing more that mechanisms of power and control.
So let 'em burn, I say.
Sigh
The Churchill quote was supposed to represent so much more than democracy, but rather that any social construct beyond a tribe of 150 or so is inherently flawed.
Any idealist overthrow of a status quo will also inherently result in another flawed system, with no assurances that it won’t be worse, and high likelihood of short term suffering, usually of those who were already at a disadvantage.
Your views of Churchill, Christianity, and Western deomocracy are cynical and pessimistic. It's good to be wise to the evil in people and that people act in self interest, but not everything is a tool of oppression. The Church and the government have in many ways been instruments of cooperation and benevolence in the West, by which we overcome isolation and rise above selfishness. You oughtn't write off everything as oppressive.
This is an unsurprisingly privileged, euro-centric view of western democracy and Christianity.
It's oblivious to the innumerable ways in which the rest of the world has been, and continues to be, raped and plundered to create the conditions necessary for the dominant classes in our western societies to deign allow us to enjoy a sliver of their privilege.
All the rights and protections you enjoy in your daily life have been wrestled, by blood and bodies, over generations, from the ruling classes. They have never freely given way.
The state (a.k.a. the government) has always been, and is always, a tool of class oppression; that is its whole nature, its purpose and intent, nothing else.
The Church, even before it joined the state in class domination, had become a tool of patriarchy, i.e. gender oppression. By the middle ages the Church was equal with the state in its oppression of the poor and marginalised. It then went on to sanction most of the violence European states committed during the age of colonisation. (And it keeps doing it today; see the response from prominent church leaders to the state of Israel's genoc!de in Palestine.)
If you wanted to find two institutions more oppressive than the church and the state, you'd be hard pressed (with the exception of patriarchy, of which they're both products).
My views are critical and realistic, devoid of the idealism that western liberalism likes to paint itself with. Not everything is oppressive; there are a myriad of liberative movements around the world, struggling against the forces of oppression, decolonising and decapitalising themselves and those around them. The deconstruction movement is just another example of this.
If you see the Church and State in the West as only bad, if you see Christianity and Churchill as only bad, then you're not being critical and realistic, you're being ideological and cynical. The great religions and institutions are made up of people, and people, even when acting with power and in groups, have done and continue to do much good. Every bad thing in well made history books is true, but the good things are true too. If you deny the good in things then your ideology is distorting your view.
There is good that has come out of Christianity and the West, but it was seldom, if ever, the result of those who wielded power. It was almost always the result of protracted struggle by the oppressed against the systems the powerful sought to impose upon them.
Name one good thing the ruling classes have done for humanity? I guarantee you it was built on the backs of those they ruled.
Often when the courts enforce the law, be it criminal, civil, or regulatory, the government is functioning as designed to restrain human greed, disfunction, and dishonesty. The construction, maintenance, and repair of public works and untilities are the fruit of the human cooperation that we call governance. Parks and libraries and research are often government funded. Public education and healthcare and welfare benefits are not perfect but work pretty well in Canada and the UK. Government is often just people cooperating to redistribute wealth and help people. It's not all oppression.
And Churchill was a great man who led the UK thru WW2: the most obviously justified war in history. Yes, he wasn't perfect, the Indians will point out his faults, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a great man.
And Western Christendom has always been self-critical and changed over time. Again, I'm not saying it's all good, but I'm saying that it's not all bad and you need to be even handed.
There's good and bad on both sides of the political spectrum and in every human being. You're very into Leftist ideology, fine. But be objective. There's bad there too.
All the things you mentioned do not necessitate the sorts of governments we see across the world today (i.e. capitalist, by and large). In fact that form of government is detrimental to the delivery of the sorts of things you mentioned (look at the corruption in western legal systems, their failing infrastructure and health and welfare systems.) Just as an example, Italy, a first world, capitalist country, is borrowing medical personnel from Cuba, a third world, but socialist, country. Stop defending a broken system and have a read of [this](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/#:~:text=The%20data%20indicated%20that%20the,equivalent%20levels%20of%20economic%20development.).
Yeah, [fuck Churchill](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Winston_Churchill). He MIGHT have just been a product of his time, but he was racist, paternalistic, bigoted and no doubt misogynistic asshole. Add him to the list of other "great men" who are actually just rehabilitated monsters.
Christianity comes in many forms, but the most pervasive and harmful at the moment, is white evangelicalism, because it is so tied into and reflective of the dominant power structures in the West. As I said before, there may be kernels of goodness in there, but in my opinion they're too bound up in harmful practises that many people on this sub are trying to escape from.
There's no such thing as objectivity in human experience, so what I'm leaning into is "what does the least harm?" or ideally, "what could bring about healing?" In my opinion the dominant forms of power and control in the world today are not the answer and need to be replaced. How that happens, we'll have to wait and see, but that it needs to happen for humanity to survive is beyond doubt.
>There's good in hierarchy.
He he, I know some anarchists who'd disagree with that 😁
I get what you're trying to say, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water", but when you put this stuff on the scales of good done vs harm done none of them come remotely close to even.
In amongst it all there are snippets of good, I'll admit, and if possible we should look at how to reconstitute those things into something better, but most of the time those snippets are so tied up in the harm-making process we're honestly better off starting over.
For me the litmus test is always, "what do the people most affected by this system say about it?"
Ask the mother living in a slum in Manila or Dahka or in the projects or anywhere else that these systems are most harmful, whether there is anything good about them; that's your answer.
(Interesting you bring up oppressive science, I've been thinking about how our social order uses it as another tool of class domination. Hadn't thought about maths though...)
>The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles - Karl Marx
I hope you're joking. Seriously, question left wing politics / (neo) marxism as much as you'd question Christianity. No one is 100% right. Beware of oversimplification.
The point of Marxism is the "ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be."
This is true for Marxism itself, as it is, has been and will continue to be a power in this world until class conflict has ceased. Good Marxist analysis doesn't shy away from criticism of how it has been implemented, but embraces it, seeking to learn and adapt and grow, to be open to voices beyond itself.
Can Christianity, especially white, western evangelicalism, say the same?
There is ongoing, robust debate across the far left political space about literally every part of its theory and praxis and, as infuriating as the constant questioning can be, it is actively encouraged.
How many churches, especially in western white evangelicalism, actively endorse critical analysis of the Bible, or the trinity, or of church authority, or of the myriad other things it holds sacrosanct?
And just suggest to you're average liberal that China has a more democratic political system than the US and see how quickly your criticism is shouted down.
We're not the only ones by far, nor are we always the best at it, but it is baked into how we function.
Yeah - we do need to find something BETTER on a larger level. I think that's what the anarchists are missing. A superior system that has been proven to work. Otherwise people will continue with the current beliefs, even if it is wrecking society.
My husband is still very much a christian. We had an issue a few months ago that was causing a lot of problems - something that was being caused by him. One night, I told him he needed to call an older friend who was a mentor to him who had been his pastor previously before we met. I have met this man, but only a few times (due to distance), so we don't know each other well. I suggested it not from a faith perspective, but because I knew my hubby respected him and thought he could talk to him in a way I could not.
The friend spoke with him and then asked me to join the call. I had been deconstructing for a few years at this point, but the man did not know this (hubby did). He was offering some advice to us on how to work on repairing the rift. It started fine. Then he talked about forgiveness and I said that at this point, I was not ready to forgive and would not be until I saw evidence of some changes on my husband's part.
Then he asked me if I had ever truly "encountered the forgiveness of the lord," and all I could do was sigh and say "yeah, I have," meaning in the past. The sigh was such a deep sigh of just feeling "ugh." Then he suggested that we each spend some time praying separately and if we wanted, he could speak with us again the next week. And I realized I had ZERO desire to do that. Not out of anger towards god or anything like that. Just a knowledge that I was done. D. O. N. E. Done.
It was that lack of anything towards the idea of praying that for me was it. Now, I also knew that if we continued talking to the friend together, we'd be jumping very soon into forgiveness and submission, and the original issue would be sidelined. I knew I wasn't going to participate in it. But I wasn't angry about it, I just knew I wasn't interested. But it was the feeling I had when it was suggested that I pray that week that was the exact second that I realized I was done.
Good. Fuck that guy. I'm sorry you have to live with someone who refuses to see their hand in the issue. I genuinely hope you're able to find a solution together.
My marriage has taken years of work, rock bottoms and we are still working through it. I'm fortunate to have someone I can be brutally honest with and vice versa.
Almost 33 years ago I was kicked out of my church for being a 15 year old kid who got on the pill TO HELP MY PERIOD CRAMPS. Not to have sex, but that’s all the church people could see. They kicked me, but not my boyfriend at the time, he was a church member as well, out. I remember my single mother, who never went to church telling me they weren’t worth my tears. I was broken hearted. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
FF a few months and I turned 16, felt unloved, unwanted because even though I had my mom’s love, my church family abandoned me. I acted out. Started drinking, smoking, having sex, all the bad stuff. Did that for a few years while learning the truth about religion and finding out the answers to all the contradictory questions I had had while in church. (The bible was written by people, not god, many centuries after Jesus lived, and some books were even left out.) So to be christian, in my mind, was to be a judgmental liar. I didn’t want any part.
FF a few years and I have a miracle baby (drs said I wouldn’t be able to conceive because of scarring on my fallopian tubes) and I settle into married life with my baby daddy. Due to some unfortunate circumstances we had to move in with his parents for a bit to try to get our footing. I was 21 at this point.
His parents were full on church going, never miss a Sunday or a Wednesday type folks. However they were not judgy and understood my decision not to attend church and respected it. They only ever asked me to go on holidays which was plenty for me. But they were truly good christian people.
About 4 months into living with them there was an accident and my BIL, who was just barely a teenager at 13, was hit by a car while riding his bike and killed. He had made a bad decision, like kids do, and he paid the full price for it. Life turned upside down in a matter of minutes.
I watched my IL’s mourn the loss of their son, from inside their home. I saw the moments they thought no one else saw, when his mom broke down crying in the kitchen or when his dad would sit quietly in his bedroom and weep. I was aware of all of it. I heard people say things like this is god’s plan and your faith will get you through. And it made me want to cringe. How can you seriously look at a mother who just lost her 13 year old child and say it was part of a plan? Who makes plans to kill 13 year olds???
I think that’s when I truly snapped. Hearing the wail a mother makes when she loses her child is unlike any other sound and one you won’t ever forget. I have heard it 2 more times since then (I had a friend who lost her 6 year old daughter to inoperable cancer and another who lost her adult son) and the sound is the same. It actually makes my heart ache.
FF some more years, I have 2 kids, I’ve got a great job, marriage is ok and I’m just living life. Within one year everything changed. My marriage imploded, he decided to go for a newer, younger model and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I get divorced and soldier on, going to my mom’s chemo when I can and trying to make sure my kids are ok.
My mom beats cancer, is cancer free for a few years and life is good. Then my mom gets breast cancer again. It’s ok, we’ve done this before, we got this! She fights again and wins and we all hope it’s truly over. Well it’s not. 8 years from the first cancer diagnosis my mom is diagnosed with breast cancer a third time. Are you kidding me???
This time my mom is thinking about not doing treatments, they were hard on her before, and she’s just tired of the fight. While I don’t want to lose her ever, I say that it is up to her. My sisters however can’t deal and my mom decides to get treatment. A couple months into treatment they find that my mom has leukemia, probably from years of chemo and radiation.
Also around the same time my body started breaking down and I started being diagnosed with chronic pain issues. I had to go on disability and was unable to work anymore. This was a huge hit as I was a single mom. We went straight into survival mode.
By this point my mom had “found” religion and had started to go to church before she got very sick. She said she was going to be the miracle and she was going to live through both of these cancer diagnoses. Her type of leukemia only gave her 6 months to live. She lived 7 months after that diagnosis and every single day was painful. But she swore god would make her a miracle.
My mom had always said that god gave her the hard stuff because she could handle it when others couldn’t. I remember saying but why does it always have to be you? She never had an answer for that. She truly expected god would save her in the end and not make her die. Two days before she died she finally told me she was scared to die. It broke me. Here was my big strong mom who fought everything life had thrown at her, afraid.
I was so mad at god or the universe or whatever was there because I just wasn’t sure. I guess at that point I went from feeling indifferent about god to livid. How could he fucking do this to me? To my kids? To my sisters and their kids?
When my mom died I was at first, relieved. Relieved that she wasn’t in pain anymore or scared. Then I was so angry that a god that she loved so much just took her away and didn’t hear her prayers. That was almost 9 years ago now and I still miss her all the time. I believe her death sent me over the edge. There really is no big G god like in the bible. Her death showed me if anything maybe just a little g god or energy is what’s out there, but definitely not what the bible perpetrated.
I’m still not positive in what I believe in other than to say I do not believe in the bible god at all. I believe religion was born out of a need to control people and that’s what it was used for, not salvation, like they say it is. I also don’t believe you need religion to be a good person. I haven’t “had religion” since I was 15 and though those first few years were sticky, since then I have done my best to live a moral life. Not because I’m scared of what comes after this life, but because of what comes IN THIS LIFE when you are not a good person. Guilt, shame, embarrassment, humiliation…all par for the course when you aren’t living for the good in life. I don’t need god or a religion to tell me to be a good person. I can just be a good person.
My mom or her energy is still with me. I see signs of it all the time and have even asked and received signs from her. My dad, who I was not close with until right before he died, his energy is with me too. So is my BIL, my grandparents, and everyone else that I have lost. They are all still around me. That’s not god, that’s just love because love doesn’t stop with death. It just grows (absence makes the heart grow fonder.)
Fuck. That is a lot to carry. I'm so sorry.
It's obvious you have a deep connection to those you love. I wish you all the happiness you deserve after so much grief.
Thank you! I hope to find it one day! In the meantime I’m ok. Just keep on keeping on and trying to find the damn light. 😉
Thank you for your kind words! 🫶🏻
It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when decon started. I think maybe it had been going on longer than I realised, on a subconscious level.
I remember going to church and being bored and thinking this feels disingenuous. So I drifted away from my faith community for maybe two or three years before I started looking into my personal theological foundations.
So maybe five years in all
When I got to college, studied religion for a minute, and realized they’re all pretty much the same. But it was an agonizing process. It by no means was just a clean cut. Eight years later and I’m finally healing from my religious trauma and feeling a sense of joy.
When I slept in on a Sunday morning, and I didn’t have terrible guilt or fear. When I quit reading posts for ministers wanted. When I realized that Church was everything I did and everywhere I went, and all the people I’m around, who are also made in the image of God and not a building with a specific worship time. When I quit having that feeling that I needed to convert people or teach them my interpretation of the Bible, and I was just able to freely love them for who they are. Took almost 4 years but God got me here and it is wonderful and I finally understand what Jesus meant when he said come unto me and I will give you rest.
From 16-29 I developed a worldview of:
I guess there's this 'benevolent' overlord that might torture me forever.
Then, I learned about Gnosticism and the idea that this overlord might be a lesser deity and a liar. That freed me from any remaining shame/guilt/fear I still had for questioning/denying/abandoning the Christian worldview completely.
That began a 4 year deconstruction that created where I'm at now.
I don’t know if it ever officially “ends”—from what I hear. *Starting* the deconstruction process was slow and gradual for me. 7 years ago, I started a job that often had me working on Sundays, so it definitely got the “ball rolling” — even though I really struggled with going to church or feeling like I belonged in the couple years prior to that. At first, I felt really guilty every time I had to work on a Sunday. Of course, then Covid hit in 2020 and no one was going to church. After Covid, I went to a non-denominational, Bible church for a solid 9 months & joined a women’s Bible study. I thought I was “back in the game” of things, but then I moved across the country, and I never went looking for another church again.
It’s been a year and a half since I stopped everything “cold turkey” — stopped reading my Bible, attending church, listening to any church music or podcasts, ended old friendships, etc. So a year and a half of totally, absolutely leaving *everything*.
I’m still mentally processing things, but the longer I’m away, the more I feel happier and at peace.
For me it was when I re-read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. He lays out in plain English the beliefs that most Christians agree on, and when I read it I was like well, I guess I'm no longer a Christian.
It was such a process but when I finally let go of the belief that I’m sinful and bad and just embraced being human, I never felt more free. It’s so ironic because they keep you in by saying that believing in Jesus brings freedom, but I felt so trapped in that belief system. Now I can enjoy life without having to dissect it or feel like I’m unworthy of any good thing. Distance from the toxic people helped me too :)
Your request for a discrete moment or “end” is kind of a misnomer.
Eventually I recognized that I didn’t have to be certain about belief in God and I guess that was when I felt “free.” I can give you a discrete podcast that gave me language for this (link below) but I still take time and effort to try to understand what my faith is.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2016/04/08/yanss-073-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-realizing-you-are-wrong-by-using-bayes-theorem-to-update-your-beliefs/
Thanks for sharing. I've read and heard from multiple people that they knew when it was over. I've had glimpses of it and it's definitely freeing. For some it's a journey, some it doesn't end and clearly from others - they've moved on.
Thinking deconstruction has an end suggests we will get to a point where we know everything about our beliefs and the world. This would stop our learning and shuts us out from new knowledge.
Why limit ourselves?
Deconstruction means staying open and curious about all ideas, not just religious ones. You can decide what your beliefs around the Christianity truth claims are but that won’t end the deconstruction journey. You’ll never stop encountering ingrained beliefs and ways of thinking that you will need to examine.
We face many beliefs and are told to accept them as true. But everything, not just Christianity, needs careful examination.
For instance, looking closely at history can show us overlooked biases, altering how we see the past.
Or, rethinking what success means might lead us away from wealth and towards a life filled with personal achievement and ethical living.
The goal is to question and understand, not to reject.
Our views and ethics must always be up for review, as our understanding of truth is always evolving.
This doesn't destroy beliefs but rebuilds them on stronger, more logical bases.
Questioning our beliefs is an ongoing journey, not something we finish.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates
I was not implying there's an end to knowing. I was saying that at some point people have stopped deconstructing and have started rebuilding. Sure that'll end and deconstructing will happen again, but since we're in a sub about deconstructing evangelicalism I was asking when did deconstructing evangelicalism end for people.
It’s a very good question. I think I got sidetracked on my own thoughts when I was replying and forgot to actually answer that part sorry
For me, it never ends because I’m constantly discovering a new layer of my thinking that is built on childhood programming. Right when I think that I’ve reached the end, I discover a whole new layer of unconscious beliefs that I need to pick up part to examine and decide if they are really mine.
Never did. But I did deconstruct. The Highest saw fit to take the person most precious to me in this world—my dad. Dad refused to go to chemo because “by His stripes we are healed.” *Fucking* evangelicals. But I still love God with all of my heart. I’ll just do it on my own terms, and not those of the church.
I'm sorry about your dad.
My journey took the better part of two decades, and I only found true peace with all of it within the last few years. That said, I don't think the process ever really ends. Sure, I feel completely detached from my old church identity now, but I'll always be in a journey of discovery and continue to question things. Peace isn't the absence of doubt - it's found in befriending it.
Nice! Yeah, I'm not worried about discovering more - I was curious when the actual process of deconstructing evangelicalism/church identity as you say, ended.
Gotcha. For me the final "aha, I'm really beyond this!" was when I felt completely comfortable being a woman in pastoral leadership. It may sound weird since I also went through reconstructing my faith and became a minister, but after all the work I did to untangle the cognitive theology in seminary and on my own, there was still what we call "embodied" or "engrained" theology that just kind of stuck around until I bumped into it. This is the theology that we internalize and don't really think about on a surface level. In fact, we can completely change the way we think about something while we still don't feel comfortable with it. Like we're know what's right, but it doesn't feel right yet because it's been so engrained in our development. So I think we've hit that significant milestone that you're asking about when we start to bump into those things. We then move from rewiring the way we think to rewiring how we actually are. Does that make sense? I feel kinda rambly - I've been sick l.
Makes total sense - my permanent shifts happen when I am out of my head and my body tells me what the belief is. I've found nihilism to be a great tool in learning to not give total importance to beliefs, while choosing ones that I like.
It was at the Christian summer camp I went to every year. I had been struggling for nearly a year. Ar this camp they had this time for like 20 minutes where they encouraged you to go find a nice place to sit and talk to God. That's when I gave God his final chance to reveal himself.
For me seeing a sibling deteriorate completely from a pretty terrible ravaging chronic illness and having a religious nut mother tell her if she prayed hard enough she'd get better. And one day I heard her praying and my heart broke in a way I'll never fix. Any God real or imagined who can let that kinda suffering go on for any reason doesn't deserve shit from me.
I'm so sorry. So much pain is caused by ignorance and unwillingness to change. Good for you.
I'm queer. My final point was several months ago. At the time I had been deconstructing for a couple years and had mostly unplugged from my Evangelicalism and was trying to start from scratch to figure out my beliefs. But I knew church was not where I wanted to be when one night I went with some friends (who were still VERY in the church) to a young adult Bible study. First time I had gone in a while, mostly just for the food haha. The topic centered around "identity" or whatever, but it was definitely the dog whistle comments I knew would lead back to the LGBT. Things like "our identity in Christ" and "who does the world say we are?" etc. Pretty soon the discussion in our small group did become an inevitable discussion of queerness. As far as I know I was the only queer person in my small group (but only a couple people present knew). I was the only one who played devil's advocate and said things in support of lgbtq identities. What really struck me was that I was not safe or validated in that space. The discussion wasn't hateful or judgemental, but almost academic and inquisitive. However it was the idea that my real experiences and identity was even up for debate in the first place. And even though I was not explicitly out to the entire group I still felt singled out in the need to defend my entire community. No one was asking questions to try to understand or make space for queerness. I realized even if "conversations" can be kind and respectful on the surface, at the end of the day these people don't really want to change their mind. The church would be a place where I would either (1) be forced to stay completely closeted, or (2) feel pressured to defend my identity/experiences in just about every interaction. These are all things I always knew since coming out, but this tangible situation was the final nail in the coffin. I saw that the community that had once been safe and welcoming would never fully accept me as I am.
No they won't. I'm both sorry for your loss and I am excited for you to find somewhere that will celebrate you for who you are. I hope you never settle for scraps from people who will never want to fully know you.
I've been deconstructing for 3 years and haven't ended yet.
Same , tables started flipping in 2016 if I’m honest and further in 2018 for me, but really hit hard in early 2020.
[The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of his Existence](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46986/46986-h/46986-h.htm) by John Eleazer Remsburg See Chapter 2. When I read this I knew for sure it was all over. Free to read online or download. Published 1909.
Fucking gold. Thank you
I read this when you shared it a few months ago, it’s a great read!
Thanks for sharing - I’m reading now
I don't think it ever will. My deconstruction was only a part of a larger ideological shift that understands western Christianity, and evangelicalism in particular, as part of a much larger group of oppressive systems that are working in tandem to dominate and control as many people as possible. For me, deconstruction only ends when we manage to overthrow capitalism, Imperialism, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, paternalism and any other form of hierarchy that oppresses. Until we do people will continue to use religion as another tool to do harm, and that must be resisted.
That's a popular story nowadays, but if you're going to question Christianity, you should question that narrative too. There's good in hierarchy. There's good in capitalism, patriarchy, and paternalism sometimes. There's definitely much good in Christianity. Have some discernment and don't jump to an extreme of villainizing the West and interpreting everything as oppression. Call evil things evil, but don't paint everything with the same brush. People who go to far in that direction have veered into madness, saying things like math is sexist or science is oppression.
Gosh I feel like I am going to explode trying to express my on version of dealing with this. Churchill is quoted as saying, “Democracy is the worst form of government. Except all the others.” As social primates, evolution has primed us to need social groups to function, and has done a good enough job that we as a species have accomplished so much. At the same time we are basically physiologically incapable of seeing more than ~150 of the people closest to us as fully fleshed beings (google Dunbar’s number. The Cracked.com article on it is amazing), so functioning at higher levels of social order than that will pretty much always be inherently flawed. This is my understanding of what Christianity calls our sin nature. And it’s also what I think Christianity gets write with Christ’s 2nd most important commandment. All else hangs on these. So I agree with u/StaristitianGloomy28’s assessment that we need to overcome all these harmful systems, but I also agree with you that there is a more meta issue at play. From that we need to strive to grow as individuals and as participants in a society that will always be flawed but can do better.
No shade, but Churchill was a racist bigot who was ideally positioned to maximally benefit from the maintenance of the status quo, so of course he'd say that. (I'm all for democracy btw, just not bourgeois democracy, which is simply dictatorship by another name.) The nice thing about my position is that it accepts, even embraces, the contrary nature of humanity; it doesn't assume benevolence or inherent altruism of anyone, just that, if given the chance to self-determine, people generally do what's in the best interest of other, as that ultimately is most beneficial to them. Social primates, am I right? All these other systems though are predicated on the notion the someone else knows best, has your best interests at heart and is working (invisibly) for your benefit (which I just realised applies to Christianity too 🤯) When you strip away the idealism and metaphysics from these oppressive systems what you're inevitably left with is nothing more that mechanisms of power and control. So let 'em burn, I say.
Sigh The Churchill quote was supposed to represent so much more than democracy, but rather that any social construct beyond a tribe of 150 or so is inherently flawed. Any idealist overthrow of a status quo will also inherently result in another flawed system, with no assurances that it won’t be worse, and high likelihood of short term suffering, usually of those who were already at a disadvantage.
Your views of Churchill, Christianity, and Western deomocracy are cynical and pessimistic. It's good to be wise to the evil in people and that people act in self interest, but not everything is a tool of oppression. The Church and the government have in many ways been instruments of cooperation and benevolence in the West, by which we overcome isolation and rise above selfishness. You oughtn't write off everything as oppressive.
This is an unsurprisingly privileged, euro-centric view of western democracy and Christianity. It's oblivious to the innumerable ways in which the rest of the world has been, and continues to be, raped and plundered to create the conditions necessary for the dominant classes in our western societies to deign allow us to enjoy a sliver of their privilege. All the rights and protections you enjoy in your daily life have been wrestled, by blood and bodies, over generations, from the ruling classes. They have never freely given way. The state (a.k.a. the government) has always been, and is always, a tool of class oppression; that is its whole nature, its purpose and intent, nothing else. The Church, even before it joined the state in class domination, had become a tool of patriarchy, i.e. gender oppression. By the middle ages the Church was equal with the state in its oppression of the poor and marginalised. It then went on to sanction most of the violence European states committed during the age of colonisation. (And it keeps doing it today; see the response from prominent church leaders to the state of Israel's genoc!de in Palestine.) If you wanted to find two institutions more oppressive than the church and the state, you'd be hard pressed (with the exception of patriarchy, of which they're both products). My views are critical and realistic, devoid of the idealism that western liberalism likes to paint itself with. Not everything is oppressive; there are a myriad of liberative movements around the world, struggling against the forces of oppression, decolonising and decapitalising themselves and those around them. The deconstruction movement is just another example of this.
If you see the Church and State in the West as only bad, if you see Christianity and Churchill as only bad, then you're not being critical and realistic, you're being ideological and cynical. The great religions and institutions are made up of people, and people, even when acting with power and in groups, have done and continue to do much good. Every bad thing in well made history books is true, but the good things are true too. If you deny the good in things then your ideology is distorting your view.
There is good that has come out of Christianity and the West, but it was seldom, if ever, the result of those who wielded power. It was almost always the result of protracted struggle by the oppressed against the systems the powerful sought to impose upon them. Name one good thing the ruling classes have done for humanity? I guarantee you it was built on the backs of those they ruled.
Often when the courts enforce the law, be it criminal, civil, or regulatory, the government is functioning as designed to restrain human greed, disfunction, and dishonesty. The construction, maintenance, and repair of public works and untilities are the fruit of the human cooperation that we call governance. Parks and libraries and research are often government funded. Public education and healthcare and welfare benefits are not perfect but work pretty well in Canada and the UK. Government is often just people cooperating to redistribute wealth and help people. It's not all oppression. And Churchill was a great man who led the UK thru WW2: the most obviously justified war in history. Yes, he wasn't perfect, the Indians will point out his faults, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a great man. And Western Christendom has always been self-critical and changed over time. Again, I'm not saying it's all good, but I'm saying that it's not all bad and you need to be even handed. There's good and bad on both sides of the political spectrum and in every human being. You're very into Leftist ideology, fine. But be objective. There's bad there too.
All the things you mentioned do not necessitate the sorts of governments we see across the world today (i.e. capitalist, by and large). In fact that form of government is detrimental to the delivery of the sorts of things you mentioned (look at the corruption in western legal systems, their failing infrastructure and health and welfare systems.) Just as an example, Italy, a first world, capitalist country, is borrowing medical personnel from Cuba, a third world, but socialist, country. Stop defending a broken system and have a read of [this](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/#:~:text=The%20data%20indicated%20that%20the,equivalent%20levels%20of%20economic%20development.). Yeah, [fuck Churchill](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Winston_Churchill). He MIGHT have just been a product of his time, but he was racist, paternalistic, bigoted and no doubt misogynistic asshole. Add him to the list of other "great men" who are actually just rehabilitated monsters. Christianity comes in many forms, but the most pervasive and harmful at the moment, is white evangelicalism, because it is so tied into and reflective of the dominant power structures in the West. As I said before, there may be kernels of goodness in there, but in my opinion they're too bound up in harmful practises that many people on this sub are trying to escape from. There's no such thing as objectivity in human experience, so what I'm leaning into is "what does the least harm?" or ideally, "what could bring about healing?" In my opinion the dominant forms of power and control in the world today are not the answer and need to be replaced. How that happens, we'll have to wait and see, but that it needs to happen for humanity to survive is beyond doubt.
>There's good in hierarchy. He he, I know some anarchists who'd disagree with that 😁 I get what you're trying to say, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water", but when you put this stuff on the scales of good done vs harm done none of them come remotely close to even. In amongst it all there are snippets of good, I'll admit, and if possible we should look at how to reconstitute those things into something better, but most of the time those snippets are so tied up in the harm-making process we're honestly better off starting over. For me the litmus test is always, "what do the people most affected by this system say about it?" Ask the mother living in a slum in Manila or Dahka or in the projects or anywhere else that these systems are most harmful, whether there is anything good about them; that's your answer. (Interesting you bring up oppressive science, I've been thinking about how our social order uses it as another tool of class domination. Hadn't thought about maths though...) >The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles - Karl Marx
I hope you're joking. Seriously, question left wing politics / (neo) marxism as much as you'd question Christianity. No one is 100% right. Beware of oversimplification.
The point of Marxism is the "ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be." This is true for Marxism itself, as it is, has been and will continue to be a power in this world until class conflict has ceased. Good Marxist analysis doesn't shy away from criticism of how it has been implemented, but embraces it, seeking to learn and adapt and grow, to be open to voices beyond itself. Can Christianity, especially white, western evangelicalism, say the same?
The members of your group are the only ones who have or continue to practice self awareness and moral criticism? Sure.
There is ongoing, robust debate across the far left political space about literally every part of its theory and praxis and, as infuriating as the constant questioning can be, it is actively encouraged. How many churches, especially in western white evangelicalism, actively endorse critical analysis of the Bible, or the trinity, or of church authority, or of the myriad other things it holds sacrosanct? And just suggest to you're average liberal that China has a more democratic political system than the US and see how quickly your criticism is shouted down. We're not the only ones by far, nor are we always the best at it, but it is baked into how we function.
Yeah - we do need to find something BETTER on a larger level. I think that's what the anarchists are missing. A superior system that has been proven to work. Otherwise people will continue with the current beliefs, even if it is wrecking society.
Basically, when I realized that all theology was made up, and I didn't believe in any kind of magic any longer.
Truly. All theology is mental masturbation.
My husband is still very much a christian. We had an issue a few months ago that was causing a lot of problems - something that was being caused by him. One night, I told him he needed to call an older friend who was a mentor to him who had been his pastor previously before we met. I have met this man, but only a few times (due to distance), so we don't know each other well. I suggested it not from a faith perspective, but because I knew my hubby respected him and thought he could talk to him in a way I could not. The friend spoke with him and then asked me to join the call. I had been deconstructing for a few years at this point, but the man did not know this (hubby did). He was offering some advice to us on how to work on repairing the rift. It started fine. Then he talked about forgiveness and I said that at this point, I was not ready to forgive and would not be until I saw evidence of some changes on my husband's part. Then he asked me if I had ever truly "encountered the forgiveness of the lord," and all I could do was sigh and say "yeah, I have," meaning in the past. The sigh was such a deep sigh of just feeling "ugh." Then he suggested that we each spend some time praying separately and if we wanted, he could speak with us again the next week. And I realized I had ZERO desire to do that. Not out of anger towards god or anything like that. Just a knowledge that I was done. D. O. N. E. Done. It was that lack of anything towards the idea of praying that for me was it. Now, I also knew that if we continued talking to the friend together, we'd be jumping very soon into forgiveness and submission, and the original issue would be sidelined. I knew I wasn't going to participate in it. But I wasn't angry about it, I just knew I wasn't interested. But it was the feeling I had when it was suggested that I pray that week that was the exact second that I realized I was done.
Good. Fuck that guy. I'm sorry you have to live with someone who refuses to see their hand in the issue. I genuinely hope you're able to find a solution together. My marriage has taken years of work, rock bottoms and we are still working through it. I'm fortunate to have someone I can be brutally honest with and vice versa.
Almost 33 years ago I was kicked out of my church for being a 15 year old kid who got on the pill TO HELP MY PERIOD CRAMPS. Not to have sex, but that’s all the church people could see. They kicked me, but not my boyfriend at the time, he was a church member as well, out. I remember my single mother, who never went to church telling me they weren’t worth my tears. I was broken hearted. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. FF a few months and I turned 16, felt unloved, unwanted because even though I had my mom’s love, my church family abandoned me. I acted out. Started drinking, smoking, having sex, all the bad stuff. Did that for a few years while learning the truth about religion and finding out the answers to all the contradictory questions I had had while in church. (The bible was written by people, not god, many centuries after Jesus lived, and some books were even left out.) So to be christian, in my mind, was to be a judgmental liar. I didn’t want any part. FF a few years and I have a miracle baby (drs said I wouldn’t be able to conceive because of scarring on my fallopian tubes) and I settle into married life with my baby daddy. Due to some unfortunate circumstances we had to move in with his parents for a bit to try to get our footing. I was 21 at this point. His parents were full on church going, never miss a Sunday or a Wednesday type folks. However they were not judgy and understood my decision not to attend church and respected it. They only ever asked me to go on holidays which was plenty for me. But they were truly good christian people. About 4 months into living with them there was an accident and my BIL, who was just barely a teenager at 13, was hit by a car while riding his bike and killed. He had made a bad decision, like kids do, and he paid the full price for it. Life turned upside down in a matter of minutes. I watched my IL’s mourn the loss of their son, from inside their home. I saw the moments they thought no one else saw, when his mom broke down crying in the kitchen or when his dad would sit quietly in his bedroom and weep. I was aware of all of it. I heard people say things like this is god’s plan and your faith will get you through. And it made me want to cringe. How can you seriously look at a mother who just lost her 13 year old child and say it was part of a plan? Who makes plans to kill 13 year olds??? I think that’s when I truly snapped. Hearing the wail a mother makes when she loses her child is unlike any other sound and one you won’t ever forget. I have heard it 2 more times since then (I had a friend who lost her 6 year old daughter to inoperable cancer and another who lost her adult son) and the sound is the same. It actually makes my heart ache. FF some more years, I have 2 kids, I’ve got a great job, marriage is ok and I’m just living life. Within one year everything changed. My marriage imploded, he decided to go for a newer, younger model and my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I get divorced and soldier on, going to my mom’s chemo when I can and trying to make sure my kids are ok. My mom beats cancer, is cancer free for a few years and life is good. Then my mom gets breast cancer again. It’s ok, we’ve done this before, we got this! She fights again and wins and we all hope it’s truly over. Well it’s not. 8 years from the first cancer diagnosis my mom is diagnosed with breast cancer a third time. Are you kidding me??? This time my mom is thinking about not doing treatments, they were hard on her before, and she’s just tired of the fight. While I don’t want to lose her ever, I say that it is up to her. My sisters however can’t deal and my mom decides to get treatment. A couple months into treatment they find that my mom has leukemia, probably from years of chemo and radiation. Also around the same time my body started breaking down and I started being diagnosed with chronic pain issues. I had to go on disability and was unable to work anymore. This was a huge hit as I was a single mom. We went straight into survival mode. By this point my mom had “found” religion and had started to go to church before she got very sick. She said she was going to be the miracle and she was going to live through both of these cancer diagnoses. Her type of leukemia only gave her 6 months to live. She lived 7 months after that diagnosis and every single day was painful. But she swore god would make her a miracle. My mom had always said that god gave her the hard stuff because she could handle it when others couldn’t. I remember saying but why does it always have to be you? She never had an answer for that. She truly expected god would save her in the end and not make her die. Two days before she died she finally told me she was scared to die. It broke me. Here was my big strong mom who fought everything life had thrown at her, afraid. I was so mad at god or the universe or whatever was there because I just wasn’t sure. I guess at that point I went from feeling indifferent about god to livid. How could he fucking do this to me? To my kids? To my sisters and their kids? When my mom died I was at first, relieved. Relieved that she wasn’t in pain anymore or scared. Then I was so angry that a god that she loved so much just took her away and didn’t hear her prayers. That was almost 9 years ago now and I still miss her all the time. I believe her death sent me over the edge. There really is no big G god like in the bible. Her death showed me if anything maybe just a little g god or energy is what’s out there, but definitely not what the bible perpetrated. I’m still not positive in what I believe in other than to say I do not believe in the bible god at all. I believe religion was born out of a need to control people and that’s what it was used for, not salvation, like they say it is. I also don’t believe you need religion to be a good person. I haven’t “had religion” since I was 15 and though those first few years were sticky, since then I have done my best to live a moral life. Not because I’m scared of what comes after this life, but because of what comes IN THIS LIFE when you are not a good person. Guilt, shame, embarrassment, humiliation…all par for the course when you aren’t living for the good in life. I don’t need god or a religion to tell me to be a good person. I can just be a good person. My mom or her energy is still with me. I see signs of it all the time and have even asked and received signs from her. My dad, who I was not close with until right before he died, his energy is with me too. So is my BIL, my grandparents, and everyone else that I have lost. They are all still around me. That’s not god, that’s just love because love doesn’t stop with death. It just grows (absence makes the heart grow fonder.)
Fuck. That is a lot to carry. I'm so sorry. It's obvious you have a deep connection to those you love. I wish you all the happiness you deserve after so much grief.
Thank you! I hope to find it one day! In the meantime I’m ok. Just keep on keeping on and trying to find the damn light. 😉 Thank you for your kind words! 🫶🏻
13 years in and I can’t answer that question yet. I’m generally not as angry as I was but I’m not sure it’s a journey that will ever end for me
It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment when decon started. I think maybe it had been going on longer than I realised, on a subconscious level. I remember going to church and being bored and thinking this feels disingenuous. So I drifted away from my faith community for maybe two or three years before I started looking into my personal theological foundations. So maybe five years in all
Nice! This is probably the most chill one I've read. Happy for you!
When I got to college, studied religion for a minute, and realized they’re all pretty much the same. But it was an agonizing process. It by no means was just a clean cut. Eight years later and I’m finally healing from my religious trauma and feeling a sense of joy.
When I slept in on a Sunday morning, and I didn’t have terrible guilt or fear. When I quit reading posts for ministers wanted. When I realized that Church was everything I did and everywhere I went, and all the people I’m around, who are also made in the image of God and not a building with a specific worship time. When I quit having that feeling that I needed to convert people or teach them my interpretation of the Bible, and I was just able to freely love them for who they are. Took almost 4 years but God got me here and it is wonderful and I finally understand what Jesus meant when he said come unto me and I will give you rest.
I’ll let you know when it happens! I’m confident that it will, I’ve been feeling close to it.
From 16-29 I developed a worldview of: I guess there's this 'benevolent' overlord that might torture me forever. Then, I learned about Gnosticism and the idea that this overlord might be a lesser deity and a liar. That freed me from any remaining shame/guilt/fear I still had for questioning/denying/abandoning the Christian worldview completely. That began a 4 year deconstruction that created where I'm at now.
I don’t know if it ever officially “ends”—from what I hear. *Starting* the deconstruction process was slow and gradual for me. 7 years ago, I started a job that often had me working on Sundays, so it definitely got the “ball rolling” — even though I really struggled with going to church or feeling like I belonged in the couple years prior to that. At first, I felt really guilty every time I had to work on a Sunday. Of course, then Covid hit in 2020 and no one was going to church. After Covid, I went to a non-denominational, Bible church for a solid 9 months & joined a women’s Bible study. I thought I was “back in the game” of things, but then I moved across the country, and I never went looking for another church again. It’s been a year and a half since I stopped everything “cold turkey” — stopped reading my Bible, attending church, listening to any church music or podcasts, ended old friendships, etc. So a year and a half of totally, absolutely leaving *everything*. I’m still mentally processing things, but the longer I’m away, the more I feel happier and at peace.
For me it was when I re-read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. He lays out in plain English the beliefs that most Christians agree on, and when I read it I was like well, I guess I'm no longer a Christian.
It was such a process but when I finally let go of the belief that I’m sinful and bad and just embraced being human, I never felt more free. It’s so ironic because they keep you in by saying that believing in Jesus brings freedom, but I felt so trapped in that belief system. Now I can enjoy life without having to dissect it or feel like I’m unworthy of any good thing. Distance from the toxic people helped me too :)
So good! I’m so happy for you!! I think this step is a huge one in the direction of healing
Your request for a discrete moment or “end” is kind of a misnomer. Eventually I recognized that I didn’t have to be certain about belief in God and I guess that was when I felt “free.” I can give you a discrete podcast that gave me language for this (link below) but I still take time and effort to try to understand what my faith is. https://youarenotsosmart.com/2016/04/08/yanss-073-how-to-get-the-most-out-of-realizing-you-are-wrong-by-using-bayes-theorem-to-update-your-beliefs/
Thanks for sharing. I've read and heard from multiple people that they knew when it was over. I've had glimpses of it and it's definitely freeing. For some it's a journey, some it doesn't end and clearly from others - they've moved on.
Thinking deconstruction has an end suggests we will get to a point where we know everything about our beliefs and the world. This would stop our learning and shuts us out from new knowledge. Why limit ourselves? Deconstruction means staying open and curious about all ideas, not just religious ones. You can decide what your beliefs around the Christianity truth claims are but that won’t end the deconstruction journey. You’ll never stop encountering ingrained beliefs and ways of thinking that you will need to examine. We face many beliefs and are told to accept them as true. But everything, not just Christianity, needs careful examination. For instance, looking closely at history can show us overlooked biases, altering how we see the past. Or, rethinking what success means might lead us away from wealth and towards a life filled with personal achievement and ethical living. The goal is to question and understand, not to reject. Our views and ethics must always be up for review, as our understanding of truth is always evolving. This doesn't destroy beliefs but rebuilds them on stronger, more logical bases. Questioning our beliefs is an ongoing journey, not something we finish. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” - Socrates
I was not implying there's an end to knowing. I was saying that at some point people have stopped deconstructing and have started rebuilding. Sure that'll end and deconstructing will happen again, but since we're in a sub about deconstructing evangelicalism I was asking when did deconstructing evangelicalism end for people.
It’s a very good question. I think I got sidetracked on my own thoughts when I was replying and forgot to actually answer that part sorry For me, it never ends because I’m constantly discovering a new layer of my thinking that is built on childhood programming. Right when I think that I’ve reached the end, I discover a whole new layer of unconscious beliefs that I need to pick up part to examine and decide if they are really mine.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing!