My Response to The Gospel Coalition’s “4 Causes of Deconstruction” Article

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January 10, 2022

About a month ago, an article from The Gospel Coalition written by Joshua Ryan Butler and entitled “4 Causes of Deconstruction” caught the attention of the deconstruction community. Lately the TGC has been very preoccupied with deconstruction and is doing everything they can to minimize, discredit, and explain it away. And they’re failing spectacularly. People are more comfortable than ever turning a critical eye toward the Church and, as a result, are leaving the Church in droves.

Butler’s article is more of the same—he’s trying to speak on something he doesn’t fully understand, even though he thinks he does. This can be attributed to a completely different set of frames through which he and I see the world. And that’s fine. In his article Butler lists four things that cause deconstruction, which are: church hurt, poor teaching, desire to sin, and “street cred.”

One of the very first articles I ever posted on this blog was called The 4 Most Common Reasons People Deconvert. Butler and I actually agree on a few things. However, he brings up some stuff that I did not address in that older article, so I will respond to some of his points today.

Here, I’ve organized my own article with the same headings as Butler’s and will provide my own commentary to excerpts from his article.

Church Hurt

Yes, people leave the Church because the Church hurt them. That’s obvious, although apparently not so obvious to Butler. Just like every other anti-deconstruction Christian that’s spoken out before him, Butler insists that the best way to deal with church hurt is to… return to the church and try again because next time it’ll be better.

Church hurt is real. But deconstruction is a false cure. The gospel’s remedy is lament.

The definition of lament is, “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow.” I’d say this is a natural and acceptable reaction to being hurt by the Church, but how is this the remedy?

I’m assuming Butler means lament is the first step of the remedy, and after you’re done lamenting, you’re meant to get over it and return to the Church.

You don’t need to ignore the church’s problems to protect its reputation. Instead, bring the problems boldly to God—like David did—and encounter a deeper intimacy with him as you’re honest about your wounds.

Deconstructing people are not ignoring the Church’s problems. They just aren’t bringing these problems to God. They’ve likely tried this before, only to be completely ignored, or perhaps rebuked by a pastor who didn’t like being called on his shit.

Much of deconstruction exists because it’s easier to move on than to be sad.

That’s actually quite correct. This is why people strive to move on from sad situations: relationships, careers, friendships, and a religion that no longer makes any sense.

The solution to bad community isn’t abandoning community; it’s good community.

Eh. Nice try. The solution to bad community is abandoning that particular bad community. And then finding a good community.

Diagnosis: church hurt

Cure: grief and lament

Butler is essentially saying that when the Church hurts you, grieve and be sad, and then that’ll eventually make you want to return to Church. Already we can tell this man is not living in reality.

Poor Teaching

“Poor teaching” is kind of putting it lightly in my opinion. If I receive poor teaching in a college classroom, then I’ll be pissed off but then eventually get over it. I’ll either learn it myself or take a different class.

But the teachings in the Church—as I’ve written about many times on this blog and in my book—are ones that affect all aspects of your life. With a scope this large you can’t afford to have too much poor teaching. This is why people who are deconstructing are struggling. They’ve realized that the way the Church taught them to live (whether explicitly or subtly) just doesn’t work in the real world. In the end, it doesn’t make any sense.

But if the problem is bad teaching, the solution is good teaching. There are great resources out there…

He then goes on to list two of those “great resources” which are a book and a video series, both created by The Gospel Coalition. Which is the problem that many of those deconstructing have identified with the Church—they kept getting referred to the Bible itself for answers to their questions about the Bible!

Jesus is critiquing not the Scriptures, but faulty traditions and insufficient interpretations.

I actually agree. I just don’t think Jesus is the last person to ever be allowed to do this.

And to be fair to Jesus, most people who have deconstructed (including myself) don’t really have problems with anything Jesus said or did. He sounds like a pretty chill dude. What we’re critiquing today in the modern era are the faulty traditions and insufficient interpretations of the Church. The Church has done a hell of a lot to botch Jesus’s original message (but again, we’re supposed to “lament” that, get over it, and move on).

Diagnosis: bad teaching

Cure: good teaching

Taken out of context with this rest of his article, I wholeheartedly agree.

Desire to Sin

This section may as well be called “desire to have sex.” He immediately uses this as his example:

Some deconstruct out of a desire to justify their sin. Many friends in ministry have suddenly had “big questions about God”—then proceeded to quickly deconstruct their faith. So many times, it later comes out they’d been having an affair that started well before their deconstruction began.

I minister in a college town (go ASU Sun Devils) where students regularly deconstruct when they’ve started sleeping with their girlfriend or boyfriend. Convenient timing. Others deconstruct while harboring an addiction (drugs, alcohol, porn), to release their guilt.

There are many ways to begin deconstructing, and one way is to critically examine the Christian lifestyle. Specifically, many wonder why having consensual sex with a person they love is supposedly dirty and sinful.

And I don’t think I’m fully on board with the idea of a Christian having an addiction to alcohol and hard drugs, and then deconstructing just so he can continue to be addicted to alcohol and hard drugs. What seems far more likely is that in the rare instances that this happens, the Christian cried out to God to deliver him from these things, and their prayers went unanswered.

As for porn, pretty much all Christian men (and a growing number of Christian women) watch porn. Their sexual energy needs an outlet and they’re going to find that outlet one way or another.

God allows us to think we are “judging” him, when really it’s a form of God’s judgment on us.

This kind of thinking is all kinds of messed up…

If the problem is a desire to sin, the solution is confession and repentance.

Confessing and repenting to God isn’t going to help someone addicted to alcohol and drugs. What will help that person is a trained, licensed professional who has experience in this area.

Diagnosis: desire to sin

Cure: confession and repentance

Then after that’s done, keep on desiring…

Street Cred

(It took me forever to get my word processor to stop autocorrecting the word “cred” to something less stupid).

Doubt is hip.

Thank you for saying I’m hip!

That’s why so many deconversion stories sound like everyone’s reading off the same script—its well-worn clichés signaling conformity to accepted norms.

The same thing can be said about testimonies.

I’m simply observing that social pressure is a powerful carrot on the stick

The most powerful social pressure I’ve ever felt in my life was when I was in the Church: fit in, do as I was told, never question, follow all the rules, and if I stepped out of line I’d be rebuked by a person who was probably stepping out of line themselves and just hadn’t been caught yet.

Many of us feel the social pressure—and the release valve is a simple Instagram post away.

Shit, if only deconstruction was that simple…

The “cure” here is the crucifixion of your image.

I agree, actually. Only it was the crucifixion of my Christian identity.

It’s not wrong to want love and affirmation; it’s just wrong to want it more from your fickle friends than your faithful God.

At least my friends respond when I speak to them.

Diagnosis: street cred

Cure: crucifixion of image

I don’t actually agree with the diagnosis here.

Also, “street cred” doesn’t address the people who deconstructed decades before now. They didn’t have an online community in which to process their thoughts and emotions. Many of them truly walked the painful path out of religion alone. And back then, it was far less acceptable than it was today. There was no “street cred” to be had for them.

Conclusion

Butler’s article is another in a long line. There are more coming, and probably from The Gospel Coalition. They seem to be on a mission against deconstruction.

Although this article pissed off a lot of people, I’m ultimately of the opinion that articles like this are a good thing. Why? Because I have a feeling articles such as these will have the opposite affect. Christians who may have not heard of deconstruction before will read this, wonder what Butler’s talking about, and then possibly get launched down a rabbit hole of new information that they never before knew existed. They may, for the first time, finally find the permission and space they need to ask the questions they’ve been dying to ask all along.

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