Some have mocked the distress and angst supposedly expressed by evangelicals over so many young people’s “deconstruction” of their faith and why it is essentially not a rejection of Jesus, but is rejection of institutionalism and politicalization of churches and religion, presumably and most notably by traditional, i.e., conservative Christians.
My own take on “deconstruction” or rejecting their faith, that is so trendy right now, is that it is sort of like what I experienced in my 30’s…… awakening to the reality at 29 that my years (since infant
Cradle roll days) of being a faithful churchian…. learning Bible, participating in traditions, seeking what I saw as “doing justly, loving mercy” etc. and realizing that, based on the dissonance between my stated beliefs and my actual conduct and influences, something was very wrong with my belief system and I was miserable. Either what I’d been told was a lie, there was no God, or I didn’t really know God…. That questioning of everything I had thought I believed led me on a nearly decade long searching journey, which is a quite normal part of spiritual maturing. I sought not so much to know God better, but to try to know myself better. By 38 I had to confront the reality of what I was capable of in terms of self-deception, dishonesty, selfishness, attempts at control, insecurity, and more. When I saw myself for what I truly was…. poor in spirit, broken, prideful, rebellious, fake, filled with secrecy, shame, deception and distortion of the Word (2 Corinthians 4:2) …..I also found Christ waiting right there at the point of my deconstruction of myself to invite me, comfort me, guide me, restore me, and reassure me that nothing I’d done could stand between me and his love for me. The realization of the magnitude of that love would transform me significantly over the next decade in some ways that surprised people who knew me well and surprised me even more. What had been Bible literacy became love and commitment to the authority of God’s Word. What had been personal entitlement to my “rights” became surrender to God’s sovereignty. What had been fear of God’s judgment became understanding of His grace, goodness, and call to be holy. What had been a consumerist and socially affiliative attitude toward church became a servant’s desire to be a cooperative part of the larger Body of Christ, serve God and His people within and beyond my own little comfortable fellowship, and build the Kingdom of God.
By my early-to-mid 40’s my knowledge of, love for, submission to and desire for the Lord had little to do with church and everything to do with relationship and yearning for the virtues of Christ to be manifest in me. I came through more-than-a-decade of time spent seeking and being pruned and refined that led me into “owned faith”……. knowing who I am, whose I am, and how to live into the purpose intended by God for my life. Learning to know and love God (heart, soul, mind, and strength) is certainly the primary part of that “searching faith” journey. But, for the second part of the Great Commandment, loving others as one’s self cannot be accomplished until one has invested in the parallel fearless and searching self- examination that leads to honest self-surrender to the truth of the depravity of heart each of us is capable of as a result of the marred human condition. I observe a lot of what appears to be dismissiveness, even condemnation, of others and arrogance in the attitude in many announcing their abandoning of faith. My suspicion is that their faith, like my own at 29, was vested in the wrong thing all along…. in an ideal that doesn’t exist, in their own goodness and intellect, in expectations of life and others that aren’t being met, etc.
I’ve seen plenty of others, like myself, go through a period of disillusionment, rebellion against external constraints, disgust with perceived hypocrisy of others, and more. However, I believe they, too, are likely to find a far better personally-owned faith if they earnestly seek self-examination and understanding and the Christ they may actually have never known instead of the faith they experienced and absorbed from others among whom they were originally nurtured or from those with whom they found affiliation as youth and young adults.
Statistically most self-described Christians live most of their lives in the immature experiential or affiliative modes. Comparatively few actually undertake an earnest searching faith journey and even fewer, reportedly as few as 6-10 % ever reach the mature owned-faith stage that cannot be shaken by any disillusionment in humankind or cultural upheaval and leads to humility, contentment, generosity of spirit toward others, and trusting in God for one’s own good and the good of others, whether we agree with them or not.