[Music] one word that I'm sure you and I have heard a lot about recently in our culture is this
word deconstruction seems to be all the rage today to talk about it we see people leaving the faith
and that's called deconstruction and really the conversion sometimes the term is used other times
it's not so much that that people are are leaving the faith entirely but sometimes they use the word
deconstruction to mean leaving a certain version of the faith yeah or a certain denominational
stripe of the faith if you will uh regardless though this is part of the doubt discussion
right this this departure whether it's from Christianity as a whole or from a particular brand
of Christianity and I think one of the things that may be helpful is to think about causes of
that deconstruction and there's many out there but I mean what are some of the things you're seeing
right now that maybe are are poking at people that are leading them to to head down this path
yeah well I I think ultimately the path to leave Christianity one of the issues that one of the
issues that people are stumbling over is they don't understand the difference between Essentials
and distinctives and that's it that's its categories that Mark Knoll the historian has given
me and what he means by that is there's there's a lot of us who have grown up in the church
um C.S Lewis has this uh this this historic analogy of a house that Christians that live
in this house and each Christian lives in a room but for some of us we maybe have grown up in in
what I would call an attic space and it's kind of untethered or unconnected from the other rooms in
fact we might not even realize all that's beneath our feet the treasures down there and it's a kind
of reactionary space and because we're not Tethered to the deeper Christian tradition
and and our room as in the Attic isn't um all of it gets lumped together so Essentials which would
be things like what we find in the Apostles Creed what what Christians basically everywhere have
affirmed about Jesus about um about his life and his death and about who God is the key elements of
the storyline of scripture and that's really laid out for us and guarded by these ancient Creeds
um and so those would be the the things that make up the main floor of the house but what
happens sometimes in this attic space is we have certain reactions we have certain interpretations
of of what you would call second order third order doctrines and those things get placed as essential
and so you have something like this with the debates raging in Christian communities over
creation and I think a lot of times if somebody has grown up and saying Hey to be faithful to
the Bible you have to have this particular uh reading and interpretation of Genesis 1-3
uh and then they begin to question that they begin to think they're questioning not simply
okay what maybe this room or this group of people who who's in the Christian house think
about or interpret that passage or they begin to question the entire structure itself and so even
if you hold very strongly to a specific uh view of Genesis 1-3 in creation exactly how God Did It
allowing the person you're talking to to have some space to actually engage with that and what I have
found it's a major issue when communities don't do that when they cast any rival interpretation
or many rival interpretations of scripture as not only um uh maybe all for we disagree but threaten
Orthodoxy threaten every entailment of uh the key entailments of the Christian story now of course
some of the debate is going to be over well what's essential what's tied to essential right but at
least having the categories between essential and distinctives and trying to work through that as a
community and as a pastor as a leader and giving some people some space on that I think is really
helpful so another way to say that is when it comes to causes for doubt it's not even just that
the individual Christian May confuse secondary issues with primary issues although that happens
but that certain promoters of views are doing that in other words they're saying if you don't hold
my interpretation of this passage then you're rejecting Christianity or rejecting the Bible
and that in one sense causes a little bit of an existential panic in people they're like well
then I must not be a faithful Christian or maybe Christianity isn't true if that one interpretation
isn't yeah isn't isn't that way and I think that's a really good Insight because I think
we need to be responsible in the way we present our interpretations yeah so that they're seen as
what they really are not necessarily if you accept or reject our interpretation on a secondary matter
that you're accepting or rejecting the Christian faith yeah and I think that's a that's an
important observation and and oftentimes it's it's a kind of fear that is driving a kind of actually
a kind of fear for that person you want to keep them in the Attic you want to keep them in the
safe space but in doing that you actually make a space where people eventually can't feel like they
can't breathe they'd be able to suffocate yeah and my my suggestion in in those cases is is to
tell somebody or tell if somebody who's in this kind of community or attic is to come downstairs
to the deeper tradition and see maybe some of the posture that for instance on creation Augustine
would have on creation right who he's he's saying we need to have conversations with the leading
scientists of his day right and I think that same posture uh Augustine for instance would be one
figure who would encourage us to have today right so hey let's actually have these conversations
um about about how where to interpret these decks yeah but that that one that uh
that kind of issue that people are wrestling with is more on a very cerebral intellectual
level and I know that there's right now deep hurt within the church there's deconstruction
going on because people don't trust the church and I know this is something you've thought
about yeah I mean I think there's so many causes to doubt I mean you mentioned one I
think is really insightful one of the ones I've been working on lately that
um I think needs to be addressed in the world of apologetics is this concept of church hurt
how people leave the faith because of the way they were treated or mistreated by church leaders and
this includes lots of things it can include you know just an oppressive legalistic environments
in churches but it can also uh involve abuse situations whether sexual abuse or spiritual
abuse and I've just recently written my book bully pulpit on spiritual abuse and how much damage
that can and has caused in the church and one things I was amazed by when I wrote that book is
how pervasive the senses of people that that that their their mistreatment from the church
has caused them to doubt God doubt Christianity doubt the goodness of the gospel and I think we've
not reckoned with the fact that dealing properly with abuse in the church is part of apologetics
I think we've separated the two as if apologetics is one thing and abuse is something over here
that's an outlier and what I want to do is I want to show people that actually they're related
because the rise of deconstruction over the last 10 years or so is not in my opinion unrelated to
the rise of abuse scandals over the last 10 years ago and if you can't believe that the church is a
good place or the people in it are actually you know authentic godly people not perfect people
but godly people um then you're going to question the gospel and so yeah so I think the church has
a lot of work here to do and I think one of the things they do is just admit the problem instead
of covering up the problem minimizing the problem and pretending the problem isn't there and it's a
few outliers a few bad apples I think we need to admit the problem and I think there needs to be
some sort of Reckoning with the problem some sort of acknowledgment to the to the world out there
that look we realize this is an issue we're owning this and we're working hard to make sure the
leaders of the church are Godly authentic people who are not going to harm the harm the flock uh
and so yeah I it sounds like a completely separate issue from apologetics but it's really part of
solving the doubt question yeah I I've called that apologetic of repentance yeah in a world that
doesn't do repentance and forgiveness very well um to be a people who repent and not in a forgiveness
in a light way there needs to be accountability there needs to be uh we can't simply throw someone
right into leadership or maybe ever in leadership again right after certain sins that have been done
but but having actually this not taking on an apologetic of spin yeah apologetic repentance
and in our age one of the one of the huge factors right now is uh Andy Crouch calls this the
shrinking Circles of trust and fundamental to our witness as Christians is well is bearing witness I
mean we're to give testimony but if we do not have trust of others right we do not have trust of even
families within our own communities then what does that do to the witness of the Gospel what does
that do to the arguments that we give I found that most of the time my arguments only have weight
if it is within a context where people trust me yeah and that's a Biblical idea if if and
but we instead have such a we and because of society we feel like everyone's always
selling us something and so we have a generation of people who have been taught for a good reason
to keep their hand on their wallet yeah no that's right and so very quickly when apologies show up
our pastors show up and someone's dealing with doubt and all of a sudden you're glossing over
the you know the the sins of the church you're glossing over uh the ways that the church has
failed them or Community too quickly then um it actually it actually does damage to the message
um now I also think that we can point we should point to uh in those conversations to the to to
the ways that the church has has been a light to the world has done things but what I have found is
if they don't actually encounter that if it's just abstract well back in the history of the
church the church was you know they they have the first modern hospitals if they're pointing way
back there they'll quickly point to the Crusades and other things right but I've found what's so
powerful is this living apologetic of the people of God and when we're saying that Christianity
gives us these deep resources for a different type of life and then it's not lived out in front of
people there is a huge problem with our apologetic yeah I mean I think you can say it simply that
you can't separate the Christian message from Christian character and the Deliverance of that
message the the the message itself is affected by the the manner in which it's uh delivered in
the in the manner which is delivered is affected by the people in the institutions that deliver it
um and so this is why as I said in my book Christian Character Matters
for all Christians but it especially matters to Christian leaders because they have the
megaphone and that's a megaphone that can do a lot of damage if it's not done
properly it's a megaphone that can do a lot of good so we want to make sure
that our Christian leaders have the proper characters or the messages is properly heard