I have a hunch that the afterlife and Christian teaching on the subject is one of the big reasons for so many evangelical Christians entering the process of deconstruction.
Where deconstruction is a dirty word in much of mainline evangelical Protestantism (I’m thinking of the US especially here), it can also be seen as a much needed, healthy, spiritual stocktake.
Deconstruction is, at its best, an attempt to disentangle from the central tenets of Christian orthodoxy other doctrines which may have been presented and/or accepted as tethered to the Christian faith, but are not essential. (There will be a wide spectrum of views on where the ‘essential’ line is drawn!) When these tethers start to fray in the minds of Christians’, often attended by disappointments with the church or personal challenges, a process of deconstruction begins in order to explore and re-examine the whole ‘Christian package’.
Podcasts and magazines are full of deconstructing Christians. And is it any wonder, when we keep seeing exposés of Christian leaders mired in corruption and sin? When things and people are not as they seemed, it naturally causes many to question whether the faith itself is flawed, and not just some representatives of that faith.
Anyway, I’ve tried briefly to explain the recent trend for deconstruction and, by way of personal comment, before the word was so trendy I went through my own deconstruction experience. I blogged about an aspect of it here. But it was wider than the single issue of men and women in the evangelical church. And it’s my hunch (which is where this piece began) that a major sticking point for contemporary believers is traditional evangelical teaching on the afterlife.
I am reading and thinking a lot on the subject at present, and while I won’t cite any conclusions, mostly because I’m not sure I know what they are yet, I will say that what was handed down to me with my evangelical theology ‘package’ as a young believer has been severely challenged in the process.
A caveat is essential here. As is always the case, any doctrine and conviction I am to embrace must be supported by the best efforts at understanding the Bible. What the process of deconstruction can (and should) involve is an honest searching of the Bible’s teaching, coupled with an openness to the approaches of other Christian traditions. In my opinion evangelicals at their worst can come across as rather self-congratulatory in seeming to believe that they have a monopoly on correct Biblical understanding on all subjects. That’s clearly not true of all evangelical Christians at all times, but I suspect you are wise enough to know what I mean. (Openness to other approaches and traditions does not mean that every opinion has equal value: there are wrong ways to read the Bible!)
For those of you who want to start (or continue) thinking through Biblical teaching on the afterlife, here are some resources I have found very helpful: Preston Sprinkle’s Theology in the Raw podcast starting here; this series on the website of Andrew Ryland here; and Four Views on Hell from the Zondervan Counterpoints series.
Oh, and if you find yourself in a process of deconstruction, please do it in dialogue with good faithful Christian people; and I pray that you find a way to reconstruct with integrity and faith.
- I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (Jn 14:6)
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