If you’ve hung around some spiritual geeks and seekers like me, read books or articles about progressive Christianity, or watched a few YouTube interviews with your favorite biblical scholars or theologians, you might have encounted the term Deconstruction. This rather recent phenomenon describes the process of dismantling the inherited religious beliefs, dogma and practices you grew up with. Rather than blindly accepting a faith tradition, you pull it apart layer by layer to evaluate what is authentic and worth keeping, and what needs to be discarded.
This can be a very difficult process and I speak from experience. I was raised Roman Catholic in an Italian family. We were culturally Catholic and our religion, the religion of my ancestors, was a part of my DNA. I left the Roman church when I turned forty. As a gay man I said enough is enough. This denomination’s hierarchy thinks something is wrong with me. But the reality is that I was just fine, made in the image of the Creator. Something, however, was wrong with them. And so I left and was spiritually adrift for several years. I eventually became an Episcopalian because the denomincation was welcoming and affirming of me and my LGBTQ brother and sisters. Priests married and women were ordained. Yeah! But much of the dogma remained and it began to weigh heavily on me. I continued to deconstruct and eventually became a member of my local Unitarian Universalist congregation. I was hooked when I saw an adversement for them that read “No dogma, Just Love.” Bingo, I found my spiritual home. And it only took about fifteen years, painful ones, feeling like a traitor, fraud, and a quiter. But now I feel whole again. Interestingly, I never gave up on Jesus. He will always be my north star. But I no loner identify as a Christian, but simply as a follower of Jesus, the one I’ve come to know intimately. The guy who preached love, compassion, generosity and stood with the marginalized , the stranger, the poor, sinners, the outcasts, untouchables and ritually unclean. He was not afraid to speak truth to power. And that is exactly why he was killed.
I invite you to see if any of these common triggers for Deconstruction might apply to you. 1) Spiritual trauma or abuse. 2) Social injustice. 3) Rigid institutional doctrines. 4) Bibliical contraditions and historical discrepancies. 5) A struggle to reconcile the existence of a loving God with personal tragedy or global chaos. 6) Eternal conscious torment imposed by an angry and vengeful God. 7) Patriarchy. 8) Religious superiority and intolerance of other paths to God 9) Original sin. 10) And franky, the nonsensical. This is not an exhaustive list and there can be many other triggers you identify as you peel back the layers of an inherited or adopted belief system that no longer work for you.
Now let’s look at what it means to emerge from Deconstructon with a new spiritual paradyme for your life. The term frequently used for this process is Reconstruction and the time it takes build back up and create something new is very personal. As I mentioned, my Deconstruction and subsequent Reconstruction took me about fifteen year. And frankly my Reconstruction will continue as I to learn, experience life and nuance my beliefs so that my mind, body and spirit are in alignment and congruent. While I found a spiritual home in Unitarian Universalism, I also became a member of my local Quaker Friends Group because of the very similar and complementary set of principles within each of these spiritual paths. And with the Friends I can learn to quiet my mind through meditation and listen to the small voice of the Divine within me. As you can see, my Reconstruction continues.
As you Reconstruct you begin to value a spiritual community that offers a safe space for curiosity. You no longer need to conform to a way of acting, believing and voting as other do. You are free to be your true self. Your faith becomes experiential and embodied. You leave the broken theology of “who is in and who is out.” To the man Jesus, no one was “out.” Everyone had a place at the table. You do and so do I. The word Gospel is defined as “Good News.” This, in a nutshell, is the good news, indeed!