Navigating Faith Deconstruction with Your Loved Ones (Part 2 of 2)

And so we want to encourage those out there who may be in a situation that feels impossible, feels hopeless, just be encouraged that we serve a God who raised Jesus from the dead. Welcome to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Today, Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett are back with us again, and we're looking forward to hearing more of their insights about how we as Christians can understand and respond to the deconstruction movement.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. You know, John, the why we are covering this kind of content is because we have a heart for the culture. We have a heart for evangelism and discipleship. Those are two core strategy efforts here at Focus, along with marriage, parenting, and helping children, and foster care, and in the womb, et cetera, helping that mom make that decision for life. All of this is connected into a Christian worldview.

I mean, you marry from a biblical standpoint, hopefully you parent from a biblical standpoint, and today we want to reinforce those things that are truth right out of scripture that we cannot jettison. And if folks didn't hear the program last time, go back and listen, because we talked about a movement that is occurring within our culture to deconstruct faith, and some of it's coming right from the pulpit. And we have got to be better acquainted with those methodologies so that we can, one, live it, live our faith out better, and then be able to parent our teens, our 20-somethings in a way that helps them to overcome this deconstruction movement. And as I mentioned, we have Elisa Childers and Tim Barnett with us again, and they are both parents and apologists and defenders of the faith, and they engage in those social media channels about this. They've written a terrific resource. It's a book called The Deconstruction of Christianity, what it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond. They were so winsome last time, Jim.

I want to affirm what you said. Check out that first episode and get a copy of the book from us here at the ministry. We've got details for you in the show notes. Welcome both of you back. This is good. Thanks. Looking forward to it.

Good to be back. I've really enjoyed it, and you could probably tell I get a little inspired interacting with someone who's really studied this, and it's so relevant, and that's why the folks listening and viewing on YouTube, I just want them to dig in because it's so critical that we as the Christian community, one, stay on the bedrock of truth. Don't get moved off that place because it's like that portrait of the wolf with the one eye looking around the tree. This is exactly where the enemy of our soul wants to get us, in big time doubt, not believing in the scripture, questioning it. And maybe that's the place to kick this off. Questions are okay. I mean, you have to ask yourself, okay, do I really believe this? But speak to that component of being okay to ask questions.

Yeah, we think questions are great. In fact, as we travel around teaching and speaking, it's important that we question what we believe. We should know not just what we believe, but why we believe it. And parents out there, I want to strongly encourage you to be giving that why for your faith, because if you can't give a why for your faith, you'll never be able to give a why not to your doubts.

I'll just speak from experience. Growing up, my parents kind of gave me my belief in God like they gave me my birthday presents. Here you go. And I just accepted it. Okay, God is real.

When I was in university though, studying physics, secular university, and my friends who weren't Christians started challenging me, I didn't know what to say. I needed that why. I needed to find the answers. And so it's really important that there are going to be beliefs that our students are going to receive that are good and true from us. But there are also beliefs that we get from our parents if we think about it that aren't true. Like for example, my mom told me that if I crack my knuckles, then I'll get arthritis.

You had to go to that one. Or if I swallow my gum, then it would stay in my stomach for how long? Seven years. How long does everyone know that?

Seven years. Well, that's not true. It will come out with everything else. So we get some beliefs from our parents or from sources that are good and true and some that aren't good and true. And it's really important as we mature, especially into adulthood, that we know how to adjudicate between those two things.

We have new viewers, new listeners, and they haven't heard yesterday's program. So let me just ask for that redefinition of deconstruction of Christianity. Right. Oftentimes we think people are confusing deconstruction with doubt. So doubt is when you question what you believe, right? Deconstruction is actually a very specific method of reassessing your theological beliefs, but not requiring scripture as a standard. That's how it's manifesting in culture. Now that, give me a practical example so we can recognize it in our own practices or perhaps even in our own church where that might be going on.

What does that sound like? What does it look like? Well, one, one example of what it can look like is in the context of questions, right? We were just talking about questions. One of the things we talk about in the book is that we really encourage pastors to have times of Q and A question and answer.

But here's the problem. A lot of people in the deconstruction movement are not seeking answers for questions. They're seeking exits for the faith. And that's really where we have two different kinds of doubt. There's doubt seeking truth and then there's doubt seeking justification for the unbelief that's already there. And so you basically have honest questioning and dishonest questioning. So what can happen is if you do a Q and A and you do have an answer for a question, sometimes those answers are just not going to be acceptable to the person who is already seeking justification to leave the faith. And that can put pastors in a tough position. And the other thing about the deconstruction movement is it, it's sort of praises this idea of perpetual questioning. You don't ask questions in that space in order to land on a concrete answer. In fact, there are videos where they'll say, don't land, don't create new beliefs because then you'll just have to deconstruct those. So it perpetuates agnosticism. And so when someone isn't really asking honest questions, that's a huge sign that deconstruction might be going on rather than saying, Hey, I just, I heard this video. I really need to know, is my Bible reliable?

Do we have an accurate copy? Where could I find some information on that? Right? That's an honest question, but you might have somebody say, well, I just can't believe in a God who would do X, Y, or Z as I've read about it in my Bible. Those are two very, very different things. One is more emotional. One is more very self-led and the other is intellectual.

We often find that emotional sort of questioning that doesn't really want to find a concrete answer in the deconstruction. I so appreciate that distinction because it's really important. I was just with one of our supporters. So I was down in Texas and he had said to me, he, you know, he graduated with a finance degree, Bowen.

Hello, Bowen. I'm sure you're listening. But he said he was in New York. He was a go getter. He was going to conquer the world and kind of drifted away from the faith in pursuit of his career. But he started going to Tim Keller's church and he said, you know, the one thing that Tim Keller did that really hooked me after the sermon, after church was over, he would say, I'll be upfront. If anybody has a question about what I've talked about today, come on down and just let's ask questions and I'll try to provide answers. And he would be there for an hour, two, three hours. We actually talk about that. Do you mention that?

So Bowen is one of those people that experience that. And what a great thing. If you're a pastor, what a great thing to do on a Sunday. I mean, that is the work day for you as a pastor, but to extend your church time and let people come and talk with you right in front.

Well, if you think about it, when we go to church, you know what happens while you arrive, you sing your three songs, you hear the sermon, pass the plate, do the announcements and then just the benediction dismiss you. There's no usually overt time for Q and A, and that can give people the impression that questions aren't welcome here. And so what I love about what Tim Keller's done and other pastors have done the same is let's create a space, let's create a time in the week where we're going to get together and just wrestle with the questions that people have. And that allows people to see, you know what, maybe Christians aren't afraid of questions. Maybe it's okay for me to express my questions because the worst thing you can do is suppress your doubts. It turns out doubts not the problem. The best research we have says it's silence in the face of your doubts. That's what's a faith killer.

It's the students who were able to express their doubts. They actually had a more mature and strengthened faith. Yeah. Well, I like that concept, you know, that God's okay with an angry fist.

You related that to David last time you talked about that. I think oftentimes that's a okay place to be when you're angry, grief of some sort, the loss of a loved one, a child. I mean, that's the greatest grief anybody could experience.

When you have this emotional fist in the air saying, Lord, why, why did you let this happen? I think God's all in on that. Come on, let's talk about it. And you may never get that answer, but God's okay with the discussion.

And I so appreciated that last time. Let me move to that. I think parenting component of this, Tim, you share in the book about a young man named Adam. Yeah. What does his story illustrate about the challenges our young people are facing today? This shows the pressure that many of our young people are under to capitulate and to maybe deconstruct their Christian beliefs. So a friend of mine from church, he came to me and said, my 13 year old son, Adam is really struggling with his faith.

Do you mind going out for coffee with them and maybe having a conversation? So we went out for coffee after some small talk, he just got right to it. He said, Tim, I lost all my friends at school. And he started to recount what happened.

Well, his best friend of five years came out of the closet, said that he's gay. And he knew that Adam was a Christian went to church. So he asked Adam, what do you think of all this?

And Adam did his best. I mean, as any 14 year old can to communicate the truth of the biblical view of sexuality, with grace, truth, trying to balance that. Well, this entire discussion took place over text messaging, which is not the best place to have a conversation like this.

But this is how a lot of our young people communicate. And the young man who came out of the closet took screenshots of the entire conversation, shared it with their school. And now he's being called homophobic.

No one will talk to him. And he said, Tim, I've been watching these TikTokers. And they're saying that actually this whole view of sexuality and gender that I learned at church, it's a mistake.

It's wrong. So he'd been listening to some of the deconstructions. He said, if I believe them, I might get my friends back. So we ended up walking through some of those videos. I gave some responses to those. So he needed answers.

That was part of it. But the second thing we talked about was, you know, Adam, you have to make a decision here. There's going to be times where you're going to be at the crossroads, where you can either be faithful to God or you can be faithful to the world.

You can follow the world and where they're going, or you can follow God. And praise the Lord, Adam, a couple of years later, faith strengthened and actually was baptized. I got to watch him get baptized. So just an amazing story there where Adam was a good candidate for deconstruction. He was right there.

He could have easily been taken in by all these influencers, these deconstructionists, but instead he remained faithful to God. You know, Tim, and I love that story, but dad called you and said, can you meet with my son? What about those thousands of families that don't have that Tim?

That dad or mom could call and say, Hey, Tim, could you? So I think the question is this, how do we, how do we augment that if we're in a crisis with our teen, which is kind of typical. And I want to put it together with this question because, you know, even for us, it's, well, scripture is good. It's poetry. It's metaphor.

It's all these things, but your teen and 20 something could say, but do you really believe that it was totally inspired by God that every word there is truth. And you know, just maybe we start there and then talk about if you don't have it, what you need other than the book, you get a copy of the book, but we could also give your cell phone number. Well, let's not do it. Well, I'll be honest. I'll be honest. We get every event we go to a parent will come up and say, I just, I wish my son or daughter was here to hear this, or I wish you could sit down with them and have coffee. And here's the thing in one sense, you can bring us into your home.

That's we talked about this last time with red pen logic. I'm responding to some of those challenges that are out there. So you can literally play the deconstructionist and then hear my response at the dinner table at here's what we do with my girls. So I got three girls, 13, 11, and eight, and I will come to the table and say, girls, let's pretend like dad's an atheist. Okay.

He no longer believes in God. So I'm kind of role playing what a TikToker might do. You know, my girls aren't on TikTok and they're not on Instagram, they're on social media, but I'm going to kind of role play. So how would you respond? Would you guys still be Christians if daddy wasn't a Christian? And it's like, well, and so they're, they're, they're, they're struck.

Okay. Well, the Bible says God's real, so God must be okay. Well, what if daddy doesn't believe the Bible? And you could see them like a wrestling and well, you know, a building needs a builder.

So a creation needs a creator. That's what my daughter said. I was so proud of her, you know, and it's like, here's them like really thinking through this for themselves at such a young age. And so that might be one approach that you could take. And I think one of the key parenting techniques here that we need to understand as Christians, committed Christians is don't act shocked or don't act with react with emotion.

Like, how could you say that? That's exactly what the other side sort of speak is saying. That's right. So we need to absorb that.

Boy, that's a good question. Yeah. And I would love to add to that too, because I think a lot of parents listening to us might be thinking, but yeah, but you guys know all this stuff. You've studied this.

I haven't done that. I don't know how to tell my kids these truths. Well, here's the thing. You don't have to be an apologist.

You don't have to be a scholar or professional philosopher. You just have to be curious enough to let your kids know that it's a safe place for them to answer the question. So I always tell parents, the one thing you can do is ask your kids, what's your biggest question about God? And then prepare yourself that you're not going to act shocked.

You're not going to gasp. You're going to just take a deep breath and then compliment your child for having such an insightful question. And if you don't know the answer, you're going to make them feel so good about themselves when you're like, wow, I've never thought of that question. And then be willing to go on that journey with them. And that promotes just an atmosphere of you learning together. You don't have to know everything to be able to start that conversation. That's so good to remember to say, I don't know.

Let's go investigate it. Elisa, let me ask you, you know, just trying to think of the folks listening and what they've gone through. They might feel like they've got family members that they have not really talked effectively with and they feel guilty about that. You know, maybe a sibling, a mom and dad who have gone through this and they're no longer claiming to be Christian and they become enlightened and all those things. They're free from the toxic Christianity as we have talked about.

What can we do with that? I think Heather was an example that you used in the book. Describe that situation with Heather.

So Heather's not her real name. I just want to say for people listening, but Heather was a woman that I was friends with that we went to church together. We had a very similar experience of spiritual abuse in this church. And this was even after my faith crisis and all of that. But Heather began to deconstruct and she started to ask me questions.

And this was after I had been studying apologetics. And she asked me questions about biblical reliability and she kept asking the same question. I would give her resources. I would give her my best answer. And then she would just sort of reword the question and keep asking it. So finally it occurred to me, I don't think she likes the answer.

That was kind of the thing that came to me. And then I finally asked her, what's underneath this question? And she said, well, if this pastor that was abusive used scripture to abuse us, how do I know that the men who wrote the New Testament didn't just write it to oppress women and to make people kind of come into the fold like that? And I thought that was really getting to the heart of her question. And I did my best to answer her questions. But I do remember going to dinner once and I tell this story in the book where she was crying a lot.

It was very emotional experience. And so she was bringing up all of these claims about the Bible and about Christianity. And I just felt in that moment that it wasn't the right time to correct her and bring out my best apologetics because I wanted to cry with those who cry. She was in a lot of pain. But what happened is when we walked back out to the car, she kind of blurted out, well, if you would have had any answers, I'd have taken them. And I just, my heart sank because I thought, here I am an apologist, and I couldn't even give her answers for her questions. And it really bothered me for a long time after that. But after I really thought about it, I thought, you know, her deconstruction is not on me.

I made the best wise decision I could in that moment to not overwhelm her with counters to everything she was saying because she was in a lot of pain. And ultimately, I think that's the one thing that I would say to people, if you have a loved one in deconstruction, I'm sure there are parents who are watching us who have responded in shock and fear, and now they're feeling very guilty and they're like, what do I do? But even so, your loved one's deconstruction is not on you. You are not that powerful.

You are not the Holy Spirit. You can do what you can to influence them for good. But the best thing you can do if you've had an outburst or something like that is just go back and repent to them.

Tell them you were wrong. Model what Christian humility looks like in that context. It's kind of proof in the pudding, right?

It is, right. And, you know, that doesn't guarantee any outcome. But I think that the most important thing we can do is do what we can, live the beauty of the gospel in front of them. That's what my parents did for me. That's what got me through so many dark moments was knowing what they had was real. And I think that's probably a good first step. And in the end, that's really what kept you tethered to the faith, even though you're on a thin rope, if you want to use that imagination.

Tim, you speak about staying with Saturday or, you know, living in Saturday. Speak to that because I think it's really apropos right here. Well, I was actually preparing a sermon and called Elisa and said, look, I want to end with some hope. You know, there's a lot of stuff we've covered in these interviews. And man, it can seem like this is overwhelming. It seems hopeless.

And we started to brainstorm. We thought, let's talk about the resurrection Sunday. There's a lot of hope there. Well, if you think about Easter weekend on Friday night, Jesus is abandoned by all of his followers. And that Friday night, you have Peter and he's now denied the Lord three times. Of course, we all know Friday, but Sunday brought resurrection hope. Again, we read in the gospels that the angel says, go and tell the disciples and Peter, like Peter really needs to hear this. He's going through something.

What happens on the Saturday? You know, we're just not told. So we can only speculate, but you can imagine like, what was going through Peter's mind? Did he have like unanswered questions?

Probably. Did he start to question some of Jesus' teachings and maybe his identity? Like after all, the Messiah wasn't supposed to die on a cross, was he? Did he start to question some of the miracles that he saw, maybe tried to explain them with some naturalistic, we just don't know. He was living in a Saturday. Well, we do know one thing, and that is that the day after Saturday came Sunday and with it brought this hope. And Peter, his faith was restored.

It was strengthened. And I think there's a whole lot of people out there who have loved ones who are living in a Saturday. And it's not just 24 hours. Like their Saturday might be months, it may be years. And what we can take from this account is, look, if it can happen for Peter, if he can have that Sunday experience, then maybe it can happen for our loved ones too. And so we want to encourage those out there who may be in a situation that feels impossible, feels hopeless, just be encouraged that we serve a God who raised Jesus from the dead. And as a result has spurred on, look at, I mean, Peter's faith, we read about his words and the Bible.

I mean, there's something that God was able to do with Peter's life, even though he denied the Lord three times and went through this process, maybe you could even describe it as a deconstruction. And so I think there's hope for our loved ones too. Your grandfather. Yeah. Right to the end.

Yeah. And this is just a classic example here where on March 1st, 2018, I got a phone call and never forget. My mom says, your grandpa's kidneys are not working properly and we don't know how much time he's got left. So we grabbed our kids, picked them up from school and we took them straight to the hospital and got there, went up the elevator.

I still remember. And there's all like 30 of my family members in the lobby there in the hallway. And I'm thinking, why aren't they in the room? Well, we started asking questions and they were actually doing some tests on my grandpa.

I said it would be like two hours. So because it was so close to dinner at this point, we ended up taking my girls home. I was flying out the next morning to go speak at an event in Dallas. And so I had to see my grandpa.

I didn't know if this would be the last time. So I got in the car, went back to the hospital. And when I got back, went up the elevator, okay, there's nobody, my family's gone.

Okay. Maybe they're in the room. So we go talk to the nurse. The nurse says, actually, one of the tests, we discovered that your grandpa has tuberculosis and no one's allowed to go in and see him. Your family all went for dinner.

I wasn't going to take that answer from them. I said, I'm going to talk to my grandpa. And so they said, well, here's what we can do. We'll put a hazmat suit on you, essentially.

This is before COVID. This is like mask, the whole gown, everything went in there. And this, just to back up, was an answer to prayer because that morning when I hung up the phone, I prayed, God, give me one last opportunity to share the gospel with my grandpa. And I knew that wasn't going to be easy because I knew my family would all be there. And most of them on that side of the family are not believers. So here's Tim, he's going to get up and he's in front of everyone.

He's going to preach the gospel. And sure enough, there I am in a room with just my grandpa. Actually, my sister was with me. I picked her up as well.

Just the three of us. And because of this tuberculosis thing, they weren't letting anyone else in. So for an hour and a half, we shared some memories. And then I said, grandpa, where are you going to spend eternity?

And we walked through. And here's a man who was hard against the gospel his whole life. He wanted nothing to do with Jesus.

In fact, it was like, that's why we didn't bring it up anymore. We thought this was a hopeless situation. It just wasn't going to happen for him. Well, I present the gospel and grandpa's like, I want that.

I want that. You'd be surprised because a man who knows he has few days left is willing to take a lifeline. And he wanted to receive Christ for the forgiveness of his sins. And we were rejoicing. In fact, I didn't even believe it when it happened. So I was like, did he really understand what I was getting at? Okay, maybe if I, so as I'm praying for him, I'm like reiterating all the stuff I had already said, because I'm like, do you, it's not supposed to be this easy.

You're supposed to have challenges. That's what we're used to as apologists. Well, we left that room rejoicing.

And that next morning I was on a plane heading for Dallas, actually before it took off, I got a text from my mom and said, your grandpa passed away in the night. And so praise the Lord. The takeaway of this story is that God is able to work in impossible, what seems like impossible situations. That's where he does his best work. And your situation may seem hopeless.

This one certainly seemed hopeless to us. And in his final hours before meeting Jesus, he received Christ. Just amazing. Well, I mean, that's, that's the place to end and we're so appreciative. I mean, that's a great story about doing what you can do. And the last two days we've talked about being prepared to be in conversations to help address these questions for your family, for your children, for those around you.

This is the quick, the Christian witness, right? This is a part of it. So don't be lazy and understand what it is that's going on in the culture. So you can address these issues to the best of your ability. And then, you know, contact us, let us help you be equipped for that discussion. This book is a great place to start the deconstruction of Christianity, what it is, why it's destructive and how to respond.

Like I said yesterday, I don't know why you wouldn't want this book. And if you can just get ahold of us, make a gift of any amount. If you could do that monthly, that's great. Be in ministry with us, man, we are, we are making a difference in the culture. Help us to do that. In addition to that, get a great resource from us and John will give you the details on how to do that.

Yeah. Donate today when you call 800-232-6459-800, the letter A in the word family. We're stopped by the show notes. We'll have all the details there for you to make a donation and get a copy of this book, The Deconstruction of Christianity. Alisa and Tim, thanks again for being with us. Thank you for writing the book and all the effort it took to do that and all the great experiences that God has given you. It's just, it's refreshing to have this discussion with you. Thanks. Oh, thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for having us. Well, what a great conversation we had. And plan to join us tomorrow as we'll hear the story of a marriage that was saved through our hope restored marriage intensives. So as I realized, I thought I was starting a battle into one thing. I realized I was in a battle.

We were in a battle to save, to save our marriage. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Culture is changing so fast.

How should Christians respond? At our next Lighthouse Voices event, you'll hear from John Stonestreet with the Colson Center. We live in what is called a civilizational moment. Civilizations ebb and flow, and we are at a pivotal moment. I think a lot of us have felt that existentially for a long time. Learn how to face this moment with clarity, confidence, and courage. Lighthouse Voices is on April 15th, and you can register for the free live stream at lighthousevoices.org.