Navigating Faith Deconstruction with Your Loved Ones (Part 1 of 2)

I truly believe that what we're seeing happen with a lot of people who deconstruct and get rid of these beliefs is they've never really tasted that the Lord is good, as it says in 1 Peter.

They haven't tasted the beauty of the Christian worldview. Welcome to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Today we're going to have a timely discussion about a movement that is sweeping across social media and it really is impacting the church. Thanks for joining us.

I'm John Fuller. John, I don't mention this very often, but I want to paint a picture for the listeners, the viewers on YouTube about what we walk in here every day trying to do. So it's evangelism and discipleship. A lot of people don't know, last year we had 190,000 people come to Christ through Focus. I think it's because family is such a place to talk about beliefs, right?

So it's natural. So I'm really happy that we're impacting people like that. Then, of course, it's marriage and parenting, advocacy for kids with foster care program, our option ultrasound program. And then finally, culture. How do we engage the culture in a way that is Christ-ordained, you know?

Long suffering, all the fruit of the Spirit, being kind to people, et cetera. I'd say today's program fits the culture component and the disciple component. And we are going to talk about deconstruction. Many of you might be saying, what is that?

That sounds like a big word. And we're going to get those definitions today from two great guests. Yeah, we've got Elisa Childers and Tim Barnett with us, and they're both parents and apologists, and they're passionate about understanding the truth, especially as it comes to this matter of faith deconstruction. How do we look at that? We'll be discussing some of the concepts in the book they've co-written called The Deconstruction of Christianity.

What it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond. And you can learn more about our guests and this great book on our website. We've got the link in the show notes. Elisa and Tim, welcome to the program. Good to have you. It's great to be here. Both first-timers.

Yes, yes, first time. Well, we should have had you here a long time ago, but it's great to talk with you about this really important topic. The deconstruction of Christianity is so timely, and the culture seems to be writhing in this. In fact, people in Europe that I've talked to, we have a film coming out later this year called Truth Rising, and we interviewed a lot of the both non-Christian and Christian academics from Europe, North America. It's going to be a great film, and I'm probably tipping our hand to that right now. But in there, I would say a core component of it is how to manage a culture that is jettisoning the Judeo-Christian value system, a deconstruction of what Western civilization has been built upon, right?

And I'm really interested. There are atheists that have become Christians in this film more recently, and even atheists who have said, you know, the Judeo-Christian value system is the best social structure because it delivers the highest quality of human being. These are atheists, and they're saying we have to be really smart about that component before it's jettison. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's fascinating. So when you get to the definition of deconstruction, I think in the book you mention John Cooper, who's with Skillet, which is a band, and I mean the guy is tatted up. I've seen him on the I Am Second website. If you haven't gone to that, go check it out because it's testimonies of people sitting in a chair just telling you what they experienced about God, and he's one of those powerful testimonies. And he referred to the fact that we need to declare war on this deconstruction.

So give it to me. What is that top line about deconstruction of Christianity? Yeah, deconstruction is a very loaded term. In fact, if you ask, we always joke, if you ask 10 people what deconstruction means, you're going to get 11 different definitions.

And that's one of the reasons we wanted to write the book when we did because we were observing this thing happen in culture and in the church, and then we were seeing people talk about it in various ways. Now, my story is kind of related to this because I had a really significant faith crisis over 10 years ago, and I thought I had deconstructed because I busted my worldview down to the studs, I rebuilt, it was difficult, agonizing, it took years. And so I talked about my deconstruction, but as I watched the deconstruction movement, I started to realize that's not exactly what happened to me because I was always searching for truth outside of myself, objective truth. And I wanted to line up what I believed with what was true.

But as we were studying deconstruction, we noticed that's not exactly what's happening. So we do want to acknowledge that lots of people are using this word to mean everything from perhaps questioning a secondary doctrine you were taught in your particular denomination, all the way to leaving the faith altogether. And so we were thinking if it means everything, it means nothing. So it has to mean something. So we wanted to define it according to how it's manifesting in culture and according to its philosophical history. Because this word in this context has a history. So, Tim, if you want to give us the big drum roll definition.

Well, and the connection to John Cooper that you saw that video. Sure. So he was on, it was at Winter Jam and he's in front of over 15,000. It was 15,000 young people. Outside? This was indoors. Okay, good.

It wouldn't happen in Colorado. Yeah, that's right. And he gets up there and says, it's time for us and your generation to declare war against this idolatrous deconstruction Christian movement. And he got a thunderous applause. But in the aftermath, when this video went viral, not everyone agreed. In fact, this thing was being talked about by all the Christian news outlets. They were saying that, look, John Cooper is declaring war against people who have doubts. And he has a fundamental misunderstanding of what deconstruction is. And so it occurred to us, man, this word, because it has different meanings, it's people are not being able to talk to each other.

In fact, they're talking past each other. Someone needs to bring clarity into this conversation. And so this is, this got Elisa and I talking about, okay, what does this word actually mean? The definition.

That's right. And when we started out, we thought, you know what, maybe you could talk about good deconstruction and bad deconstruction or healthy deconstruction and unhealthy deconstruction. So we're just adding adjectives to the word. But the more we researched what the deconstruction movement is all about, we realized there's nothing healthy about this. In fact, There's no good deconstruction.

Deconstruction is not a neutral word that you can just add adjectives to it. There's something fundamental to it. So for the listener and the viewer right now, what is the definition?

Okay, so here's where we landed. And this was the hardest sentence in the entire book to write. Interesting. Deconstruction is a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring scripture as a standard. Now, there's two key elements in that definition. One is that it's a postmodern process. So it has to do with truth. In fact, the process isn't truth directed. It's not truth oriented.

Something else is going on. And the second part is that it's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring scripture as a standard. There's an authority problem. The Bible scripture is not an authority. Something else is the authority.

Usually it's the self. And so truth and authority, those are two fundamental elements in this process. Deconstruction is not just a that. It's a how. It's a methodology. It's how people are thinking and rethinking their faith.

And we're going to spend today and next time getting into all of this. So we're going to peel the onion, so to speak. But let me ask you about the movement. Because again, I think for some you think of conspiracy theory. You know, so there was this big conference about how to deconstruct Christianity and everybody went to it and they walked away with their marching orders.

Yeah. What does that mean that there's a movement to deconstruct the Christian faith? Well, I would say without social media, there is no deconstruction movement. Social media has brought people together in a way that it's never happened before, where unbelievers, people reconsidering their faith, people wanting to leave their faith are able to find these online spaces, online communities. They're finding deconstruction coaches.

You can go to people and pay them. And there are conferences. There really are. I was just shot in the dark. No, no, no.

There was a decon 2023, decon 2023. And if you went to the lineup of speakers, what you would find is it's a whole bunch of TikTokers. Yeah. People, not Bible scholars. These are influencers on social media who have massive accounts. Some of them have half a million people that follow them and their entire account is set up merely to mock, ridicule and challenge Christianity every day they post videos. And by the way, Alyssa and I, part of our job, our day job is to respond to this nonsense.

And so we're online, we're going to conferences and we're answering these challenges one by one because people desperately need answers. Alyssa, let me ask you, the word toxic flies through our culture. Toxic masculinity is kind of the buzz right now. But they also talk about Christianity being toxic. What's the source of that and what's the fallibility of that comment?

Right. One of the fundamental things about deconstruction that we discovered, and we kind of touched on this when we talked about truth, but people in the deconstruction movement are not necessarily looking for what's true. They're looking for what is in according to their own internal compass, what feels healthy, what feels liberating. And so you're going to hear words like toxic theology, abusive doctrines. And what they mean by that is things like objective claims, like we're all sinners. We need a savior.

Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Biblical sexuality. These types of things are viewed as toxic beliefs. That Jesus died for our sins is toxic. Yes.

Yes. In fact, many people in the deconstruction hashtag, if you mentioned substitutionary atonement, the idea that Jesus died in our place or took our punishment upon himself, they say, well, that turns God into a cosmic child abuser. And now we're just talking about child sacrifice and how could you worship a God that needs a blood sacrifice of his own son just so you can be reconciled. It's super twisted. It is twisted.

And so there's a lot of conversation in that hashtag about abuse. And so because they view Christian beliefs as toxic. Well, and some, by the way, will still consider themselves to be Christians, but they are progressive Christians, meaning they've denied all of those core fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. But it's the emphasis for them to disconnect from their church. And sadly, from their blood families is really strong because it's not in this is so important for people to understand if you have loved ones who are deconstructing. It's not that your loved one thinks that you're wrong. They think that you're toxic. They think you're abusive, you're unsafe. So the impetus to disconnect from you is very strong.

And so they find, as Tim mentioned, these communities online that will affirm them, celebrate them and completely just celebrate this new journey in their life. Yeah. And let me let me throw this one.

Either one of you can jump on this. The the tolerance issue in the culture, you know, we've had other guests on that have talked about this, how high a value the culture places on tolerance. So if you come along and say there is a truth, there's an absolute truth when it comes to the definition of marriage, human sexuality. Whoa, that's toxic because you're trying to tell me what truth is and my truth doesn't match your truth. I mean, it's a pretzel of logic. It's hard. And the fact that we have de-anchored from absolute truth that scripture is true is the core problem.

Right. In fact, it's funny because you'll even see many posts in this hashtag that will say things like, oh, your pastor might be telling you to deconstruct, but deconstruct with your Bible in your hand. And they just mock that idea because the whole idea in the deconstruction movement, as we see it online, which is mainly where it's happening, is that you have to free yourself from the oppressive mentality that is this idea of biblical authority. Like if you still think the Bible is your authority, then you haven't really come into your true authentic self. You are just being handed beliefs. These aren't really your beliefs. So the virtuous thing to do is to deconstruct the root, you know, whatever that paradigm of truth is that you were given by your stream you grew up in and then figure out what you think is most healthy for you. And so often that's just jettisoning the entire Christian worldview because, like you mentioned, that's based on objective truth. And that's why people need to get a copy of the book because we're only going to scratch the surface in two days and people need to get this for more information.

Right. And the book title again, The Deconstruction of Christianity, What It Is, Why It's Destructive, and How to Respond, written by Elisa Childers and Tim Barnett. And stop by our website to get a copy.

The link is in the show notes. And Elisa, just to dial in a little more practically, I have a young adult with me who is online and it seems like he really is seeking his theology from these various online prophets and speakers. And I don't have an issue with some of them, but how do I talk with him about actually there is this Bible thing and this contradicts the Bible.

How do I, how do I engage him on that? Well, that's a tough question because a lot of times you have to do a little diagnosis to figure out how much truth someone is actually seeking for. Because when I had my faith crisis over 10 years ago, I remember hearing arguments and then I'd hear the counter argument and then I'd go seek out the counter argument to the counter argument.

And sometimes on one question, it would be years of even reading scholarly literature to try to get to the bottom of the answer to the question. The problem with TikTok theology is you have videos where somebody takes 20 seconds to deconstruct the Christian worldview. And typically how that goes is they present a fact that they assume the church has kept from you. It's usually a fact that people have known for a long time, but they'll present it as if it's new. Now, you probably never heard this and the church doesn't want you to know this and here's what you should conclude based on this information. And so they lead to a skeptical conclusion. And so that leads the person who's watching the video to go, wow, truth has been kept from me.

The church doesn't want me to know about this. They get distrustful then. That's right. And then with the attention span of social media, they're not going to probably do the deeper work of figuring out what the counter arguments are in the back and forth of the debate, because they're moved on to the next TikTok video with the algorithm. More of those types of videos are going to come into their newsfeed. And before you know it, they're in an echo chamber and completely brainwashed. So these deconstruction theologians are planting the seeds of doubt, the seeds of skepticism in these videos. As Lisa just pointed out, they're using hashtags like hashtag evangelical, hashtag ex-vangelical. And if you watch one of these videos, the way the algorithm works is you're going to end up seeing a video just like it.

And all of a sudden, that one doubt becomes a whole lot more. And the students are wondering, is any of this true? And so it's really important that when we have young people in our homes who have access to social media especially, we're talking about what are the kind of videos that you're watching? One of the things I do with my ministry is called Red Pen Logic with Mr. B, where we take a red pen to a lot of the social media nonsense out there. I'm responding directly to those TikTokers and those Instagram reels. They're, you know, one minute and I'll give me two minutes and I'll respond to it. And this is really helpful for young people, especially because they can watch the challenge and see, wow, feel the weight of it. And this is pretty compelling until you hear the other voice, until you hear the response. Yeah, it'd be good to link to that so people can tap and go check that out.

That'd be awesome. And I think for us as Christians in the culture, it means we have to know what we believe. And to a degree, and I'm certainly guilty of this too, we kind of have just kind of slid along here because the culture generally embraced Christianity up until the last 30, 40 years, right?

Then there's been an aggressive attempt to rid the culture of this toxic faith, et cetera. Lisa, let me ask you to paint a picture. You've mentioned a couple of times your deconstruction and what you were going through.

Like John Cooper with Skillet, you came out of the music industry. Describe what was going on and what was getting your attention at the time. Yeah, well, growing up in Southern California, I grew up as a Christian, very devoted Christian. My whole life, I read almost the whole Bible by the time I was 12 years old.

Boy, that's good. I really loved the word of God. I loved Jesus. We did a lot of evangelism in my family.

We did a lot of homeless ministry. Just loved the Lord my whole life. Now, of course, I didn't always live that out perfectly, but I never doubted what I believed. And so even going into music, none of that changed. Now, I will admit that touring wore me down. It made me sort of apathetic. I take full responsibility for this, but I wasn't really connected to a local church during my touring years.

And touring can make you a bit cynical and jaded. And so I had some of those elements going on that I think were setting me up for this. But when Zoey Girl ended and we came off the road, I don't know if I said that. I was a member of the group Zoey Girl from ages ago. But when Zoey Girl ended and we came off the road, my husband and I, by this point, we were married. We had our first child. And I really wanted to make sure that our kids grew up in church. And so we started attending a couple of churches, but we landed at a church that really seemed like people were like minded with us. We loved this church. The pastor had a more intellectual kind of calm approach, which we both really loved. But after attending there for about eight months, the pastor invited me to be a part of a smaller study and discussion group. And he said, this is going to be like going to seminary. And I was really excited because I always knew what I believed, but I wouldn't have been able to defend it intellectually. And so long story short, over the course of about four months, this pastor basically, who I learned later, had fully deconstructed by this point, was deconstructing the members of his church in these private classes and in private meetings.

And I lasted about four months. We left the church. I left that class. But when that happened, I was really isolated and I didn't have because I would try to debate with him in the class. And I didn't have anybody to debate with anymore. And it really brought me to the edge of agnosticism, where he had persuaded me intellectually that the Bible was corrupted, that I didn't have an accurate copy of God's word, that they didn't even have historical accuracy in what they wrote. And this led me to the cliff of does God even exist at all? But I knew I knew that I was a sinner and I knew that if Jesus hadn't died on the cross for my sins, I was doomed. And so I cried out to the Lord one night and I just said, God, if you're real, if everything I've believed about you, my whole life is true.

I need you to show up. But I didn't need him to show up with an experience. I had a lot of experience. I needed information.

And God was so faithful to lead me to study all sorts of different things like church history, biblical scholarship, philosophy, anything I could get. It's even kind of foundational truth. Yes.

Yes. And just to piece together my worldview. And so I built back up from the ground up and concluded at the end of that process that the historic Christian worldview is true, that Jesus is who he said he is.

The Bible is reliable and that he did die for my sins and I can put my trust in him and be saved. And and so that was what I thought was deconstruction. But when I realized after studying deconstruction, that's not typically what happens. People aren't searching for what's true. They're not going to read the biblical scholarship on both sides. They're watching TikTok and they're thinking, oh, maybe the church has been keeping this for me. So maybe it's all, you know, it's all just not true. But it's so often, I think, based on morality. They don't like biblical morality.

Right. And I would add the word they're watching TikTok and believing what they're hearing. They're not questioning it. And they're not questioning it. Let me ask you guys.

We're you know, we're zeroing in at the end here for today and we'll come back tomorrow and continue the conversation. But why? Why is that pastor? What is the motivation really?

What benefit do they see other than feeling good that we can embrace a sinful lifestyle and not really object to it and not give people a light about the destructive nature of that and God's plan for marriage, for family, et cetera. I mean, what you studying it the way you two have. What's at the core of the assault? I mean, it sounds satanic, if I could say it that way. It's spiritual warfare.

Absolutely. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, too, Lisa. But there's like an evangelistic zeal that they don't lose these evangelical pastors and deconstructing, but they don't lose that zeal. And so there's something about them that wants to bring people along with them.

They want to follow. And so, I mean, there's lots of warnings in scripture about this kind of thing. I mean, you read Second Timothy and there's warning after warning after warning about making shipwreck of your faith and and following after Satan and these kinds of things. And and so we as Christians need to be on guard and have a solid foundation. I mean, thank God, Elisa, you were able to come back and build that foundation from the ground up that is so necessary to protect yourself from these deconstruction evangelists. You were constructing.

I mean, that's what you're describing. You had questions about your faith. You were challenged in your faith and you went to find truth and construct your faith.

Yes. And, you know, I think when I really look back on it, even though my doubt was primarily intellectual, what really kept me going and I don't quite know how to word this, but it was the faith of my parents. I knew I knew that what my parents had was real. I knew that all those times we prayed together as a family and studied the Bible as a family. I knew they had something. I knew they weren't perfect, but they modeled repentance. They modeled what it's like to love other people, to love God with your whole heart, with everything.

And I wasn't willing to let go of that so easily. So to answer your question of the why, I truly believe that so many people, because there are a lot of people that have these very similar crises that remain Christians. I truly believe that what we're seeing happen with a lot of people who deconstruct and get rid of these beliefs is they've never really tasted that the Lord is good. As it says in First Peter, they haven't tasted the beauty of the Christian worldview. And so when I mean, I understand what it would feel like to cast off moral restraint and do what you want.

There's a certain sense of freedom from that, that sort of thing that people are celebrating in that hashtag. But I truly believe the reason they're so evangelistic is because they haven't tasted that the Lord is good. And they truly, deeply believe that Christianity is abusive and oppressive.

And they've bought into that narrative and they want to free other people just like they perceive themselves to be free. You know, what you're saying reminds me of a conversation we had with John Lennox, the former, I think, chair of mathematics at Oxford. He's a jolly Christian soul. And he debates the atheists and all that. But he said to me, you know, my practice is to ask people where they get their joy. And he said, it usually if you're not a believer, if you're not a Christian in the full sense of the word, people don't know how to answer that question. And they'll say to him, why are you so joyful? You're a mathematician.

You should be dour and all that. And he said, I'll just ask him, where do you get your joy? And that happened when he was like 19. You know, he was at Oxford undergrad and a Nobel Prize winner.

He was having dinner with him and seven other professors. And they got him up in a room and said, you've got to denounce your faith because it's going to limit your ability to understand mathematics. Imagine that your faith in God will limit your understanding of mathematics. Hello, who created mathematics, right?

Why does the universe work? And he said, which it was such boldness as a 19 year old, he said to those men, where do you get your joy? And they couldn't answer his question. And basically he said, I'll keep my faith in Christ and you can keep your faith in Darwin. And what a powerful statement. And that's kind of what you're saying. Yeah. Well, it's not a matter of if, but when tragedy, suffering, pain, trauma, abuse, all these things that can cause people to go into deconstruction.

Those things are going to come. But those of us who have found joy in Jesus, who have found that Jesus is good, they can cry out like the Psalmist did. Psalm 13, right?

David, how long will you forget me forever? But then he at the end of that Psalm, he says, I'm going to praise the Lord because you are good. And so I know I'm experiencing this stuff right now in the moment, but there's something that I cannot deny because I've experienced it. And that experience is that the Lord is good.

And I think that this is a powerful thing that we're praying that these people who are going through deconstruction would find that the Lord is tasteless. Well, that's our goal and that's why we wanted to have you on. And Tim and Elisa, this has been a great opener and I'm looking forward to our day tomorrow to talk more about this and get into the nitty gritty. Maybe we can talk about what people are believing and how we can help them rethink what they're believing. So thank you for being with us.

It's been great. And I, you know, there are programs that come along, John, that you're going, everybody should get this and read it because it's so such a good supplement to the scripture. And in this culture, we need this kind of training. We need to have the ability to express what we believe, especially with the onslaught of social media. So get a hold of us.

John will give those details in a minute. If you can make a gift of any amount, we'll send it to you. The book is our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry monthly.

A one time gift is great. If you can't afford it, we're Christian ministry. And if you want this and need this, we'll get it in your hands for free. Just call us. Our number is eight hundred. The letter A in the word family.

Eight hundred two three two six four five nine. Of course, we have all the details for you in the show notes. And on behalf of the team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We'll have Tim and Lisa back tomorrow and 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 Stone Street 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