Ministering in the age of deconstruction will likely involve attentiveness in conversation, sensitivity to the Spirit, and the risk of investment—knowing the person might end up bailing anyway. Good doctors take time with their patients, and as ministers of the gospel we must too. 

Deconstruction is a symptom, not the root cause.

A proper diagnosis is important because—to continue the medical analogy—each underlying condition has a different cure.

I’ve walked as a pastor with many wrestling with deconstruction. While not exhaustive, these are the four most common root causes I’ve seen. Let’s look at the gospel’s treatment plan for each.

1. Church Hurt

Many who deconstruct have been wounded by abusive or manipulative church leaders, or generally unhealthy church cultures. Often these relationships were intimate and formative: the pastor you grew up with, the mentor you trusted. For others, the relationships are more distant. You grew up under the influence of leaders like Ravi Zacharias, Carl Lentz, or Mark Driscoll—whose teaching and charisma powerfully inspired you and formatively shaped you—but then the curtain got pulled back. The betrayal can make the whole thing look like a sham. The pain can be excruciating and disorienting.

It’s easier to throw the baby out with the bathwater when you feel like you’ve been drowning.

Church hurt is real. But deconstruction is a false cure.

The gospel’s remedy is lament. The psalms often protest mistreatment at the hands of God’s people and petition for his justice. David—who wrote a majority of the psalms—experienced abusive leadership firsthand from King Saul. Yet he sought the Righteous Judge with lament, groans, and tears.

You don’t need to ignore the church’s problems to protect its reputation. Instead, bring the problems boldly to God—like David did—and encounter a deeper intimacy with him as you’re honest about your wounds. Deconstruction bypasses this deeper healing. It’s a shortcut that internalizes grief rather than bringing it before God.

We’re not good at grief today. Much of deconstruction exists because it’s easier to move on than to be sad. But the only true and eternal cure for these deeper wounds is Christ.

The solution to bad community isn’t abandoning community; it’s good community. A healthy treatment plan will eventually involve rebuilding a good church community with good boundaries and good leaders. No community’s perfect, but trust can be rebuilt on the other side of lament, in healthy relationships centered on Jesus and life together as his people.

Diagnosis: church hurt

Cure: grief and lament

2. Poor Teaching

Some Christians have been led to believe they must choose between faith and science, because of poor teaching on Genesis 1. Others have been led to believe God is a vindictive sadist, from a popular caricature of hell. Best abandon Christian faith entirely on account of some dubious or sloppy teaching, right?

But if the problem is bad teaching, the solution is good teaching. There are great resources out there (such as TGC’s recent book, Before You Lose Your Faith, and video series “Gen Z’s Questions About Christianity”) and many wise pastors are walking patiently with those who wrestle with hard questions. Good teaching and good teachers exist.

Jesus is the best model of replacing bad teaching with good teaching. I love his refrain in the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard it said…but I say” (Matt. 5–7). Jesus deconstructs bad teaching in order to reconstruct good teaching. Not all deconstruction is bad.

The bad form of deconstruction, as my friend Seth Troutt pointed out, is epitomized by the serpent’s question in the Garden: Did God really say? (Gen. 3). The enemy wants us to break trust with God and distance ourselves from him and his people. This is the way of most deconstruction today.

Jesus shows us a better way. In contrast to the serpent’s question, Jesus proclaims: You have heard it said …but I say. The serpent’s goal is to break trust; Jesus’s goal is to build trust. The serpent’s goal is to distance us from God; Jesus’s goal is to draw us closer to God.

Some mistakenly think Jesus is critiquing the Old Testament when he says “You have heard it said.” But Jesus loves his Hebrew Bible. He’s constantly saying things like, “It is written,” “Have you not read?” and “I have come not to abolish the Scriptures but to fulfill them.” Jesus has a higher view of the Old Testament than most of us do.

Jesus is critiquing not the Scriptures, but faulty traditions and insufficient interpretations. Not much has changed. Inaccurate caricatures and misreadings of Scripture are everywhere today, even promoted within some churches. 

We need to take good teaching seriously. Our refrain should be, You have heard it said, but Jesus says… I’ve written books on hell, judgment, holy war, sacrifice, wrath, and atonement, and I’m writing one on sex and gender. I’m often trying to confront popular caricatures of the Christian faith and replace them with a healthy, biblical, historic understanding. That’s one of TGC’s goals, too.

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