Everywhere I turn, I come across people in various stages of deconstructing the faiths of their childhood. This is an unraveling of what had previously been a solid and unchangeable presence in the lives of their younger selves -few consciously choose such a path but many of us find ourselves on it.
Some are queer folks healing from rejection.
Some are survivors healing from abuse.
Some are thinkers rejecting the easy answers of an unexamined life or a spoon-fed theology.
Some are evangelicals who could no longer square their reading of scripture with the hypocrisy of a faith that embraced Donald Trump.
And some simply fell away during the pandemic to discover the joys of a free Friday evening or Sunday morning spent with family rather than in obligatory services. Truthfully, this part has been slowly happening for decades and regular attendance patterns have shifted, much to the consternation of those who track congregational life in America. The Pew Research Center does decent and consistent work here.
I spent my first 25 years in ministry as a youth minister, and if you’re doing it right, some of this deconstruction will happen within your youth group as a matter of course. I’ve embraced this process with the young people, and it has been easy to translate it into working with friends and others who find their own faith unraveling. We’re all always developing.
Bur from an academic cognitive development standpoint, young people are only able to grasp concepts like the abstract and the ideal once they’ve reached certain developmental thresholds. Only then can they compare, poke and find holes, come to conclusions that are truly their own.
What happens when they start experiencing these shifts matter greatly. Is it accepted or resisted? Is it guided or quashed? Growing in spiritual maturity requires the space to question, to examine. This isn’t just true for children and young adults.
We all need this grace, this oasis of acceptance. Within it, we are able to try on new things, to challenge our assumptions, to be wrong and to change.
This is true for most new things, and while difficult, is a process that reveals much. We are all holding onto things we need to put down, or believe things based in a bias. We all have more to learn in every situation, but we have few supports for that humility to be nurtured. We often feel as if we will be seen as foolish if we say we do not know, are not sure, or might have been wrong.
But this process is required, I believe, for what we think we know to be truly known, for our faiths and trusts to be ours wholly. Holy.
This is an idea that is reflected in scripture for sure, as Paul is often reminding his congregations that life is messy and people can be childish, but that a follower of Jesus has other options.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:11-12)
And isn’t that the key? Being known? Being loved? Being seen?
For so many experiencing this deconstruction, the source of all that knowing seems to have disappeared. And surely the previous authorities dictating the shape, the form of your faith have fallen away. The Divine pulse of love that permeates all creation feels out of reach.
But it isn’t. For it is within. It is without. You are of it, from it, and will return to it.
If you need to feel it some without pressure or expectation, I would invite you into what John Muir called Nature’s Cathedral, the great outdoors. Creation is imbued with this force.
Read your own bible and compare translations. The website biblegateway.com is great for this. Get into some of the simple resources available to help anyone read scripture more deeply. We at Spirituality Collective have several directions you can go on Our Faith Transition page.
Join our online bible study, which meets every Friday morning 10:00-11:00 MST. Send us a note on our FaceBook page, reply here in comments, or send an email to jessica@spiritualitycollective.com to sign up.
You do not have to go through this alone. Each of us is a spiritual being with our own language and relationship with the Divine. And together, we can form communities of care and concern.