Navigating Deconstruction

How to deconstruct your beliefs:

Deconstruction must begin with something small first, especially if none of your beliefs have ever been changed for a long time. This is because the dogmatism in your mind will be unwavering. Part of it is a defense mechanism because your beliefs may form a part of your identity and that is something you want to subconsciously protect. However, our identity must not be in our beliefs but in Christ alone. Once we transfer all of our identity to Christ and find all acceptance in Him rather than in any religious affiliation or group, then we will be more ready to change our minds on a particular subject.

In addition to our identity getting in the way, the programming of our minds gets in the way as well. The longer you’ve been taught something and solidified your doctrine through hearing or searching out various arguments, the harder it will be for you to break that programming. For this reason, it is important to first deconstruct something that hasn’t been programmed so heavily in your mind. Try to find a more neutral topic to deconstruct first and work your way from there. An example of this would be to deconstruct Divine Exhaustive Determinism before deconstructing any of the other beliefs of TULIP. Once one realizes that God does not necessarily determine every single event that takes place, even the most mundane events and then working your way to moral events, then it becomes easier to take down unconditional election. This is because Divine Exhaustive Determinism is a foundational stone that supports unconditional election. Without it, you begin to question the need and necessity for this doctrine of unconditional election. One also begins to question the very nature of God’s sovereignty and how it actually works.

If your mind’s programming is very firm on a particular Bible verse in the defense of your doctrine, it is helpful to zoom out and examine the entire picture with a bird’s eye view because otherwise, you may get such myopic vision that you will never be able to see clearly just looking at that one verse or that one word or phrase. For example, the word “elect” had a certain connotation for me that was so hardwired into my brain so that even when I was trying my best to see it a different way, I couldn’t. I got very frustrated with this. It was driving me crazy. I think what helped was taking a break from that subject and then deconstructing the other ones like Total Depravity and Irresistible Grace. Then I came back to Unconditional Election and deconstructed that one. Another example of this bird’s eye view is in examining Conditional Immortality if you believe in ECT (Eternal Conscious Torment). Don’t just fixate your mind on those few proof text verses in the book of Revelation to refuse understanding the other position. Remember, your mind has been solidified and programmed in that way your entire Christian life. If you decide to look at the overall data and all that data points to Annihilationism, while the few proof text you have for ECT are in non-didactic (non-literal) texts, then perhaps your proof text are really just outliers rather than proof texts.

Another way to deconstruct is through reading or listening to a lot of material of an opposing viewpoint. You can do this, not necessarily to accept that viewpoint but to neutralize the bias and dogma in the mind enough so that you can more easily accept another viewpoint or conceive of other possible variables.

It is helpful to see what the early church fathers believed about a particular subject so that it can cause you to question and deeply examine why you believe what you believe.

A wrong understanding on the nature and character of God could be a foundational error that corrupts all sorts of doctrine. Therefore, before beginning the deconstruction of doctrines, it is essential to have a correct understanding of who God is. We must start with the character of God first and then begin decoding the text, not the other way around.

How everything connects:

PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) uses ECT subconsciously as a defense of God’s wrath needing to be satisfied. Since ECT paints a starker picture of God’s wrath, PSA language helps to alleviate some of that wrath as the problem that we face. However, if one does not believe in ECT, retributive wrath is not needed on the cross. The wrath of God still exists but it’s postponed until the future eschatological day where God’s wrath is poured out. Until then, God’s wrath is His wrath of abandonment. So, it's consequential wrath instead of retributive wrath. It’s governmental wrath instead of retributive wrath. It is for these reasons that if you deconstruct ECT first, PSA will be easier to deconstruct.

For many Calvinists, it may be easier to deconstruct ECT first before Calvinism because an emotive objection Calvinists have for leaving Calvinism is that if they did, they would not be able to emotionally reconcile how to process the fact that people could go to hell for an eternity and that if they failed to share the gospel with them, it would be blood all on their hands. Like, how does one reconcile that it’s your own fault that you didn’t try hard enough to share the gospel with your friend and now because of it, they are going to suffer and be tortured in hell for an eternity? Can you just hear their screams already? Now, when I left Calvinism, I very quickly adopted the view of Annihilationism, so I can’t speak for how to emotionally reconcile such things that the typical Arminian would have to deal with. I do suppose, however, that one might have to cauterize their conscience to a degree to emotionally survive that doctrinal framework.

On the other hand, I do perceive that if someone were to abandon ECT first, it may be harder to get them to leave Calvinism. Because for me, ECT played a critical turning point in my cognitive dissonance that led me to leave Calvinism. I could not reconcile how a good God could arbitrarily choose some people and not others for salvation. The rest, He just throws into eternal conscious torment and they had no chance at actual redemption since they were born unable to choose faith in God from their very birth. And for what reason are more people condemned than they are saved? If, after all, it’s solely on God’s sovereign choice and nothing else? How does it glorify God more that more people should suffer in hell than to have a greater number of people worshipping Him in heaven? It makes absolutely no sense in the Calvinistic framework and does not harmonize with who God has revealed Himself to be through Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of Original Sin as taught by most Christians around the world is a foundational stone for the doctrine of Total Depravity. But if one were to acknowledge that we either weren’t born sinners or we weren’t born completely unable to choose God in faith, then Total Depravity has no leg to stand on.

If one believes in ECT, the idea that one can lose their salvation seems unthinkable that God would allow that to happen. However, if one believes in Annihilationism, the idea is no longer as unthinkable. It rather makes more rational sense.

If most Christians were to reject Calvinism, ECT, and PSA, the love of Jesus and the Father would be allowed to come in and deeply transform the heart through faith in His love and this would result in a real transformation in life to where many of the doctrinal disagreements that we have in the church today would not need to be had.

To deconstruct Penal Substitutionary Atonement, it may be helpful to understand and default to Satisfaction Theory. Since, it was out of Satisfaction Theory that the PSA model was built. Once you’ve done that, then deconstruct Satisfaction Theory.

How angry is God with sin? Does His anger have a limit? Or does it last for eternity? If His anger lasts for eternity that He would need to torture people forever in hell, then I suppose it would be logical that to escape that judgement, one would need an eternal sacrifice. Based upon this reasoning, we can see how the doctrine of ECT is a foundational stone to PSA.

Understanding the OT sacrifices as God pouring out His wrath on them, is also an underpinning of PSA. But the sacrifices were gifts and meals that were shared as part of a covenant. They were not about wrath. That is presumed into the text.

We could admit that a miracle happened in the death and resurrection of Jesus to give us life and cleanse us from sin but if a miracle is not satisfactory, we might have to use a model like PSA to help us reconcile this with our western minds. Since, for the western mind, miracles often aren’t sufficient as we need everything to be explained in detail to make logical and rational sense of it all.

The character of God underpins most of the theology that people have: ECT, PSA, Calvinism vs. Arminianism or other models.

The problem with some camps of theology is that they take words and definitions so literally and from this literalness, they develop their theology. But we have to understand that Christianity is so much different than anything else. We use the words available to us in our society to explain spiritual and eternal realities. Therefore, the earthly connotations that those words have cannot all apply. The spiritual and the natural realm are not equal for equal. This is a stumbling block that many Christians fall into as they myopically look at the Greek and Hebrew and grammar of the text as if that is the end all, be all.

When thinking about the atonement, understand the difference between literal, symbolic, and mechanical. For example, when Jesus purchased us with His own blood: Was this mechanical and legal, or was He just speaking about purchasing our hearts by His love by winning over our devotion? It has been said that the devil owned us and we were purchased from him but could this just mean that our devotion and service was to the devil but now it is to Jesus because Jesus brought our identity back to us?

The doctrine of imputation is a foundational stone of PSA. Without PSA, there is no imputation of righteousness to the believer. There is no “declaring them righteous.” There is no legal fiction of some book in heaven saying you did all the deeds that Christ did. Rather, the books say all the deeds that you did and you are judged by those deeds.

If you leave PSA, the doctrine of eternal security will be affected and you will be inevitably inclined to accept the fact that one can forfeit their salvation as this becomes the logical conclusion. The Catholics are a few steps down from PSA and they hold to Satisfaction Theory (Vicarious Satisfaction). Under this model, you will have to decide what role good deeds have. The Eastern Orthodox church is even further down. They mainly hold to Recapitulation Theory and Ransom Theory with probably some other ones. But those two are the main ones. Without PSA or Satisfaction, you will have to question what role retributive justice has in this framework, if any. Was the curse and removing from the garden in Genesis 3 retributive or consequential from the sins of Adam and Eve? What is the nature of God’s justice and how does He rightfully carry it out for humanity? Will justification by faith alone still work under these systems? Why or why not? Or, how so?

If you still hold to PSA and limited atonement, it won’t make sense that someone is able to lose their salvation.

If you are a Calvinist, it will be much more difficult to deconstruction PSA because of the substitutionary doctrine of the (limited) atonement which isn’t a mental block for the Armenians and Provisionists.

The imputation of sin and imputation of righteousness needs to be dealt with first before deconstructing PSA. But before this, it would be wise to deconstruct Unconditional Eternal Security. Otherwise, mental instability may likely ensue. However, I have heard from William Lane Craig that it is possible for one to reject the aspect of the wrath being poured out on Jesus from the Father while still accepting the doctrine of imputed righteousness. Perhaps even John Stott might believe that but I’m not sure. I also don’t see how holding such a position is actually possible but perhaps you will find a way if that’s where this journey leads you.

When deconstructing, hold on to a few Bible verses continually in your head like Ephesians 2:8-9 and Romans 4:5. Memorize them, find security in them, and do not let go of them. These are the foundation of your faith in Jesus. The foundation of the building must be kept intact for it to survive the demolition work and for the building to be built back up again.