Tag: deconstruction

prayers in cracks of the wailing wall, 2018

Kicking Bricks & Flipping Tables

Posted on by Hilarey

I’ve heard foundations cannot be changed. (I feel like this is said when people describe how America was started as a Christian nation and therefore it could never not be a Christian nation.) But sometimes houses are moved from their foundations and placed in other areas. You can also lift a house and pour a new foundation—it’s just very costly.

So before you need to relocate the whole structure, I think it’s a good policy to not assume that you have a totality of the gospel already inside of you. Sometimes I prefer to seek affirmation for things I already believe, but when I approach the Bible with curiosity rather than angrily seeking confirmation—I usually enjoy it more. (Although, looking for something you know can be healing when it refutes lies. And a little confirmation bias does give a jolt of dopamine.)

I’m not an architect or an engineer, but my simple understanding is that if there is a crack in your foundation, it doesn’t mean you should heap more weight on top. When you do that, and the earthquake comes, you’re more likely to lose your faith completely.

Although they have built thousands of years on top of the stones where Jesus walked.

prayers in cracks of the wailing wall, 2018
My trip to (and under) the wailing wall in 2018.

Be willing to walk around the house and kick the bricks, checking for cracks in your foundation. Because we repeat so many things that are not actually biblical.

Not a Lender Nor a Borrower Be

One thing I was told with such authority was, “the Bible says to never lend or borrow.” I keep digital notes when something comes up during my Bible reading. That way, I can see them wherever I go, and add to them whenever I have space to process. The words I jot down could be anything from beautiful, resonating, irritating, confusing… but I especially like to add things that contradict either my paradigm or something else I’ve read in the Bible. This is how I kick the bricks of my foundation.

The first time I read, “You will lend to many nations, but borrow from none” in Deuteronomy 28:12, I thought to myself, “this contradicts not a lender nor a borrow or be.” So I did a quick search: “What does the Bible have to say about lending?” (I love digital Bibles.)

It says to not be tight-fisted to the poor. And when (not if) you lend, do not charge interest. I should lend.

I can’t find it telling me not to borrow, either. It says “the borrower is a slave to the lender” in Proverbs. Therefore, I want to have prudence when I decide to borrow because I am giving over my freedom until the debt is paid.

Proverbs is a collection of truths perceived by a wise person, but I don’t ever want to take one verse from it and turn it into a non-negotiable mantra. Otherwise I would get whiplash when I read chapter 26 verses four and then five.

As it turns out, the scripture “not a lender nor a borrower be” is from Hamlet. You can watch the Skipper sing it on Gilligan’s Island here.

My girlfriend calls that “the pizza bible.” You just say things you want or believe with authority and call it scripture. The bible says to bring me a pizza.

But you can also eat from the pizza bible it by taking things out of context.

Happy Good Friday

The Jesus who resonates most with me right now is the one who flips tables at the beginning of Holy Week. Sometimes I need to pull back and ask if I’m really called to flip everything I see over on its side. But to me, the God who comes down and passionately removes the gatekeepers restricting access to him is a God who sees and understands.

Black and white thinking from English translations only (or even worse, fixating on a single version) and taking it out of context means you could take a verse like 1 Timothy 1:10 and…

if you read ESV, you would come to the conclusion that it’s only immoral for men to practice homosexuality.

if you read the KJV, you would understand that only menstealers are immoral—it is fine to kidnap women.

We lose so much in English translations because we have humankind or mankind written as “men.” It lands in our mind as “not women” because it isn’t built into English to see humans/genders in the word “man.”

When I read the New Testament in Spanish, it reads differently. Yesterday, I got to sit with someone who reads/studies it in Greek. And his take was fascinatingly different from my ESV.

Personal Application

So, kicking your bricks… After you check if it’s actually in the Bible… see if it aligns with the context of the message, then in context with the heart of God. If it doesn’t work with your understanding of the heart of God… write it down rather than throw the baby Jesus out with the bathwater.

The next step is to ask, what does this mean for me in 21st century America versus the time and people it was written for?

Because you could write Paul’s advice to Timothy, “take a little wine for your stomach” on a 3X5 card and tape it to your bathroom mirror. And the morning you have a nervous belly because you need to drive a bus full of teenagers up a mountain road, you decide to take the inerrant scripture literally, regardless of the context of who it was written for, assume it is all directly for you, pour a mug of wine, and get behind the wheel.

There needs to be room for the Holy Spirit to tell you if it applies.

The friend I visited with yesterday mentioned that it is a little narcissistic to take every jot and tittle written for the New Testament church as directly applying to me, in America, today.

I have to take this to heart. Because there was such an emphasis on “where does the Bible say that” in my youth, I remember looking down on women who wore braids. I mean, it literally says don’t braid your hair in the ESV. And I have always wanted to correctly handle the Word of God. It just turns out there is more nuance than looking up a verse.

So much pain happens when you listen to what other people tell you God has said—instead of picking up the Bible and finding out for yourself. Then judging it according to the whole heart of God using the heart, mind and soul he gave you.

Take Luck

Posted on by Hilarey

“Take Luck” was from a skit by stand-up comedian Brian Regan, where he talked about intending to say, “Take Care,” and then switching to “Good Luck,” halfway through. It’s a funny one.

I think of it when sending a meaningless salutation. To offer without really offering. Take some luck from somewhere, and have it. Keep it with you. I also think of his skit when I see generic signs that say something like, “have faith” or “be blessed!”

Have faith in what? Be blessed how? Take some luck with you—I think there’s a bowl on the counter.

James 2:16 says, “and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?” It’s like when you pass a homeless person on a frigid night, on your way back to your car, and you call out, “Stay warm!”

There is power in words and power in prayer, and it is significant when you speak a blessing over someone’s life. That’s different from when someone has a need, you see it, and you have a tangible item like a spare coat. Something to hold on to.

Substance

Have you ever experienced making up a story about someone in your head? You go into the creepy part of Wonderland (down a dark rabbit trail.) And then when you see the person, or talk to them, you know right away that none of it is true. Your theory had no substance. Nothing to hold on to.

All it took was a conversation to find out the truth.

This used to be the annoying thing about simple romances to me when I was a young girl… especially because I value (kind) directness. I could never get behind a heroine whose entire conflict was a misunderstanding or an unspoken clarification. If they would just have that conversation already, there would be no book.

I have another quote from Good Boundaries and Goodbyes by Lisa Terkeurst, since it’s what I’m reading right now, “Relationships often die not because of conversations that were had but rather conversations that were needed, but never had.”

It’s true, we can write out scenarios that seem like reality. And then a bit of truth, not even a deep dive, and we find out differently.

Making it up

We watched a few episodes of the Good Place and their funny world-building includes a heaven that “no one could imagine.” They have a picture in heaven’s office of a guy who got really stoned and said, “This is what I think heaven will totally be like.” He’s heralded as the guru who got the closest.

It’s meant to be hilarious, but many people treat things of God, and eternity this way.

Most people believe they are critical thinkers, not emotional. But faith without substance is stoned-luck. No matter how critically you look at the void, it’s still empty.

Scales and measuring cups

My friend mentioned something to me that has proved itself true again and again. She said she thought she was eating in her caloric budget until she started writing things down. I’ve seen it myself. Recently, I saw somebody order something in a restaurant that looked delicious. So I tried to copy it at home. I made a light shrimp and fettuccine salad. But when I added it to MyFitnessPal, it was 800 calories. The restaurant had served double. Not exactly a light lunch.

And even more than just logging what you’re eating, you can think that something looks like an appropriate portion—until you weigh it. It’s doubtful that the average eater actually knows what 25 grams of fiber looks like over the course of a day. Due to years of cooking, I can judge weight and volume close to accurate and often cook without measuring. But when it really matters, I still get out the scale.

So, upon closer inspection, you see details more accurately when you actually weigh yourself against the Bible.

And let’s be honest, another interesting correlation is that the days I don’t want to obey or know the scale… those are the days I don’t measure food. So there’s a submission/discipline factor of not wanting to know if I measure up. Sometimes I just want to eat like an asshole. This is likely a larger contributing factor (besides laziness or time management) for not looking in the Bible. We don’t want to see if we measure up.

But here’s the problem, someone who is a Christian, but doesn’t read the Bible, is really susceptible to the weird tangents of Christian religion. Taking someone else’s word for what the scriptures say inevitably lays the groundwork for future deconstruction. This is what children do: accept the world through the lens and experience of those over them. This is not what a maturing Christian does.

You don’t want to have a void or ungrounded faith that can’t weather storms. Take some luck, and keep it with you. Care for it.

So, you can be frustrated with what you think about God. You can be frustrated with what you think about the church. But if you’re not holding it up to a depth of study in the word, you are not frustrated with substance. You’re following a rabbit down a hole. If you look at the way the letters to the church explained the right way to live—and then you see how Christians are disobeying—that’s something to hold on to.

I used to get annoyed when I saw a verse partially quoted. (Romans 8:1a) But then I realized that the chapters and verses were added. So even memorizing a whole verse can miss the larger context. That isn’t even to mention re-wording and misquoting. I’ve seen people defend mis-worded scripture with tears. This happens when you “already know what it says” before you read it. But that’s another topic.

I love a quote I heard from Theologian Preston Sprinkle. He says, “Let the strength of your conviction reflect the depth of your study.” Pick the mountain you’ll die on.

You are doing yourself an extreme disservice if you hold your convictions tight in your head and heart, without opening the Bible to check their weight.

So the point is, get out the scales. Grab on to something solid. Read for yourself.

Dismantling Human Tradition

Posted on by Hilarey

When I was young, I told my mom a name I wanted to give to a future child. Her quick response was that if my future husband had ever known someone by that name—and didn’t like the person—he wouldn’t want the memory of them in his home.

The same name, the same word, can have different connotations.

The term “Deconstruction” has taken on a definition all its own in Christendom. It is basic etymology. As words popularize and morph meaning, they assume new preconceptions and sometimes baggage.

Maybe you know someone who deconstructed and ran screaming from the faith, destroying others. So, you hate the concept. It is scarier to watch someone else do it, but this is where westerners get to experience “Though none go with me, I still will follow.”

When God reveals a lie that I’ve believed, it’s usually painful. But it is an exhilarating process and increases my faith. The writers in my critique group who wrote for Love Inspired Suspense always incorporated a lie that their heroes and heroines believed: to be overcome before the end of the novel.

But what happens when it isn’t just a lie about your worthiness or purpose, but a lie about your faith? And what if it’s a dozen at once, more confusion than you can handle, so you are not sure if you can trust what is truth from your entire foundation?

I feel like continuing to build upon lies because you don’t want to lose your faith is more dangerous than realizing that you have something weak in the foundation and then inspecting or tearing it down.

A few years ago, some of my foundational bricks eroded.

An existential crisis of faith can become a spring cleaning if you don’t fear what you’ll find. Be more afraid of ignoring it. Deconstruction for me was merely inspecting which bricks were made of hay and stubble, fingering them out of the foundation, and replacing them with something worthy.

I guess that’s more like dismantling. When you want to keep all the good parts of a machine but pull every piece out and line them up to find the broken cog and replace it.

When terms take on baggage, we can try renaming them. But that’s just semantics. If everyone started using the new term, replacing deconstruction with dismantling or something else, it would just morph in definition and still offend some and not others.

Dismantling Human Tradition

For me, deconstruction was not questioning the Bible. But it has involved not fixating on single word inerrancy and literalism. Because it’s a simplistic translation that says Eve was created from Adam’s rib. Man doesn’t have one missing rib and, metaphorically, the word could mean side. As in, a side of man that is no longer in him is now embodied in woman.

But more than multiple translations of a single word—I’ve had to wrestle with the way the Bible was deciphered in our country and era. It was through the lens of human tradition that made me assume what certain things in the Bible meant.

As I’ve altered my view on eternal conscious torment I realized my belief can reinforce my understanding of scripture when I’m reading.

Some form of deconstruction has to happen to every believer. At least everyone who comes to faith as a child or is raised under someone else’s faith. That’s how to make what you’ve heard your own faith.

We also need to dissect things we’ve heard that were just a tangent of someone else’s faith journey. A situation where you never heard the resolution, only the plaguing question. “Why did he have to die?”

Or maybe we only heard the answer to something, but not the process. This is frequent in the New Testament. We’re often given a specific answer to a specific question in a context that is not explained, because everyone knew it. “Women cover your heads.”

Misunderstood

Premarital sex in the church comes with a lot of shame, so I remember someone quoting to me, “The marriage bed is sacred.” It was lovely… very redeeming… and good in the moment I first heard it. But it was also quoted to imply that “everything goes” in the marriage bed. If you’re married, it’s kosher…

Without the whole-Bible framework, this example of misquoting scripture can become license for anything. Because the verse is actually a command to, “Keep the marriage bed sacred.” Imagine my surprise when I found it written very different than free-license. Keep the marriage bed sacred is a lot more congruent with the whole of scripture which says God will judge fornicators and adulterers.

The Letter of the Law But Not the Heart

Scripture does not need to be misquoted to be taken out of the whole-heart of the gospel. If you read that someone cannot deny their spouse intimacy without also applying God’s design for equality, consent, and selfless love, it allows marital rape and oppression.

Or the popularly quoted OT scripture that a girl must marry her rapist. At the time, and still in some current cultures, a rape victim was utterly destroyed. She became ineligible for marriage, and since children were the only way to provide for her future, she would be completely destitute. So, giving her “raised status” as a wife, in a home, and then not being allowed to divorce her actually redeemed her living needs.

This is why I bristle when someone wants to look up a scripture to prove a point.

Be careful when you accept thoughts and statements that sound biblical. Be careful when you quote a portion of the text without the whole-heart, or use it as a weapon against yourself or others. You might lay a brick of stubble in someone’s foundation.

Also, be wary of taking your interpretation or personal directive as prescriptive law. Just because God revealed to you that you should not masturbate, it doesn’t mean you should tell the whole high school youth group that masturbation is sin. Rather, share how God can speak individually through the heart of scripture for a specific need in the moment.

Acts 18:24-26 says Apollos was mighty in scripture and knew many things but a husband and wife team, Priscilla and Aquila, took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

More Accurately

Some many people have used the verse “God hates divorce” as a weapon. God hates me, or God hates that a person got divorced. It’s quoted with disregard that God is speaking about hating the violence of divorce against the vulnerable, inside of a covenant which should protect them. Doesn’t it make more sense that he hated the blood on the garments of men who abused women by treating them like objects and divorcing them?

Yet, my grandma couldn’t teach Sunday school because she’d been divorced. That’s human tradition.

The Bible Project App has a great series right now about the Sermon on the Mount. You listen to a pleasant reading of scripture, a snippet of a discussion, and a short video commentary each week while working through the passage.

Week 20 speaks to divorce, and it helped me wrestle with some of the misquoted verses and lies I’ve always had. (Week 18 also validated why looking at someone with lust dehumanizes them.)

The Bible Project unpacks the specific question surrounding that cultural debate of divorce. It speaks to a situation which doesn’t align perfectly today, since men can’t cast aside their wives without income and protection because she ruins dinner. But when we take this reply from Jesus and repeat the Bible literally word for word, we think the only legit reason for divorce is infidelity.

Human tradition uses the Bible to justify social power. Dismantling and deconstruction can remove the barbs of weaponized, incomplete thoughts from scripture to see the larger context of God’s provision for humanity. Dismantling human tradition has been beautiful. I am meeting a good God.

Deconstruction isn’t just pulling the entire structure down because of tragedy or tough things you don’t understand. It’s testing all the bricks with fire. And even if most of them burn up—can’t God build from the ground anew? All we need is the cornerstone. Hold on to Christ and wrestle with everything else.

You don’t need a brick that says “7 day creation with dinosaurs.” You don’t need a brick that says “musical instruments and dim lighting followed by a 35 minute, three-point sermon.”

I mean… wasn’t the Jesus freak movement just removing the bricks that said, “men can’t have long hair” and, “you must wear shoes to church?”

Don’t fear the wilderness if your worthless structure is burning down. Let human traditions turn to ash, keep only the cornerstone.