The meaning vacuum
The transition from believing God is the source of your entire belief system to literally any other way to think about the “why” of your existence is one of the most difficult parts of deconstructing your faith. It’s the most difficult and most common What now? question of deconstruction. When you reexamine your faith, you disrupt the entire framework of your moral and spiritual existence. No big deal, right?
Obviously, it IS a big deal. It can leave you anywhere from seriously confused to totally depressed if you don’t follow through with the process of deconstructing.
Wait, hold on. I thought deconstruction was what got me into this mess to begin with? Don’t I need to reconstruct before things make sense?
No, and let me explain why.
your faith was deconstructed, but was it totaled?
We often think of deconstructing as a conscious process . . . and for much of my deconstruction, it definitely was. But most people who deconstruct never chose to begin that process. One image I like to use to describe deconstruction is the idea of disassembling an automobile, bringing the parts inside, and then reassembling the car in the living room. While that’s a decent way to understand what it means to deconstruct, it’s not a very accurate depiction of what it’s like to deconstruct. For most of us, deconstruction is nowhere near as calculated and methodical. It’s less like disassembling a vehicle and more like having your car breakdown and then staring at the dilapidated, steaming mess and trying to figure out what’s wrong with it.
Because our deconstruction processes tend to begin with one or more beliefs that become unbelievable, we naturally tend to focus on what we no longer believe. But, to use the car illustration again, if you take everything apart and find the transmission’s shot or the engine block’s cracked, that might be enough to send you looking for a whole new car. But that doesn’t mean none of the other parts are worth anything.
Deconstructing Christians often make the assumption that if the essence of their faith breaks down, every detail becomes worthless—possibly because we hear that taught with regularity within the church. “If the creation story isn’t true, the entire Bible loses all credibility.” “If Jesus isn’t God, then He was either insane or a liar.” “If there’s no God, then there’s nothing to stop us from committing whatever evil we choose.” The church very often teaches this all-or-nothing approach to truth and doctrine, but that’s a vital component for us to deconstruct (and dispose of). The question remains: before you go looking to reconstruct your entire value system, what can you salvage from the one you’ve been operating with?
remember the beliefs you brought to the table
So how do you differentiate between the beliefs you no longer hold and the values you don’t want to dismiss? To answer this question, I like to return to one of the observations that triggered my deconstruction to begin with: it really seemed like everyone was making the Bible say what they wanted it to say.
Westboro Baptist wanted the Bible to show no mercy to the sinners they most despised, so they focused on the verses that stressed God’s vengeance. Reformed theologians tend to value intelligence and dispassionate logical consistency, which often leads to a very high opinion of their systematic theologies and their ability to see past blatantly reductive emotional claims (which very often strike casual observers as common-sense principles of basic human decency). People who value compassion or relationships above material possessions tend to see those messages rise to the surface of their understanding of the Bible.
So when I deconstructed, I paid so much attention to the fact that everyone was interpreting the Bible according to what they wanted it to say, I failed to ask the question that would have unveiled a deeper level of truth:
What drives us to interpret the Bible in our own personalized ways? What, if not the Holy Spirit, guides us to draw our own unique conclusions about what God would say is important or superfluous, right or wrong? To make it personally effective for you, what led you to interpret the Bible the way you did? May I suggest an answer: you’re values.
your true faith was in kansas all along?
The Wizard of Oz metaphor is overdone, I know, but it’s used so often for a reason: it’s extremely relatable, isn’t it? Didn’t the beginning of your deconstruction feel a little like noticing the man behind the curtain? Even if you still believe in a god or even the God of the Bible, wasn’t there a moment when something or someone you had trusted to be divine turned out to be human, someone pretending to speak for a supernatural force much greater than themselves? When you realized you no longer believed, didn’t you feel at least a little manipulated? Didn’t you feel a bit like Dorothy, stumbling upon the truth and suddenly finding yourself completely stranded?
But there’s another scene (in the film version) that can be really helpful for anyone feeling spiritually or morally stranded. When Dorothy awakens in her home, safe and sound, removed from the fantastic yet frightening dream in which she had been struggling for so long, her dearest friends from the land of Oz were still with her. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion looked a lot different, but they were real and served as her guides and protectors before AND after the dream scenario.
Personally, I believe our values function in much the same way. We have formed them throughout our development as humans. They became a part of our religious affiliation, and they informed and shaped the way we applied our faith. But as individuals, we don’t always notice when our values are steering the wheel versus when an external force (such as a religion or church) is nudging us in a different direction. That is the challenge of deconstruction. We don’t need to create new values so much as sift through the values we’ve been using to see which ones are gold and which were just bricks painted yellow.
I recommend these two resources to help you find the values that are truly, deeply yours . . . the values that continue to hold strong even after the faith you used to know has shifted. The first is pretty simple, a list of values put together by Brené Brown. The challenge she puts forward is to isolate the two values most important to you. It can be pretty maddening to try to narrow down your values to such a short list, but the process is worth it if for no other reason than to remind yourself that you own your values.
Another resource you can try offers a more step-by-step approach through the process of identifying your strongest values and personality traits and positions them as strengths. It’s the Via Institute on Character Strengths Survey. This survey takes about 10 minutes. It does require registering with Via, but it is FREE. I highly recommend using both resources to help you see that you’re further along in the process of navigating your place in the universe than you might think.
This is the beginning of establishing your true faith.
Why is it faith? Because no one can tell you the answers. You can’t be 100% sure that you’re choosing the two values that are truly most important to you or that you’re answering the questions about your strengths and values absolutely correctly. But you CAN have faith that being true to who you are and what you’ve found to be important is a worthy goal that will help you move forward. And you can be faithful to your values and your identity. The real you has been inside you all along, and only you can choose what step to take next. But there are so many people and resources that are here to help . . . including yours truly.