This series is a bit more difficult for me to write than the others. Through the Bible is the backbone of this blog, the original conceit. The Bible vs Sunday School is a secondary series with entries written as I encounter passages that seem to conflict with what I was taught, and Pieces of Me is simply my story, my life, broken down into chapters.
This series is a general collection of my personal philosophy. I have no… over-arcing structure to follow, no inherent order of progression to follow. Often, I have no idea what I’m going to write about next.
This week, I want to write about a very hard truth: Sometimes something needs to broken for something better to immerge.
This is usually something we don’t recognize as a problem, otherwise we wouldn’t be holding onto it. Sometimes it’s just holding us back: a habit, a hobby, a relationship we’ve bound ourselves to while our energy and resources would be put to better use elsewhere. Sometimes it’s a lot more harmful than that, sometimes we hold onto something that is actively hurting us: a job we’re too afraid to quit without a safety net, an interest that has taken priority over the pursuit of God, an actually abusive relationship. Sometimes, sometimes, what needs to break is a belief, bias, tradition, our very worldview.
Sometimes we have assumed a perspective that obscures so much of the vista before that we have to start tearing down the walls in our way in order to see the whole picture.
This is what deconstruction is meant to be. Tearing down the preconceptions that define our traditions and digging out the foundation so we can rebuild something stronger, something better.
I have recently spoken to yet another individual that was so damaged by the church that they simply cannot bring themselves to return. Considering that the church is meant to be a place of healing, isn’t this heartbreaking? Yes, Jesus warned us that we will be rejected by the world, that the yoke is not easy, but this isn’t what he was talking about. He wasn’t talking about the broken being afraid of our judgment and rejection. He was talking about the proud deeming us fools, the rich rejecting our pursuit of charity, the powerful fearing submission to God.
If the very people Jesus sought out most frequently are running away from us, don’t you think there’s a problem?