The Sean McDowell Show - 9 Reasons People Deconstruct (and what to do about it)

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

What is deconstruction? Why are so many people deconstructing their faith? Well, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. In this interview, I talk with my co-author John Marriott about these questions and more! Make sure to subscribe and check out some of my other videos for more on apologetics, worldview, and other aspects of culture! READ: Set Adrift: Deconstructing What You Believe Without Sinking Your Faith, by Sean McDowell (https://a.co/d/7JwpQEl) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

What is deconstruction? I was in a completely Christian context when I was deconstructing. I didn't just deconstruct, I deconverted. Why are so many people deconstructing today? Well, our guest today is a friend of mine. From sunshiny Southern California is John Marriott. We co-wrote a book together called Set Adrift. The subtitle is Deconstructing What You Believe Without Seeking Your Faith.

There are different ways that people talk about it. When we're talking about deconstructing, what we're meaning is... John, essentially, this is the book that I wish somebody had given to me about 25 years ago when I was going through a period of questioning, deconstruction, trying to figure out what I believed and why I believed it. Let's start, though. You have a whole story behind this that you start the book with, but maybe define for us what you mean by deconstruction compared to some different ways that other people use it today. Yeah, thanks, Sean. Good to be with you, and thanks for having me on the show. I think when we talk about this, the most important thing that we can do is right at the beginning is define what we're using deconstruction to refer to,

because there are different ways that people talk about it, both within the church and without. When we're talking about deconstructing, what we're meaning is a Christian young person, or maybe not even a young person, just anyone who's gotten to the place where they look at their faith, they step out of it critically and look back on it and say you know i've been handed this version of christianity but i know that there are others out there uh why is it that i believe what i do and um are there other versions of christianity within the historic orthodox tradition maybe where i fit better and maybe where I align better with. And this came about by way of a discussion that I had with a student at Biola who, after class one day in a philosophy of aesthetics class, said, can I talk to you? And I said, sure. We went outside and we sat down and I thought we

were going to talk about the content of the course, which was about beauty and art. And she said, I'm deconstructing. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? And she wasn't questioning whether or not Jesus was the way, right? She wasn't deconverting. She was questioning what the way of Jesus is supposed to look like, because she had inherited a take or a version of an evangelical understanding of what it looks like to be a Christian from her family, from her church tradition, from her denominational tradition, and had been exposed to different people at Biola, different ways of thinking about things, ideas on the internet, and wanted to be able to rethink whether or not what she believed really was lining up with what she saw in the Bible.

So she was pulling it apart, analyzing it, and trying to put it back together in a way that she felt lined up best with the Bible. That's what we mean when we talk about deconstruction in the book. Now, we know that there are other ways of using the term, right? There's a really abstract philosophical Jacques Derrida meaning of the term, which we won't even really get into. Right. He's kind of like the fountainhead of where the term comes from. Then there is another segment out there, when I say out there I mean mostly online, where there will be people who will say, hey, I'm deconstructing. And it's not because I think I want to follow the way of Jesus more closely, but I'm not even sure whether I think the way of Jesus is worth following at all.

And I'm going to pull it apart and put it back together. But it's not going to be so that I can follow Jesus more closely, but it's going to be so that I can be more authentic in who I am. That's the kind of deconstruction that we're not a big fan of in the book, but we are a fan of people rethinking their faith well so that they can walk the way of Jesus in a more genuine and healthy way. So that's super helpful. And we're looking at nine reasons why people deconstruct in the way that you and I are using the term. But before we jump in, what we're not saying is everybody who's

rethinking and analyzing their beliefs has all nine of these present. It might be one, it might be two, it might be five, and people will deconstruct for different reasons, but these are some of the most common, just not excuses, but reasons that people will give that kind of motivate them to do so. And I also want to let our viewers know that you've written, I think, five other books on either deconversion and deconstruction and for about seven years have done a lot of the academic work behind this. So you have stories, but there's a lot of data behind this as well, which is one of the big reasons I wanted to write this with you. It's not just a little story here and there, there's data behind it. So let's jump

into these nine and just kind of unpack them together. And this first one, they're not really in any particular order, like one is more important than nine. But the first one is need for certainty. And John, I want you to unpack this, but I see this a lot all the time, whether it's people who have deconstructed to the point of deconversion, some people who have deconstructed to the point of a kind of progressive Christianity that concerns me, and I would argue is outside the fold. But also many people are just rethinking their beliefs. And somehow we're given the impression that to know anything about God is to have certainty. So the idea that it's okay to believe and have doubt is a foreign one for

this person. So in your experience in a dad, how does the need for certainty play into people deconstructing their beliefs? Yeah, I think that it plays a significant role. Just speaking from my own experience, I grew up and was filled with a lot of questions, a lot of doubts, mostly that were just generated from my own insecurities, and when I would come across somebody who had a different view or a different way of thinking, or maybe the Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door and told me what they believed, I would really wrestle with that, and I was desperately seeking a sense of certainty so I could know that I know that I know whatever it is that I know. And what I think is really unfortunate about that is not only is it an unbiblical approach, but it's just really an impossible approach to ever satisfy. It's a standard that's so high that if you think about it for very long, you'll realize

that there's almost nothing that you can have philosophical certainty about. You can have psychological certainty, by which I mean you're really confident that it's true. But outside of that, you know, Hollywood does a great job of demonstrating that philosophical certainty is something that will always elude us, whether it's The Matrix or it's The Truman Show or it's Inception or Shutter Island. All of these movies point out that philosophical certainty is basically an illusion. There's always a possibility that you're wrong in some way. But if that's what you're seeking and that's what you're searching for before you're

willing to make a commitment or before you're willing to even take a step of faith, then it's something that we'll never find. And when you grow up in a Christian environment and you're labeled a believer, it's easy to see how someone who is really confident is a real believer. And if you're really certain, then you're a champion believer and your faith must be unshakable.

And that's the ideal that that we maybe sometimes hold up is that faith and belief and being a believer is being someone who's absolutely certain and never has any doubts but I think it's almost impossible for someone to be maybe of a reflective nature to live in a culture where where Christianity isn't necessarily the dominant view circle, maybe we're moving into like a post-Christian society, and not have some doubts and wonder whether or not what it is that you believe is true. And I think that that starts a lot of folks down the road of,

you know, how do I know what I believe? And what if I'm wrong? And so now I'm going to take it apart. I've been handed it and I accepted it, but now I'm not so sure. And so let's look at it in pieces. So I think, yes, a search for certainty is a catalyst for lots of folks. Now, I know a lot of people watching this are going, we're working through nine reasons people deconstruct. I just want some help with my son or my daughter, my friend. And what I would say to people listening is each one of these, what we can do to help is the reverse.

So what we've unhelpfully done in the church is we've equated knowledge and faith in God with certainty. And so people have some doubt and they start to think, well, maybe I don't have faith. Maybe I don't have knowledge because faith is viewed as the opposite of knowledge. And, you know, certainty is the opposite of, of really just having faith in God. Well, that's not the case. And so as you listen to each one of these, if we want to know how to help people deconstruct well, in a sense, do the opposite. So in this case, that would be saying we can know things without certainty, giving space for doubt, allowing people

to have questions. Inviting questions would be the way to counter this. One of the things I do, John, is all the time when I'm talking with students, and I have a lot of Biola students come in with questions almost every semester. There's a few that are just rethinking and wrestling with their faith. And I had a girl specifically, she said something effective, well, I just don't know for sure. I want to hear things like for sure and certainty. I'm listening for that. And I'll often just say, what makes you think you have to know this for sure to know it with confidence?

Right. So that's one of the things that I listen to, to try to help relieve people. And what I found is when people realize, oh, I don't have to be certain. It's like a breath of fresh air that says, I can just be honest. And that's really what God wants. Now we're going to move to number two, but anything else on certainty you want to throw in there before we- Yeah, really quickly.

I think it's also really important to know that very few of us live between either pure belief and pure unbelief. There's always usually a mixture and we're kind of always on a bit of a spectrum, right? So I think for someone to have a rationally justified belief, they just need to be inclined to think that Christianity is true. You don't have to be absolutely certain. You can be confident. You can be persuaded. You can be of the opinion. You can be inclined to think that it's true. you can have no opinion whatsoever, and then once you drop below that, inclined not to think that it's true, persuaded that it's not true, of the opinion it's not true, okay at that point you are on the unbelief side of the

spectrum. But if you're over the sort of neutral position where you say yes I'm inclined to think that it's true. That's a form of belief. That's a weak form of belief, but it's belief nonetheless. And to be inclined to think something is true, you just need to think that the evidence for it is more likely than not. So I think that it's fair to say to someone who might be wrestling with their belief is, you know, are you inclined to think that Christianity is true? Do you lean that way? Yes. Why? Because I think that it's more likely true than not that the evidence points that way than to say, then all right, then you're on the belief side. And now you can live out a faith and put it into practice and put it into action. And in doing so, that's more likely

where your confidence will grow as opposed to maybe just reading more intellectual approaches to try and shoring up the faith. Great advice. Let's move to number two. Now, this one is big because Lee, not Lee, Os Guinness would say that this is the biggest objection skeptics have to the faith, but also really causes a lot of believers to kind of question, reconsider their own faith, is hypocrisy. What role do you see that playing in people deconstructing? Very similar to the same role that it plays when people leave the faith, right? So most of the time when people leave the faith, it's because of intellectual reasons, or at least that's on the surface. But often, maybe the secondary reason would be, yeah, that there's an experience that they've had

within the church with somebody who might be in a position of leadership who has really let them down. Maybe it's a significant moral failure, or maybe it's a financial failure, or some kind of an abusive situation. And that causes people to think, well, wait a minute, if Christianity is true, it should produce much better people than this. And here's someone I really looked to as an example. And it turns out that they're kind of a fraud. And so that leads me to think that maybe it's not true. Or in the case of deconstruction, this was the person who I kind of learned the faith at their feet. They were the mentor that I had or someone who discipled me.

They were the director of the Bible camp or my youth leader or my pastor. And it doesn't seem like it really, whatever this version is, really wasn't working for them. And so now I'm going to really have to rethink whether or not I'm going to, you know, continue on in this vein, or I need to start really looking at some other form of Christianity, because I think Jesus really is the way, but man, the one that I've been in doesn't really seem to be working. And it seems to produce a lot of failures. Seems to me each of these that we're looking at, whether it's need for certainty or hypocrisy, can cause somebody to say, I still want to follow Jesus and deconstruct in the sense of building up their faith or chuck the faith. These can really be impetuses to both of these. So it's important for people to see that, which is why when somebody says, I have questions,

I have doubts, I'm deconstructing, the first question is, what do you mean by that? Where are you at with your faith? And then deal with it appropriately. So I agree with you. Hypocrisy is huge, especially for those who have been spiritual fathers and mothers and influencers for us. Third one is also huge, is the idea of sin. How big is this?

Either seeing sin in other people's lives or sin in somebody else's life and causing them to deconstruct. You know, I think that maybe where it's really the most significant maybe sin in in our own life where there's something that maybe we want to continue doing maybe it's something that we want to have a some freedom or maybe our conscience is bound because we're engaging in a practice or doing something that traditionally we've understood the bible saying is wrong but you know if i really reevaluate what i'm thinking and i maybe can go back to Scripture and find another interpretation of that passage, which will free me up to continue engaging in a practice that I used to understand as being outside of the moral boundaries of what God approves of or sin. But now I look at it and say, hey, I found a theologian that will justify and tell me I can do whatever it is that I want to do. So I think sin mostly comes into play

in our own lives when we want to do something that we used to believe we shouldn't be able to do. Probably sin in somebody else's life would be more of hypocrisy, whereas sin in our own life can lead us away from wanting to believe certain things and the cost of what it is to be a believer. I've gotten some criticism from non-believers and saying, oh, Christians say it's always sin is the issue. I say, I think it's a mistake to say that's always the root of it. There's other relational and emotional and spiritual issues at play.

But I also think it's a mistake to say that sin can't play a role and can't play a huge role. Bottom line is Proverbs 25 talks about 20 verse 5. It says the purposes of a man's heart or a person's heart is deep, and a wise person kind of draws it out. With these nine different reasons people deconstruct, although a few may be at play, I want to listen and through wisdom kind of draw out what's the heart of the issue. And many times, like you said, it's sin. Yeah, and I want to just concur with what you've said. The most offensive thing that I hear from people who have left the faith that I've talked to is when someone does say to them well the reason

that you have left the faith is because you just want to sin and it's always like some sort of sexual sin that they want to engage in and I think that the heart is always involved all the time. I think our heart is always, even as Christians, prone towards our own autonomy and doing what we want to do. I think that our heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and we often don't know it. And as the Spirit of God works in our life and changes us, of course, we would hope that we would grow in that area. But I would never want to say to somebody who has left the faith or someone who is going through this deconstructive reanalysis of some of the things they believe, I would never want to say, it's because you want to sin. But

like you said, I would also not want to rule it out. And it would be foolish, I think, for the person going through the process to say, nah, this isn't involved whatsoever. This is purely an academic pursuit that I'm on. And the hard part is if the Bible's right about our inherent sinfulness, we can fool ourselves about our purposes and our motivations. And that's where it gets tricky. So just because somebody's offended that we suggested it was sin doesn't mean that it wasn't. But I think you're right that as Christians, we sometimes default to that a little bit more quickly and don't hear people out what they're really wrestling with. That's unfortunate as well.

And certainly you and I are capable of doing the exact same thing, right? We come to the Bible and find things there that we may not like. It goes against our grain. And we might say, well, I don't really think it means that. And someone else might be saying, yeah, but you know what? I kind of think that you're coming to this conclusion more because you want to, more than because you're dealing honestly with the text, right? I mean, I see this in, I don't want to throw my kids under the bus, but if you're being honest with the text, right? I mean I see this in I don't want to throw my kids under the bus But if you're a parent, you know what we're talking about like, you know, tell it say to your children Hey, why did you do that? You did this because and my kids will say I didn't do it because of that

So I know exact that is exactly why you were doing what you did and they'll say no honestly a hundred percent I wasn't doing it that for that reason, but I can see what's going on and they can't. So I think that, you know, I think it's a big disclaimer that we're trying to make here in saying, Hey, this is something we all need to be on guard for. Fair enough. Let's move to number four. And as apologists, this is one we think about and talk about a lot is unanswered questions. Give your thoughts on that. really kind of bubble up from not being able to cross off some T's, dot some I's to get some answers to some questions. And these have been questions he's had for a really long, long time. Sometimes I think that unanswered questions are the result of almost of a stage of life. And if you can push through and endure through a stage

of life you get to a place a little bit as you get a little bit older and you can look back on some of those same questions and you can say you know that really bothered me back then it doesn't seem to bother me as much now so there is it is helpful I think to know that there's a span of time probably late teens mid 20s early 30s when when people will start to really peak and go through this questioning period where they'll have lots of unanswered questions. I think it's really helpful, though, to remember in the midst of that

is that you don't have to have all of your questions answered to make a commitment that the Bible's looking for us to make. I think it's very important to have questions answered and everyone has certain questions that they need some kind of an answer for. We don't want to have a faith that's based completely in midair. There needs to be good reasons and sound reasons why a person believes what they believe, especially if they're going to live it out and be really committed to it. But if we wait until we finally get all of the answers we'll never commit to anything right if we're not we don't we wait until we're absolutely certain and

have all the right answers about if this is the right person for us to marry we'll never ever get married I think that kind of thought process can spur deconstruction because at some point you just say i can't continue to live this out i really need to stop and investigate and ask all these questions that i have about this faith that's been handed to me so i'm going to start pulling it apart i'm going to start laying all the pieces on a table and i'm going to go through and i'm going to ask right what do i believe about this doctrine? What do I believe about that? And so I think that that is a big catalyst in why people begin this process of rethinking what they believe. Now, you and I both have philosophical training, so we nuance stuff. I think it's a

mistake to not take questions people have seriously. I think it's also a mistake to not realize that oftentimes questions are motivated by something deeper, and it might be a relational need that somebody has. If I answer this question differently than you, will you still love me? Will you still care for me? Could be a moral issue like we talked about earlier. I do think my antenna is up sometimes is it sounds a lot more sophisticated to say, well, I'm rethinking my faith because of intellectual reasons than some of the other reasons we're talking about here. I think it sounds more sophisticated. So that's on my radar, but I never, ever want to dismiss a genuine question like somebody says or has.

That's really what my life is committed to. But I think you're absolutely right. Need for certainty, hypocrisy, sin, and unanswered questions can spur a process of deconstruction. Number five is bad theology. Now, I want you to jump in here. But one of the things that I find is when I'm talking with people rethinking and evaluating their faith, again, or those who have left it, if I probe deeply enough, I almost always find some bad theology about the character of God, about the

nature of salvation, about the scriptures. This is a very, very core one. So if somebody leaves the faith because of this, it's profoundly unfortunate because in many ways they haven't left the real faith. I've seen that in many cases. If somebody's deconstructing and reevaluating, then this is good because we can say, look, you've adopted this maybe from your church, from your friends, misreading scripture. Here's a more accurate view. Let's build on that. It can be a positive thing. But talk to us a little bit about how you see bad theology leading to deconstruction. Yeah. In the same way that it leads to dec to deconversion except they end up maybe in two different places so in the book we make the argument that deconstruction can be both good and bad

it can be built it can be good because if you really are in and we use the word toxic that word is used a lot of different ways today and it's a popular buzzword but it's a helpful word i think because it means poisonous if you're in a version of christianity that has lots of extra biblical teaching it's very narrow and strict in ways that it shouldn't be if it's very legalistic and and it really is more of a burden than uh the way Jesus where he says, you know, that he's come to set people free and that he's going to give them a life that's more abundant. Abundant needs to be probably defined, but for this, for now, we'll just say Jesus promises an abundant life. He says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And when you talk to people who have left the faith almost uniformly, like you could have left you talk to people who have left the faith almost uniformly

like you could have left for values you could have left for intellectual reasons or for disappointment with god or hurts from people in the church but the one thing that almost everyone says is that they are freer that they feel more liberated and that they're happier on the other side of their deconversion which tells you something about where they came from. And the same thing. So for those people, unfortunately, they went maybe through the deconstruction process really, maybe some of them really quickly. I'm sure there probably are some people

who might be watching who said, no, I went through it. It took me a long time. But instead of finding maybe a better version, a version that allowed them to see Jesus in a way that was maybe who we really think that he is, it was like an either-or. It was this is Christianity, and I either accept it or I just leave it and walk away. And we're hoping that people will say, hey, this is

I was given as Christianity, but the alternative choice isn't to walk away. It's to kind of pull apart those things that were really maybe unbiblical, extra biblical in a way that you don't need to adopt, and to find really the heart of who Jesus is. Now, I want to say that this is also something that people who have left the faith, this is probably number two offense, is when Christians say, well, the version of Christianity that you had wasn't the real version, and if you would have just found the real version, you wouldn't have left. And so there will be some people who will say, no, no, no, no, that's just, that's not really true. It doesn't matter what version it is. There's just some significant problems. And so that's probably more for the apologist

to address those kinds of questions. I think there's a difference between recognizing bad theology and saying, if you just had good theology, you would have stayed. Those are different points. I think there's some people, no matter just had good theology, you would have stayed. Those are different points. I think there's some people, no matter what the theology was, they were leaving for different reasons. Yes. But I found for those who have left and deconverted to just simply say, tell me about the gospel you used to believe in. Tell me about the character of God you used to believe in. For those who are rethinking their faith and deconstructing, I just want to probe down and say, okay, what are the beliefs that you have a hard time embracing now and why?

What are the beliefs you are rethinking and why? And both of those focus on the importance of good theology and getting your theology from scripture. Let's move to number six. This is a big one. Now, I recently was reading the book, The Great Dechurching by two pastors and by Ryan Burge has some thoughts in there as well. And one thing to point is that people who have dechurched have not all deconverted, interestingly enough. There's a lot of people who stopped going to church who are still evangelical in their beliefs. There's still people who are going to church who are still evangelical in their beliefs. There's still people who are Christian in their beliefs, not evangelical, but just don't go to church. And then there's some who have chucked their faith.

A lot of people fall out of church simply because they move, they get busy, life happens. They're just kind of casual, not casualties. They were casual Christians and they just slowly faded away. For those who are a lot, many who are ex-evangelicals, who are casualties, you find church hurt and spiritual abuse there common. Very much so. What role, very much regularly, what role does spiritual abuse play in people deconstructing their faith as you've seen it? Well, you know, I think maybe a good example would be, and I hate having to bring up names,

but the fallout from the Mars Hill incident with Mark Driscoll, I think really caused a lot of people who grew up and were discipled and had kind of bought into his preaching and his particular perspective his theology i think it caused a lot of them to step back and say is this really what like is this christianity is this what the bible teaches is this how i should be living is this the the understanding and when when we talk about the version of Christianity, we're not saying that there's multiple versions and you can just choose whichever one you want, right? We're saying that there is truth out there. Our job is to try and go to the Bible and understand it as best as we can and then live that out. But there are different people who have done that,

different traditions, different denominations, throughout the history of the church, there's lots of different ways that people have done that. And what happened at Mars Hill was one of those ways imploded and caused a lot of people who had felt like they had been hurt and abused to rethink the very particular sort of brand of Christianity that Mars Hill stood for. And I think that that happens a lot when it comes to deconversion as well, maybe even more so when

people are really hurt and really wounded, they start to think maybe this isn't true at all, because if it was, why would these people have done some of these really unfortunate and terrible things? And so they leave the faith, or in the case of deconstruction, they rethink it because they think at the core that Jesus is really who he claimed to be, and they really want to follow him, but now they're kind of lost in a fog of everything I thought that I knew is now up in the air because of this experience that I've had with these people who were in church leadership. And now I've got to really rethink who is Jesus and what does he look like? I mean, yeah, I'll just leave it at that.

No, that's great. I think some of these high-profile stories cause people to deconstruct and rethink their faith. I think as we probe down into a lot of my conversations, there's also a lot of personal experiences people have where there's just church hurt and their spiritual abuse that they maybe haven't shared with a lot of people, but hurts them and disillusions them and starts to make you wonder, what does it really mean to follow Jesus? So I think there's a combination of big stories that are out there, but also very personal ones to people when they're deconstructing. Almost every example I've had, again, whether somebody deconverts or stays within the faith, there's hurt, there's disillusionment, there's brokenness, and there's pain that often motivates this. All right, three more. Number seven, never saved. Tell us about that. Now, if somebody's never saved and they say they want to follow Jesus and they're deconstructing, they were never really in the faith. But as far as they're aware, maybe for the first time,

they're starting to realize, I'm not rejecting this this i thought i was following jesus so it's really the first time that they're in the faith and maybe they're just realizing that so how would you frame this one you know um i i've said before i don't know if it was on on your channel or not but it sometimes seems to me like uh kids who grow up in a christian home get saved at twice, and many of them three times, you know, by the time they're in their mid-20s. And I say that, of course, tongue-in-cheek, theologically, you don't get saved three times. But what I mean by that is, I'll just give you my experience. I grew up in a home, you know, my parents were Christians. I remember vividly about five or six years old praying with my mom in the living room of our home to become a follower of Jesus. My sins

forgiven and believe in Jesus. And so I grew up with a consciousness of God and who Jesus was. Around 14 years old, I went to a Bible camp and I heard that God didn't have any grandchildren and you can't get past on your parents' faith and you need to make your faith your own and I rededicated my life to Jesus. I didn't get saved but I did the rededication. Many of you who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, rededication was a really big deal. So I rededicated my life and then it it was my own, right? But when I got to around like 22, 23, 24 at the end of Bible college, I said to myself, how do I even know this is true? Like I've been dedicated, I dedicated myself to following Jesus

before I ever thought about whether or not it was true. And I gave Jesus my life and I made him my North Star and I wanted to be his disciple and I went off and I studied the Bible but now I'm wondering you know why did I do that and is there good reasons why I did that and and then the sort of that process of now investigating and thinking and almost on the back end kind of reverse engineering kind of a foundation for on at least on an evidentiary intellectual foundation for for um what i believed and so i was saved through all of that i believe i don't think i became a christian in my in my 20s but i had to go through that process of in a way deconstructing you know like why do i believe this? What are the reasons behind it? And then

on the backside of that, even asking, okay, I was handed this faith that I grew up in, and that I lived with my whole life and had all these different views on the end times and women's roles and order of salvation and, you know, young earth, old earth. And then I had to start thinking through that again, as a person who was, I don't know, intellectually responsible for my own views before God. So I think that that's kind of the case with a lot of people who, it's not that they were never saved, but it's kind of how I think you described them there at the beginning of the question. You know, I do think about that sometimes, because I think I genuinely had an experience of grace in college. Now, before then, I would have said that

I was a Christian. Was I saved or not? I mean, only God knows that. But when you said people have three salvations, I probably had three a year, John. Camp, retreats, whatever it was. I had so many, but you're right in the way that you framed that. Now we have two left. In some ways, we could have started with these. These are two of the ones we really unpack in our book that I think are two of the more timely ones today. There's always been hypocrisy. There's always been things like a need for certainty. There's always been sin. But these last two are kind of particular cultural kind of pressures that I think are one of the reasons why we have this phenomenon of deconstruction taking place today. And this is what we call a need for the authentic who I am.

Explain that one for us. Right. So growing up in the 80s and the 90s, and I think this applies to just about everybody before that, we were all handed from our parents or from someone Christianity. Like, become a Christian, and here's what Christianity is. It was always a version, right? It was always an interpretation. But at least what did we know? We didn't know any better. So we said said okay I had to take it or I don't

I believe it or I reject it but today the the impulse that I think has been instilled in young people is not the option is take it or leave it the option is well how about I'll take it from you, I'll take it apart, I'll lay it all out, I'll look at the pieces that align with who I am and who my values are, and then I will reconstruct and rebuild a faith that is authentically representative of who I am. And that's because there's been a shift that's taken place between when you and I were growing up and today, we were kind of on the end of it, where we typically grew up with a belief that there was

an objective nature to reality, a structure to reality, that there really was objective truth that was out there. Our job was to discover it and then align ourselves with it, right? To conform ourselves to the truth. But today, in what's sometimes called the age of authenticity, what underlies that is the belief that there is no way the world is. There are no true big stories out there. Everyone just has competing stories. They're all social constructs or collective hunches, and it is almost immoral, if that is the case, for a person to model or conform their own particular desires and interests and values to some social construct that tells them how to behave or tells them what is good or what is a male or what is a female or what their identity is if there is no objective

nature or structure to reality metaphysically like what is the essence of good and then what I'm told is reality it's just a group of people's agreement on it why should I have to conform myself to that? In fact, it would be wrong for me to do that. I'm not obligated to aligning myself with some social construct. All I have is the obligation to be who I really am. And who I really am is defined by my feelings, my emotions, sort of my psychological makeup. What's outside of me doesn't define any of that. I should be free to be who I am and who I want to be. And that's radically different than the world that we grew up in. And this is the script

that every young person is being handed and told to live according to today. I mean, Burger King tells you, you know, BK, have it your way. You rule. Moana, Turning Red, the High School Musical, all of them are about a hero's journey that is not overcoming something out there that is holding back a group of people from achieving and living the good life. And the hero goes and sacrifices themselves in order to help the community. It's now what is out there, the community is suppressing who an

individual really is inside. And the hero is themselves overcoming the expectations of others to be who they really are. Right? So young people live in this age of authenticity and they're continually told that they need to be who they are, live according to their views and their values, which makes deconstruction almost a knee-jerk impulse reaction that young people, whether they even realize they're doing it or not, are being squeezed into this mold and do it in the same way that birds have the impulse and the instinct to fly south in the wintertime, whether they realize it or not. And so the need for authenticity is a huge motivator in deconstructing and reconstructing a faith. You can almost see this in the shift from Thor 1, classic story of the hero,

to Thor 4, go find yourself, express yourself. You do you, live your truth. Now you used a word like social imaginary. It's not like this generation of people is being explicitly told to do this. It's more the air that we breathe, kind of the water that we swim in. And the term social imaginary kind of operates underneath the surface. And we're not directly aware of it unless somebody's super observant. It just feels like an impulse that

we're all supposed to do. I am supposed to be me. I am supposed to live this out and I'm not authentic if I don't. And we see it all over social media. It's all over advertising. It's on our films. And so there's a generation of people inside the church and outside the church who feel like I can't just accept this truth that is handed to me and follow it. That's inauthentic. I'm just falling into somebody else's mold. It's my job to discover and then live out my own truth. And then everybody is supposed to affirm this. Yes. That underlying feeling can either cause somebody to say, I'm not going to be bound by the Jesus tradition at all.

I'm going to leave this and go find my own, or I'm going to rethink the Jesus tradition and stay within it, but on my own terms. And that's the concerning part, right? Look, for our viewers, we're pro-rethinking the faith, but the question is rethinking it and rebuilding it and putting it back together according to what? Because you're always going to be building it according to something. We're very concerned that it is going to be rebuilt according to one's own personal values, feelings, emotions, and that will be the criteria by which the reconstruction is done. And when that happens, then you don't really get Christianity

in any historic or Orthodox sense. What you end up getting is just an expression of modern moral sensibilities that doesn't reflect very much of historic Christianity at all. We want to say that if you're going to really rethink your faith, you need a criterion or a blueprint to rebuild it according to, make that the authority of Scripture. Now, of course, you have to interpret Scripture, and you're going to do that with all kinds of influences,

but to the best of our ability, as much as we possibly can, trying to, before God, being as sincere as possible to understand what his word says, conform ourselves to that rather than making Christianity conform to whatever feels authentic to us. I actually think this might be the greatest contribution of our book. And I got to give you full credit, you wrote this section, is that when somebody is deconstructing their faith, what a lot of times we don't realize is the reasons and motivations behind why we are deconstructing our faith. And because the social imaginary, again, is the water we swim in, the air we breathe, a lot of young people don't even realize that that's what's motivating them.

And in part, what we do is say, if you'll take a step back, have you thought about where this idea comes from? Why do you feel this motivation? Is that a good motivation? Is that a biblical motivation? So in many ways, we're not coming along people in this book saying you should believe that and you should believe this. This is a book we're coming along kind of as a guide with somebody and saying, okay,

is this a wise thought? Where does this come from? How do you navigate this? And for some people, that makes them very nervous. But I think for the honest seeker of truth, this is what I wish I had 25 years ago. I had people in my life that guided me this way, John, and I know you did too, who had asked me questions, helped me rethink kind of this journey that I was on and helped me align ultimately with scripture, but separated what it means to be this

authentic self that's pushed by our culture that might be driving this deconstruction process, that in itself can be one of these moments for young people to go, oh my goodness, I didn't even think about that. And it was just headed down this journey without giving it a second thought. Maybe I need to go back and relook at what is truth

and what did the scriptures say about this? So I think that's one of the biggest contributions that our book makes. One more on why people deconstruct and its culture now how is this different from the need for authentic Who I am because that is also a part of culture what would be certain things in culture that might motivate somebody to deconstruct their beliefs I tend to think that when it comes to many of the beliefs that we hold intellectually, that what is at the root of them is kind of maybe a moral position that we might have or a feeling, a moral intuition about something,

especially if it's a moral issue, maybe kind of a religious, political issue, any of those issues that really touch the deep core parts of who we are. If you were to ask me who the greatest soccer player in the history of Bulgaria is, I have no idea. You could lay out two objective cases about, you know, between two competing soccer players, and I would be able to make a judgment, and there would be nothing involved that would ever impact me, affect me, change my life. I have no skin in the game. I know nothing about these things. So I'm not really influenced on a personal level by this. But I think that many of the, you know, the things that relate to faith issues and being a follower of Jesus really do relate

to who we are at our very core. They touch on all the existential and moral issues of life. And I think that almost all of those are really influenced and driven by what we feel at a gut level. We kind of draw conclusions really quickly about certain things and then reuse our reason afterwards to come along and justify them. Now, that might not be the best way of doing it. And maybe we can try and put the brakes on that at some time and then become a little bit more analytical. But that's probably the way that the decision process goes oftentimes. And I think what influences and causes us to feel at the gut level, which eventually influences what we think, is what's

out in the culture, right? So the culture, what is out there, influences what we feel in here, and what we feel in here causes us to think what we think and believe what we believe up here on many issues, not all, not all. And that doesn't mean that we can't have intellectual discussions and try and persuade people's minds by using evidence and argument. So if the culture is a culture that's always reaffirming and is a culture is a structure that reaffirms Christian belief, it's easy to be a Christian, right? It's easy to be a Christian in the 1500s because everything in society is undergirded by religious belief. Harder to be a Christian in the 21st century because not only is society doesn't always reinforce it,

but now that there's a lot of challenges to being a Christian, belief in God, belief in the Bible. And I think the same thing happens in our culture when it comes to deconstruction, right? So if the most important thing that a person can do is be their authentic self, then the values that are the most important for us as a people to have is allowing people freedom of choice, allowing and being tolerant of those choices. Tolerance almost being defined as celebration or affirming or being an ally of. And the vices in culture are being intolerant, which means the opposite of being an ally or celebrating, even just speaking out or having thoughts that are opposed to what an individual person might want to do, or limiting anyone's freedom to do

and be who they are and what they want to be. Now, unfortunately, this issue seems to be, I really wish this wasn't the issue I guess that's what I'm going to say but I think if we were to pinpoint the cultural issue that causes most especially young people Gen Z some Millennials to really start to deconstruct it's because they feel deeply that that there is a freedom that people should have that there is a freedom that people should have, that there is a tolerance, that we shouldn't be able to say something is wrong. And when the church comes along with a particular sexual ethic that says marriage is between one man and one woman for life,

and that's the only place where sexual fulfillment or expression can legitimately be exercised, in our culture, for young Christian people, it's very difficult. It's very difficult for me. I feel sort of bigoted right now, even saying that, because I'm squeezed into the mold of our world, because I, at some level, have imbibed the ideas that people should have freedom and that if you say something against a particular identity or way of life, then you're a hater. And I think that one issue, the issue of sexuality, because of the culture squeezing us into its mold, causing us to think certain ways,

generates a lot of momentum for young people to really say, is there a way I can be a Christian and at the same time affirm what's being said in my culture? And I think this goes one of two directions. Either somebody embraces a larger cultural narrative and rejects the biblical understanding of sexuality, or they begin to probe more deeply and understand what is God's design for sex, why is that actually good? And why does real freedom come from following God's design for sexuality? So in many ways, I think you're right. This is the issue that comes up all the time.

And I think so many people are deconstructing to the point of deconversion because we haven't taught what God's good design is. We haven't taught so many of these things. And this is laying bare our failure to really model and teach good theology in the church. Now let's walk through these nine really quickly. And I'm going to say what they are, give my quick response to it. And at the end, maybe sum up what you think. It doesn't have to be all nine. Just the best way we can respond to somebody like that girl. I think it was a young girl who said to you, Professor Marriott, I'm deconstructing. So if we say the need for certainty, one of the things we need to do better in the church is show that faith does not equal certainty.

Knowledge does not equal knowing for sure. giving space to doubt and question and show, like you said, I believe this is true even amidst questions. Second, when it comes to hypocrisy, showed that this actually fits within the Christian worldview. If we all have a sinful nature, we're going to fall short. And I think help people realize that the greatest critic of hypocrisy was the very person of Jesus who called out hypocrisy wherever he saw it. A sin in many ways. I can't stop somebody from sinning. I've had many conversations with young people where I've realized that's the issue. I bring it to the forefront and just say, it sounds like your issue is one of pride or lust, that's keeping you from God.

Let's talk about what that means moving forward. Four unanswered questions. Let's provide answers to questions. Five bad theology. If we realize that's what's going on, let's point back to scripture and show us the importance of teaching good theology. Spiritual abuse, a lot of this one is just healing for people and recognizing the deep hurt that is there. Never saved, bringing to the surface what does it actually mean to be saved and to know Jesus and to experience his grace. Need for the authentic who I am, helping people separate where this impulse comes from, from what it really means to be human and to be an authentic self. And last one, we talked about culturally, maybe let's separate some ideas that come from the culture from those that really come from scripture. Now

that's nine points. Nobody's going to remember all nine of those, but if I was going to sum it up, when somebody comes to me and says, Sean, I feel like I'm deconstructing, here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say, tell me what you mean by deconstructing. Tell me when this started. And I'm going to listen. I'm going to lean in. I'm not going to freak out. I'm going to give them space. I'm going to thank them for inviting me into this journey and try to look at this as a longer term project rather than fixing it right on the spot. And as best I can get to the root of the issue again, Proverbs 20 says, you know, the purposes and a person's heart are deep and a person of wisdom draws it out. I want to get to the heart of it and then do my best to address and help this young person stay within the faith and come out with a more biblical, solid, lasting faith, God willing. As a whole, what is your posture when that student comes to you? And I know you've had a lot of these conversations, John, when they say, I'm deconstructing my faith.

Very, very similar to yours. I definitely want to not panic. I want to listen. I want to ask questions, questions that will help me understand, not questions that will put them on the defensive, not questions that say, well, how can you believe this?

Or have you really looked into it? Or what have you you been listening to or is there sin in your life I want to ask questions that are along these lines so what I'm hearing you say is how long have you been feeling this way how does it make you feel like how how do you feel in this process? Do you have people that you can talk to about this? Are you going through this alone? I think thanking is a really important thing to do because this is someone who has been going through something that is at the core of their being, right?

This could be a really existential crisis for them. And they've come to you and opened up a door into their heart and shared with you maybe you know like something that's very deeply personal to them and to recognize that and to thank them for inviting you into the journey i think is really helpful i also think it's really important to let them know that regardless of where they come out on any of these issues whether they move into a tradition that is kind of outside of what we would take to be historic Orthodox Christianity, or they move out of Christianity altogether, that our love for them and our friendship for them is not conditional upon affirming the same things that we believe,

and that we'll still love them. I think it's helpful to ask them, what do you mean by deconstruction? Is everything on the table? Or is it just you're trying to figure out if Christianity, the way it should look? Or are you asking, is Christianity true? And then I think the final question, and one that's really important, and maybe not the question that you asked right at the beginning or the initial interaction, but at some point needs to be asked, is where are you in terms of your understanding of the Bible? Are you willing to submit to the text of Scripture as you rethink this and understanding it and using it as the final criterion? Or is also that on the table and is, you know, because if it is,

this is a different discussion. This is a different direction I think that things will go. Because unless someone is clear on what they think where the Bible is, it's probably not really wise to start investigating or heading down the road and trying to really think through some of the issues that they're having trouble and wrestling with. And the reason why I think that's the case is because it seems to me that if you're not solid on what you think the Bible is, whether you think it's the Word of God and filled with errors, whether you think it's the word of God and filled with errors, or you think it's the word of God and it's not,

if you're not solid on that, you will probably likely reconstruct a faith that looks pretty much what you want it to look like, as opposed to whatever the truth is. You know, John, writing this book was your idea because you've done four or five on this before when you came to me. My first hesitancy was just like, oh, writing this book was your idea because you've done four or five on this before when you came to me. My first hesitancy was just like, oh, I'm busy.

But then I think what really convinced me is I look back on my life. And when I went through a questioning period, there were two big kinds of people that helped me. Number one, William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland helped me understand, you know what? Guy, the evidence points towards God existing. The Bible is true. Intelligent design. Okay. Christianity is true. But then second was a mentor of mine by the name of Rob Lone, who just listened to me. He asked me questions. He kind of guided me, kind of like we're doing in this book and I look at my own journey I needed people to answer my intellectual questions and then I needed people to act as a guide for me

so to speak to just own my own faith and ask questions and as I thought about it really what convinced me to write this with you was, I don't think there's a book that I needed that still exists that I'm aware of. I wish I could hand this to myself, you know, 20, 25 years ago. So I really wrote this for the students at Biola who come to me all the time and just say, I'm rethinking my faith. I'm trying to understand what I believe and why I believe it. If they say I'm not sure Christianity is true, I don't give them this book. I'll say, check out Evidence Demands Verdict, look at Will and H. Craig Debates, go to Frank Turek, whatever. Go to

those apologists. But when I probably have more young Christians come to me and say, I'm trying to own my own faith. I'm not sure what I believe for my family. I'm not sure what I believe for my tradition. I've had some kind of experience that is motivating me to rethink this. I want to follow Jesus, but I don't know how to unravel some of these ideas that I have. That's exactly why I wrote Set Adrift. So I had a father write me this week and he said his son is deconstructing and he's not sure if he's deconstructing towards deconversion or if he's deconstructing and staying in the faith. He's not sure where he is at. And I literally said to him, I said, I can't promise you that set adrift is going to keep

anybody in the faith. Nobody can do that, even with the Bible, because people walked away from Jesus. Yes. And I said, if you're looking for a book to just read with your son and have honest conversations, I think it'll be helpful. And he did and said it was immensely helpful. So last question, you've written a lot of books on deconversion. You've written some other books on deconstruction. Tell me uniquely about your heart in set adrift? So working at Biola and interacting with students, having an itinerant summer camp ministry, youth camp speaking ministry, I would hear over and over and over again questions from

young people that I could tell were causing them to say, I want to be a follower of Jesus, but I'm not sure what that's supposed to look like anymore. I think that only ramped up over the last probably seven or eight years. And I was really concerned that what was going to happen was that there would be sort of this syncretistic or this combining of views from our culture and from historic Orthodox understanding of practices and beliefs and that combination would really push young people to the very far edges of being within the boundaries of what has been understood as Christianity.

I wanted them to be able to have something that they could read that they didn't feel like someone was telling them what to believe on every issue. Exactly. But something that they could read and say here are the parameters that I need to stay within. Broad parameters. Historic creedal Christianity parameters. Here are some of the essentials. But within these broad parameters, there's lots of room to think, lots of room to wander around and investigate so that before the Lord you can say Jesus I'm following you to the best of my understanding according to your word

because ultimately at the end of the day I stand and I fall before you and so I'm gonna take this seriously I know that this is what it means to be within the broad parameters but I'm a grown adult, and I need to really think about this well. I wanted people to be able to think about it well, and when they reconstruct a faith that they, before the Lord, are willing to be able to identify with, it would still be in within these parameters and not something on the outside because they have been pushed that way to adopt certain beliefs and practices by the culture that they live in. And so that's what was motivating me to write the book. I love it. Now, a lot of times we give books to young people.

People want to give evidence that demands verdict because this is going to give them the facts and this is going to keep them in the faith. That feels good. A lot of times people will ask me, what book can I give my kid to keep them in the faith? And my answer is there's probably not any book you can give them that guarantees a certain outcome because humans have free will. This book we wrote together, Set Adrift, is not an apologetics book. It's not an apologetics book. We use a metaphor of going out kind of, you know and actually the cover shows right here somebody's paddle boarding and they get kind of lost in the fog don't know how to find their bearings we're just trying to come alongside people and help them find their

bearings what it means to follow jesus and so this is some people i got pushback from one leader who said why don't you just tell people exactly what you believe on this issue? I said, because that's a different book. I've written that book. That's not this book. And that's not what I needed within my journey. And I found when young people, not every young person does this, but when young people enter into a process of deconstruction, it oftentimes takes time. It needs space. We've got to let God's spirit work in them and we can't force certain things. And I'm not saying God is uniquely working through this book, but the idea is to just give young people space to work through questions and guide them and trust God's spirit. So folks, if you enjoy this, pick up Set Adrift.

If you didn't enjoy this, pick up a copy of Set Adrift anyways. But just don't write an Amazon review of it if you really didn't enjoy it. You know what? If you didn't enjoy it and it's an honest, fair review, I am totally fine with that. If you've got an axe to grind, that's not helpful. But if you read it and understand what the heart of the book is for and see things differently, write a review. But don't write a bad review just to write a bad review. Doesn't help anybody. You know, John, I wrote a book called Apologetics for New Generation. It was about how to do

apologetics. And someone gave me one or two stars and like, this doesn't answer any of my questions. I'm like, that's not the purpose of this book. So this is a unique book that I think for the purposes we laid out here, folks will really enjoy. All right, John, thoroughly enjoyed this. We'll have you back on again. Folks, before you go away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot of other conversations we're going to have here on the topic of deconstruction, including folks like Tim Barnett and Elisa Childers, who have a great book coming out on the deconstruction of Christianity, and they see some things a little bit differently. We're going to flesh that out,

find some common ground. Make sure you hit subscribe. And if you thought about studying apologetics, we would love to have you at, by the way, we have the top rated distance program in the country, maybe in the world. I don't know. That's probably over speaking things, but there's information below. Would love to have you in class. Check that out. John, we'll do it again. Thanks, my friend. Thank you.