The Sean McDowell Show - The Deconstruction of Christianity (ft. Alisa Childers, Tim Barnett)

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

A movement called ‘deconstruction’ is sweeping through our churches and it is affecting our loved ones. What is deconstruction? Should we be concerned about it? Should we use the term "deconstruction" positively, or should we avoid it? Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett have a new book coming out in early 2024 in which they examine this movement in depth. We discuss their findings and draw attention to what this means for the church today. Make sure to subscribe and check out some of my other videos for more on apologetics, worldview, and other aspects of culture! READ: The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond, by Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett (https://amzn.to/48B2Oum) WATCH: 9 Reasons People Deconstruct Their Faith (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul8tjenO-xI) *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 the deconstruction of Christianity? Are more people deconstructing today? And if so, how should we respond? Well, my two guests today have written a book together called The Deconstruction of Christianity that is not out yet, but I hope you'll consider pre-ordering it. I think the cause is a deeper issue.

Yeah, that's a good question. What do you mean by deconstruction? We're gonna dive into that today. You know, our first guest, Elisa Childers, has been on this program before. Nice to have you back, Elisa. Tim, this is the first time long overdue. We go back a long ways. I've been meaning to have you on. It's about time. Thanks for gracing me with your presence. I was just going to say, it's about time, Sean. What did I ever do to offend you? You know, I love it. Well, good to have you both on. This is a, this is going to be a fun

conversation, but it's also a serious topic. And you guys approach this book with some gravity, with some concern for the church, for loved ones who have deconstructed. Elisa, you wrote a book, another gospel, runaway bestselling book. There's a lot. You've also written another book. There's a lot, I'm guessing, of books you could write and ideas that you have. Tell me why this book right now. Well, I think deconstruction is one of the greatest challenges to the Christian faith right now. And the reason for that is because some people might think, oh, well, it's atheism or it's progressive Christianity or it's this or that. And those are certainly intellectual challenges to Christianity, but they're different destinations. Whereas deconstruction is the vehicle that takes people away from historic Christianity and into, you know, could be, they could land anywhere

in the new age or atheism or agnosticism. And so I think that because it's really a methodology that takes you away from the historic faith, I think it's a really timely issue. And I also have a long history with this word because I've been thinking about it for probably about 10 years. And so it's just something that seemed to really connect and piggyback onto my previous work. And I was excited to work with Tim on it. One quick follow-up, please. And then I'm going to come to Tim. When you say this is one of the most concerning issues and you kind of described it as a vehicle, do you think this is the cause itself? Or do you think people often deconstruct because of a deeper cause or brokenness that is there or is it both well i think it's no it's not the cause i don't think i would say it's the cause i think

the cause is a deeper issue and and can be a cross-section of lots of different issues as those crises you know faith crises interact with people's particular faith foundations i think there can be so many different things going on that would cause somebody to fall into deconstruction. Even philosophically, there's things that could cause that. But I would really describe it more like, well, in the book, we describe it as an explosion. It's just literally like exploding out from this starting point, landing in all sorts of different places. Tim, let me come to you. This is your first book. And just for the record,

it's about time, buddy. We've been waiting for you to join the club. Thanks. It's good to have you, but this is, it's a great, powerful place to start. You got a forward by Carl Truman. You're writing with an established author who has just a critical voice today. Tell me why you chose to co-write this and maybe kind of what your contribution was. It was like working together. Yeah, that's a good question. Probably three years ago now,

I was actually giving a series of talks on this topic, deconstruction. In fact, I was invited to a camp and we spoke, it was a Monday to Friday thing. So I prepared a lot of material, had done a lot of research to kind of understand what was going on in this new kind of deconstruction movement. And one of the evenings, I thought, man, someone needs to write a book on this topic. Now, I didn't

want to write that book. So I actually seen the connection between deconstruction and progressive Christianity. I saw that this was kind of like the vehicle that was getting people, a lot of people into progressive Christianity, although that's not necessarily the destination everyone lands. It is one of them. So Elisa, obviously having written another gospel, I thought she'd be a great person to write this book. So I sent her a text message that Lisa, when are you writing the book on deconstruction? And she said, Tim, I'm in the middle of writing another book right now, Live Your Truth and Other Lies. And then I sent her another message saying, well, do you want to write one together? And she texted me back, let's talk. And that is kind of what launched this whole thing into motion now that was man like

two years ago now we kind of we kind of i think signed the contracts this book's been a a while in the works and so we're really excited that it's coming out now okay so let me ask you this i i gave you guys a heads up on the questions we're going to ask but i didn't tell you i might ask you this one partly because it just popped into my mind. I've co-written books, probably, I don't know, six or seven with my dad. And there's some issues my dad and I differ over. Written a book with William Dembski, a recent one on deconstruction with John Marriott. Every co-author I've written something with, I disagree somewhere on something, big or small. Was there any issue that came up that you just kind of disagreed with each other that you had to work through and you just kind of saw differently how

to approach this, how to define this, or is it like, we're just on the same track, let's go. Elisa, let me start. I'll come over to you with that question. And then Tim, tell me what you think. I think that there, I can't think of any main or big issues that we disagreed about. I think we, we generally were on the same track. I think early on, we both were sort of like trying to figure out how to define, I think just defining the word was where we found the most interaction as far as like, well, what about this? Well, what about this?

Well, no, that won't work because of this. And so there was a lot of, we even kind of tugged and pulled a little bit in the beginning because we were going to try to maybe present like, well, maybe there's like a healthy deconstruction and then an unhealthy deconstruction. And so there was a lot of discussion going on about that, but I can't, I don't think theologically there was really, we just tried to avoid like anywhere where Tim and i might really agree on a minor issue we just avoided that and just tried to keep the big picture in mind i think that's totally fair tim good for me for me uh i mean just thinking back i know that first i described that first kind of

week long teaching session on deconstruction that i i had done i had actually taught healthy deconstruction versus unhealthy deconstruction. I have those slides. And so I think that was where we were headed. I think it was more Elisa who was like, you know what, Tim, I'm talking about this. I'm doing Q and A's. I'm talking with parents. I'm on social media. Where is this kind of healthy deconstruction, it became more elusive, kind of as we were going. And so it was it was interesting, because, you know, we would have an idea or an argument and offer it to the other person. And let's see if this this works. And so I think that there were times when Elisa persuaded me on some things. And I think there were times

where I maybe persuade Elisa on some things. And that's, I mean, it was kind of a cool process, writing a book together, because you got that back and forth. And you got to kind of iron sharpening iron along the way. So man, I'll just tell you, we, I mean, it's hard to write a book together. We, it became at the end of it kind of a free for all we had, you know, our, our Google document open. And there are times where we were writing at the same time in like the same chapter like we're just but somehow it came together um we had some you know help from amy hall editing the process and some others and so it it does actually come across as one voice i I think, at the end of it. I think originally we intended, you write this chapter, I'll write this chapter, you write that kind of thing.

But at the end of the day, any chapter you read in there has both of us kind of, you know, here's one paragraph and then another paragraph. It's really true. In fact, I remember being really organized in the beginning. We're like, OK, you're going to write these three chapters, I'll write these all right then we'll trade off and you can edit me and i'll edit you and by the end it was i remember texting tim because we had we had all met in oregon with our uh publishing team and kind of read everything we had and then we had assignments again okay tim you're gonna work on this paragraph and this and i remember texting tim like hey do you mind if i tweak some things in this paragraph here and he was already tweaking something that I had done. He just goes,

you know what, at this point, it's a free for all, just get in there and do what you want to do. And so we really can honestly say that every single word is Tim and I together. It really is. I love that. There were a few points because I know the two of you, I thought this sounds more like Tim or Lisa, only because I know your writings and your speaking, but it is a unified voice in this book for sure. And you're right in terms of co-writing with somebody, sometimes it's hard to have those conversations, but there's something very positive about that because there's push and pull. And so that's interesting though, that the most was about defining deconstruction. And you hinted at this. There's a lot of people like Michael Kruger,

John Mark Comer, AJ Swidoba, Lecrae, myself and John Marriott, who are content in defining deconstruction differently. I don't want to get too lost in that debate in part because it's two on one. And that's not fair to you guys. Just kidding. Just kidding. You didn't see that coming. Totally kidding. I just want my viewers to hear your concern. They can go read the book. So tell us, well, actually, let's just start with how you define it, Lisa. What do you mean by deconstruction? Yeah, that'd be good place. I'll try to keep this really concise because I'm really sympathetic to your view. And really, frankly, you were kind to say just a few people. I would say most people are defining it, at least in the event. Well, I'll say this.

Most people in evangelicalism are defining it as you and others are. Whereas in my research, most everybody else is defined in a different way. So I think Tim and I are kind of one of the lone voices saying we actually see something different. So, and we know that we know that going into it. Let me, I'll keep this as concise as I can and just take you a little bit on my journey with the word. So over 10 years ago, I went through a faith crisis that really brought me to the edge of agnosticism. I was intellectually persuaded that I couldn't trust my Bible, that the people that I think were real people in the Bible probably didn't even exist, that science had disproved a lot of the things that I believed.

And it was absolutely an agonizing, horrible, several years of looking for answers for a lot of questions. I write more extensively about that in another gospel. And I actually, in that book, used the word deconstruction because I started to hear that word deconstruction. Oh, interesting. And I was like, oh, that's what happened to me. I nearly lost my faith. I had this faith crisis. I had issues with evangelicalism. I saw kind of the dark side as a traveling musician in some of the mega churches and things like this. And so I thought, thought well that's what happened to me only i ended up believing i ended up reconstructing a biblical faith well when i started to talk like that on social media deconstructionists would say you didn't deconstruct because you still believe

you know x y and z and nearly every time i would use the word deconstruction to decide describe my process they would say no you don't understand it If you think that you can believe that you're a sinner that needs to be saved, that by a guy hanging on a cross and that his resurrection had to be real in order for it all to be true, then you didn't deconstruct. You need to go back and start over. And so I began to really think about the word over the course of the past, really several years and spending quite a bit of time in the deconstruction hashtag and in the ex-evangelical hashtag is that's where a lot of this is going on. And realizing that actually,

I don't think I did deconstruct. And that largely has to do with how I think deconstruction is defined. And so here's what it is. And this is the thing I love about what you do, Sean, and we got to meet John, Tim and I, and do a little panel with him. We agree on so much. We agree on that we don't want people to leave the faith. We want people to follow the truth. And so we're totally united on that. But what I see happening is that people are describing and defining

deconstruction to mean everything from maybe changing your mind on eschatology or watching a Mike Winger video and changing your mind on women in ministry like all the way they're using the word to define that all the way to completely leaving religion altogether well and and so it started to occur to me well if the word means everything then it means nothing because it's just it's just a catch-all term that just can mean anything. So what really is it? And so what I started to ask is when there are people who are saying, no, I believe the Bible is the authoritative word of God.

I want my beliefs to line up with what is true. I just want to get rid of maybe some things that were added culturally that aren't really biblical. I mean, Tim and I both would say along with you, yes, you should get rid of beliefs that are harmful, toxic, and untrue 100% and line up what you believe with what is true. But if you're doing that, why are we using a word that is really connected to postmodernism to describe that process? And honestly, in this context, in church history, a fairly new word. Why are we saying, okay, yeah, we'll just use the word deconstruction to describe what

really is a healthy and biblical process. So that's what kind of led us away from thinking that there could be a healthy deconstruction because of how the word is manifesting in culture and online and as it's connected to its postmodern roots and we can go into you know deeper weeds with that stuff if you'd like to but i think that what i'd love people to know is that if you have a high school kid that comes home from camp and they say mom and dad i'm deconstructing my faith don't panic just ask them what they mean by deconstruction because most like that teenage kid is using it as a lot of other evangelical kids have kind of been thinking about using it just to mean like, I want to be a real Christian.

I want to be a Christian that follows the Bible, that follows truth. And if that's the case, encourage them to pursue that journey and do that. Make sure your faith is your own. Don't just believe everything your parents taught you because they're your parents. But maybe ask them, why are you using the word deconstruction to describe what really the bible already tells you to do for yourself and i think that's probably a good way to open up that conversation that's why tim and i argue for the word reformation it's much i think it's a healthier word it's a word that's disconnected from so much of the toxicity online. And then we can encourage young people, hey, reform your faith, always be reforming your faith, but reform it according to truth and

according to scripture. You're absolutely right. Let me jump in for a second. I think you're absolutely right that words matter, right? What do we mean? Do we use pro-life or do we use pro-choice? You guys talk about evangelical what does that word mean uh words and definitions matter and we have to be careful how we define them i also agree that when somebody says i'm deconstructing let's lean in and ask what you mean by that i personally i i'm less concerned with using the term but i think the focus on what you mean by that and where somebody's heart is, we have common ground on that. And I think that's the vital first step to take. Tim, jump in here. Go ahead, buddy. One of the things that jumped out at me was actually,

it got me thinking at least, was a tweet from Derek Webb. Now, Derek Webb used to be with Cademan's Call and he has deconstructed pretty vocal on Twitter and, and Instagram. And he had a tweet and it basically said something like deconstructing is is just reforming and your church should be happy that we're deconstructing. And it got me thinking is deconstructing your faith the same as reforming your faith is is what derek webb did what the reformation the the reformers did he called it semper reformanda right semper ref this latin always reforming of course that's taken from the context there is ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbi de now all the homeschoolers they all know what i just said because they know latin but thanks to you know

thanks to google translate that means the church is reformed and always reforming or always being reformed according to the word of god secundum verbi de according to the word of god is that what they're doing well elise and i spent a lot of time on the the hashtag deconstruction right um and alongside it by the way is usually hashtag exvangelical. And that's not a coincidence. And what you find there is the leaders of this movement. Now, they wouldn't want to be called, you know, the thought leaders or whatever. But frankly, they have the biggest platforms. These guys, these are the guys who are moving the needle. They're the ones who have the influence. And the things that they're saying are not biblical. And so if we just, here's three things. The first is most of these guys will say something like there is no

correct destination and there is no right way to do deconstruction. And so, you know, Joe Luman, she'll say something like wherever you land is, is, is fine. You can land in agnosticism or atheism or another type of faith. It doesn't matter. Now, is that what Jesus would say? Of course not. Jesus says there's a broad way and a narrow way. And the broad way leads somewhere, a destination, destruction, he says. And the narrow way leads to life, to eternal life.

So you have Jesus in direct conflict with the deconstructions themselves. They say there's no finality to the process. You got Kevin Max and Derek Webb both saying, don't reconstruct your faith. Don't believe new things. Now, never mind that that's self-refuting. I mean, it's a belief in itself. But their point is, if you're deconstructing and you're living out, that's your lifestyle now, is an attitude of deconstruction, then as soon as you construct a new belief, you have to deconstruct that.

So Derek Webb says, I'm done. I'm done believing, is how he puts it. I'm done believing. And then finally, so there's no finality to the process. Now that, again, contradicts scripture. Scripture says, stand firm in the things that you have been taught. You're going to continue in these things. And by the way, it actually warns against those who are always learning and never able to arrive at the truth. Paul warns against that. And that sounds a lot like what these guys are saying. And then finally, the biggest problem is there's no biblical authority. And so you'll often find the deconstructionist saying, you know, Paul said such and such, Paul was wrong. Paul was wrong. You know, the apostle said, or the prophet said they were wrong. They're not willing to use the

Bible as any kind of guidebook. No one gets to tell me what my face should look like. You'll see that over and over and over again. So I guess one of our concerns with the word is, if we tell people do deconstruction, and we call it healthy, or we add an adjective, good, healthy, whatever. And then they go to social media, because this is where kids are. This is where you know, Gen Z and millennials are living. And they type in I just today was on hashtag deconstruction on Instagram. And you are teleported into a world that is so antagonistic to to Christianity, and to the Word of God, you can't help but deconstruct it's like no duh people are leaving or coming moving at least moving away from classical christianity it's no wonder because that's

where that echo chamber leads you i mean there are very few posts from elisa or sean or whoever in the hashtag deconstruction um world it's it's mostly these other people these other voices like the naked pastor and we could we could list the names so this is the warning and so now one of the analogies i'm working on again i haven't fully thought this through but you know as a parent i have small kids i would never take an empty gatorade bottle and put antifreeze in it and just leave it out. Because when my kids were young and they didn't know the difference, they may say, oh, blue liquid in a Gatorade bottle, I'm going to drink that. So what I would want to do is relabel that so it's clear, this is

antifreeze or whatever, this is bad news so that there's no confusion and so you're right it's not really about the words i mean yeah but what i'm concerned about is the hearts of those those students or the hearts of those those people who are struggling with their faith and i don't want them ending up on that broad way that leads to destruction right amen So first off, I'm not sure Gatorade is that different from antifreeze anyways, but I digress. I'm kidding. So these three things, what's important, use the term or not, wherever you land doesn't matter. Everybody who's an evangelical agrees that it does matter where you land. We agree there's a final place, although we should always be reforming our

faith and taking it back to scripture. There's essentials we have to land on. And third, biblical authority is really at the heart of this. So maybe this is just, I don't know if this is just a personality or posture that I take, and it might just be a difference here. Not better or worse might be different. Today I was talking with my students. We're going through Thaddeus Williams' book on Don't Follow Your Heart, and he's got all these hashtags. And some of these hashtags have a lot of ideas behind them that are deeply unchristian. And he takes these hashtags and says, here's how to think about this Christianly. So we're talking about YOLO, you only live once, seize the day. And I made the distinction to my students. I said, there's an atheistic way to look at this. You're about to die. And so seize the day before the grave, live for yourself,

you know, carpe diem. But then there's a Christian way to seize the day, which means something very different. And so I started to ask him, I said, for the sake of discernment, let's look at some different voices. We watched a video by Elliot Page, who shifted from Ellen Page. What's the narrative here? We watched some Christians. And I lean in to teach them discernment to recognize some of these differences. So for me, Tim, I would take my students to the deconstruction hashtag gladly.

I'd rather have them see it from me with discernment than come across it themselves and try to say, don't search this. Don't look for it. This is bad. I'd rather lead them into it and say, here's what some people mean. Here's what other people mean. Let's see what this person means and how do we bring it back to scripture. Does that make sense? Not better or worse because I think there's a time to lean in. And I think in your book, you rightly draw attention to a movement that is bent upon destroying Christianity. The question is more of a posture, how we engage it.

What do you guys think? And then we'll move on to some of the stuff in the book. Either of you jump in here. Go ahead, Alyssa. I 100% agree with you about, I mean, Tim and I have talked about this, so I know I can speak for him here that we advocate absolutely exposing the young people in your life to things like the deconstruction hashtag. In fact, Tim prints out, he posted on Instagram, he prints out some atheist memes and deconstruction memes, and he had young people red penning them as an assignment. So I totally, we would totally agree with you that to teach kids discernment, you have to expose them

to these types of ideas. I talk openly with my 15 year old about this stuff, and I should all even show her tech talk videos and things like that, and we'll talk through it as a matter of discernment. But I think maybe where the disagreement might lie is just to allow words to just kind of be an accordion word. And so I think what Tim was saying wasn't so much like, oh, we're so concerned somebody might discover the deconstruction hashtag. What we're concerned about is that if they're already vulnerable to these kinds of things,

they could get sucked into an echo chamber where there's tons of misinformation. It almost functions like propaganda. And if they don't have a reliable guide, like a Sean McDowell teaching them or Tim Barnett teaching them how to read pen, a lot of this deconstruction is happening online. And it does have, in our view, a postmodern underpinning there's this really subjective element to it any kind of beliefs that are deemed as something that i just i don't it doesn't sit well with me it doesn't resonate with me those beliefs are deemed as toxic and abusive and harmful and so when they go into this hashtag because they already think that christian beliefs are harmful and toxic the impetus to disconnect from their Christian family

and friends and churches and deconstruct online is this is what's happening. So people, you know, you might have a young person who's on social media, they might even be going to church with their parents, but they're not telling their parents that they're in this hashtag and they're deconstructing. So I think that's really more the concern. Whereas I think what you're talking about is a great preventative. And that's something that I advocate for and I do with my kids as well. But our concern is that the main way that this word seems to be manifesting in culture is under this deconstruction hashtag that is just really antithetical to Christianity. Tim, you want to jump in here or did she save you?

No, she did. She saved me. No, thanks for clarifying that, Elisa. That's helpful because at Stand to Reason, we talk about inoculating our students. We don't advocate for isolation. We want to inoculate. And so that's part of our teaching practice. One of the things that you'll see online is, is the deconstructions themselves actually mocking evangelicals for using the term, because they'll see, you know, they'll show a picture of, you know, a pastor up on stage. And, you know, I have, I have deconstructed my faith too, but they kind of like, and they got the chihuahua given the, you know, cut eye below it. And this meme's supposed to show look

you you don't you didn't really deconstruct because you're still an evangelical you know this kind of thing so we're just what we're saying is you know what we have a word that we think is maybe more uh descriptive of what we want you guys have your thing we we actually hope that the deconstructionists will agree with some of the ways that we have described deconstruction in our book. And then, you know, they're not going to like reformation. We get that. We know that. But we're Christians and we're trying to, we want to, you know, make disciples. We want to make, we want people to have a stronger Christian faith. And we think that's doing what the Bereans did, searching the scriptures to see if these things are so. And so that and we think that's doing what the bereans did searching the

scriptures to see if these things are so and so that's our that's what we're calling reformation ginger duggar in her book um for becoming free indeed she called it disentangling you know there's other words that have been used out there um but you know we're just hoping to make that distinction and you know some people you know like yourselves want to say healthy versus unhealthy. Fair enough. But that's the, I think that's the main idea is we're trying to make a distinction so that people can see there's, there's, there's different things going on here. The process really does matter. It's not just deconstruction isn't a that, it's a how, it's a how, how are you going through this? And so we outline our book. Here's how we want Christians to do it. Don't suppress your questions. Don't keep all your doubts to

yourself. No, that's not a biblical approach. That's not a biblical process. There's models in scripture of how you go about expressing your doubts and searching for answers and all those things. Term aside, we agree 100% on what that process should look like. There's no debate there amongst all of us. Now, those Christians who mock people for using deconstruction are going to mock Christians for something, that's for sure. And they're looking for something to mock evangelicals. But let's shift to kind of what's kind of the heart of the book. You spend a lot of time defining deconstruction, and as a philosopher and apologist, huge value in that. So even if you guys are in the minority evangelical world challenging folks who define it differently, I think they need to read this. I think they need to wrestle with their

arguments. And even if they disagree, like at the end, I may still use it a little bit differently. Point well taken, clarity is sought out, and there's huge value in that. And you guys have done a massive amount of research behind this book, laying it out. So I think people need to read it just for that alone. But I want to know if you think deconstruction, the way you define it here is a transition away from historic Christianity and towards something else. That's your definition. All of us agree that that's not good and we don't want to see that continue to happen, however we label it. But I'm curious if you think that process itself is increasing. Elisa, you've been studying this for about a decade. You went through it personally. Do you think more people are, quote, transitioning away from historic Christianity and towards something else, or is just more attention being brought to it because of social media or both?

Well, it could be a little bit of both. And again, this is just, you know, I'm not a sociologist. This is just my conclusions based on observing and researching for many years and having, like you said, some personal experience in that area. I think that I do think there are more. And the reason for that is because the only unprecedented thing, I mean, there've always been God haters. There've been people leave the faith from the beginning, but this is really the first time in history where absolutely anybody pretty much in the world has a megaphone to the rest of the world you know back decades past you might have a bertrand russell who will write a book about it but that's a rare

guy for every birch and russell there might have been you know a hundred others who left the faith and left quietly and didn't take a thousand, you know, thousands of followers with them. And so I think that's what we're seeing. That's the unique thing about our moment in history is that because so many things are depending on YouTube and Instagram, and especially TikTok, where you have, I mean, it was just blowing our minds how you could have a post by somebody who is nobody even knows who this person is and that's not even important but they have a post claiming that some christian doctrine is abusive and there's two million views on the thing and and you know 300 000 likes and

this was not uncommon to find uh on tiktok under that hashtag and so i think that that we do see an acceleration because of the amplification of those voices in culture. And so I think that as we all know, we've all researched the effects of social media and echo chambers and how that can have an effect even on the way we think. And we can be persuaded to believe things that aren't true, even if we're otherwise intelligent people who are using our reasoning skills because we're being fed certain information that those algorithms feed to us and so uh i think that and also i think the evangelistic nature of the deconstruction

movement is adds to that as well because it's really deemed as i think in the past maybe somebody would lose their faith and you know they don't really want to take a whole bunch of people with them. So if it works for you, you do that. I'm just going to go over here and do this. But because of the sort of postmodern underpinnings of viewing these beliefs as so subjectively harmful, it's seen as virtuous to bring as many people out of those historic doctrines as you possibly can so there's like the testimony the deconstruction story is like the evangelical testimony to try to persuade people away from beliefs that they think are toxic and harmful so i do think that it is accelerated that's my best guess um maybe a little bit of both though i think that's totally fair it's interesting to go back when my father started

speaking on college campuses like no one was doing apologetics in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. They would get audiences of 8, 10, 12, 15,000 students at universities. And he told me the atheists and skeptics would follow up the next day and get 50, 70 students. They didn't have an audience or a platform to reach out, apart from some maybe who are professors at universities. Now that playing field has been leveled for every conceivable belief system that is out there. And so now if somebody was leaving their faith, they lost a certain level of community. But now there's an atheist community that can step into, a humanist community, and a self-described deconstruction community that will give them some of the emotional things that they were

missing in the past by leaving the church. So I think that level is different as well. I totally agree with you that there's some of both. Tim, let me ask you this, and I want to come back to you on this, Lisa. I want to know what both of you think. Do you think most people who deconstruct, if you can say most, if not many, were ever in the faith? And before you answer, because I realize this is a dangerous question going on the record, I will tell you what I think from my experience. I don't think most were. Now, I'm going to get some hate mail for this. Some people are going to really

critique me. And there's two reasons why I'm not saying all, that's not my point. I can't judge anybody's heart. But one question I've asked on air and over and over again in person is not the story of somebody leaving the faith, but tell me when you got in, tell me that moment when you realized you were a sinner in need of God's grace and you cried out for forgiveness. It's incredible how many times, the vast majority of times, I get a blank stare, which tells me you are part of the club sociologically, but maybe not fully in the faith. The second thing is when I look at a lot of people who are deconstructing in the way you describe it and do TikTok videos, the theological critiques are so often so shallow and indicate they're attacking a straw man. Either they're intentionally twisting Christianity because they're angry about it or they never understood it in the first place.

So I can't say all. I would never say that. But in my experience, in my research, I think most people who have deconstructed again in the way of just leaving the Christian faith were not in the Christian faith in the first place. Do you agree? Do you disagree? What do you think, Tim? I totally agree. And you took the words out of my mouth. I mean, again, I don't know the heart of the individual, but what I can do is I go on Deconstructing Girl's Instagram account and I see what this particular deconstruction- I knew you followed that one, Tim. I knew it.

Sorry, keep going. I mean, they all go by these names, right? And that's actually, that's a real account. I know it is. I'm calling. She put out, we red penned it. She said the primary belief of Christianity is child sacrifice. That's the, that's the central belief.

And I just think, and, and then in like the, you know, the comment, you know, she wrote, there's no coming back from this one kind of thing. And I'm thinking, first of all, I mean, this is easy to respond to, but second of all, do you think, do you, I mean, this is someone who respond to. But second of all, do you think, I mean, this is someone who says they were a Christian, and yet they think that our central belief is that in child sacrifice. I mean, my seven-year-old can respond to that challenge. My seven-year-old knows that Jesus was a full-grown man when he gave his life on a cross and he willingly gave that life and so it was i mean so when you see that when you see that straw man as you just described

and these straw men are everywhere you can only come to two kinds of conclusions one is they are being deliberately uh they're deliberately misrepresenting christianity now i'm not i don't want to go there so i'm just going I'm going to, what I'm going to assume is you don't get it. And if you don't get that something as simple as this, as fundamental as this, then, then maybe you didn't get any of it. And you're right, Sean, you hear these testimonies and someone will get up and talk about how they went to a camp and maybe they had some kind of experience the music was great and they you know walked forward or put their hand up and said you know i'm i'm a follower now or something but what's missing is this like the defining

experience of a christian and that is to to you know kind of beat your breast and say, have mercy on me, a sinner. This kind of experience, you think of Jesus describes this scenario where the man can't even look up to the sky. There's this posture of, I am not worthy to stand before the holy God. And so you're just casting yourself on his mercy and asking for forgiveness. Is that kind of experience being described? You know, I think it's Psalm 51, you know, where the psalmist kind of describes his transgression before the Lord.

Against you and you alone have I sinned, you know, this kind of thing. And of course, you don't, I mean, frankly, you don't hear a lot about sin. There's lots of churches that don't talk about sin. And then when you start going down into the hashtag deconstruction, what you find is that this whole idea of sin is just about control. That's the motivation. The church is, they're just trying to control or hurt people. It's toxic theology. And we're going to talk more about that. So I'm right

there with you. I totally agree. I'm not saying that none of these people were saved, but it just, it seems like the vast majority didn't get it. Elisa, what do you think? If you want to weigh in here or was it covered? Yeah, well, it's covered. I don't have much to add. When I'm asked this question, Sean, I often reference you. And I say, you know, every time Sean has a conversation with somebody, he asks them this question and I've never seen yet a truly satisfying answer. And I think the little bit I'll add to, I totally agree with you guys on this 100%. I think that over the past, what is it, 50, 60 years, we've seen the rise of the megachurch

model. We've seen the rise of the seeker sensitive movement. There's a lot, I believe a lot of people who think they're Christians who aren't really Christians. I mean, even think about the way a lot of churches do their VBSs and things like this. They're just, they, you know, come make a decision. Well, the kid's five years old. They may not even, maybe they do. I mean, I've seen the conviction of the Holy Spirit come on a five-year old. I'm not saying that that can't happen, but so often it's like this kid you know signed a card at vbs or something and they think they're christian but really what has happened is they've grown up around it they might even like the culture they might even believe certain things about christianity but they've never

trusted in jesus and that's the big difference is the bible says the demons believe and shudder demons have correct theology they believe the correct things about Jesus, but they don't, they can't trust in Jesus for their salvation. And so I think that you, Sean, have done such a great job of teasing that out with some of these conversations that you've had. And I referenced them all the time. So I agree with you a hundred percent on this. So one of the questions, when I see a movement like deconstruction and we have deconstruction coaches, we have books that are written on this, we have hashtags and by deconstruction, again, we mean helping people shed their Christian faith. When I look at this, one of the things I think is why do we have this movement right now?

And where has the church fallen short that this gains steam and people are responding to it so well? Like, obviously, we've fallen short. So one way is, theologically, we got to go deeper. We just clearly haven't taught good apologetics, good theology. And so we're kind of seeing the weakness of many of the mega church movement that doesn't have the depth that it needs to. Not all, but many. I'm curious what else you guys think, because sometimes when I look at deconstruction, sometimes I'm not, obviously I'm concerned and I want to prevent the church from buying into some of these voices that

are proclaiming you should leave your Christian faith. But I also stop and I think, why is this gaining traction? What do we need to do better as Christians and listen to these folks who clearly have been hurt or misled? So what do you think we can learn from or do better in light of why this movement has gotten so much traction? Tim, tell me what you think. And then at least if you want to add anything, jump in. Well, I think you're right about the theological component first. I mean, there was a Ligonier study done in 2022, and it was asking evangelicals questions,

like just basic questions about, you know, is, is Jesus just a good moral teacher or was he God? And, and the evangelicals, it was something like 40%, you know, said he, he was God. Um, so it just like, this is brutal. We put these statistics in our book just to show that as Elisa pointed out, you know, this is an explosion. An explosion starts at some center point. And we know that people are leaving. They're moving away from what they're calling evangelicalism. The problem is, what is the evangelical? Carl Truman, he wrote a book called The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

He says that it's not that there's just no evangelical mind. He says there's no evangelical. We can't even get our beliefs together. So one of the first things you hit on there is the theology. We don't even have the theology straight, I don't think. So we got to do a better job with just biblical literacy and theology. But then there's all these other things. And sadly, the church is guilty when it comes to lots of different sins, marrying politics with Christianity. You have real abuse that happens. Now, we want to be careful, and we do this in the book.

We talk about how, man, a lot of stuff. I mean, if you believe in kind of the traditional view of marriage and gender, that's toxic. Okay. And that's called spiritual abuse. I was listening to a deconstructionist last week, go on Instagram and his story, and he's talking about how this is spiritual abuse. Now I want to be careful here because I don't think that's abuse. And we can go into that in a little bit, but there is real abuse and the church needs to take responsibility for that we have pastors who are abusing people in their congregation and then they're being re-platformed without any kind of sign of repentance you know this is stuff

that's happening there's churches that are hiding things that shouldn't be hidden these things should be brought to light and justice should be done. So, so I think part of the problem is there's lots of things. There's, there's a criticism of the church that I think is valid. And that is we need to do, we need to do a whole lot better. Now I get it. The church, as long as there's a church, there's going to be church hurt because we are sinners and we, um, and sinners and sometimes sinners hurt other sinners. That's how it goes. But again, we're not sweeping out of the rug. We want to deal with it head on. And so that's something that I think is a valid criticism. Again, we're writing our book and we're acknowledging some of those things but we're also saying there's lots of stuff in there that isn't um a valid criticism and especially when it comes to orthodox theology this stuff is true it's not toxic it's true

i don't know if elisa wants to to um say something about that too no you covered it tim i think spiritual abuse is a huge one i think you know. I think if you have somebody who's been through two, three, four, and that's not that uncommon of experiences in a church where you have maybe a narcissistic kind of bully pulpit kind of pastor that has high control over the congregation, well, then the man who told me I'm a sinner and needs to get saved is also this horrible person. How do I reconcile these things? And so I think we see a lot of that confusion in the deconstruction movement. Like you guys, I can't even remember how many podcasts I've

listened to by people who are self-described deconstructionists leaving the faith and encouraging other people to do so. The hashtags, like I've swam in these waters for a while and often have competing senses of like, I want to listen if there's valid criticisms and do better. But I also get a little bit defensive because I'm Christian and I think it's true. And I think these things are misguided. So I'm always trying to balance those two. And there's a line in your book where you say something effective, we have swords in our hands and tears in our eyes. So I want to probe what you think about this, because I know John Cooper from Skillet said something effective. Actually, I think I could read the exact quote so we don't

misquote him in here. He says, it's time for us and your generation to declare war on this idolatrous deconstruction Christian movement. And that just blew up Twitter and social media and everybody got upset. And I have, I don't know if I'd say torn thoughts on this. On one hand, I'm like, I get it. There is a movement trying to dismantle Christianity and talk people out of following Jesus. We've got to put a stop to this. And you guys in your book are standing up to this saying time out. On the other hand, when I get off social media, just this week, I had two conversations.

One person called me up and said, Sean, I'm deconstructing my faith. I said, what do you mean? They said, I'm just rethinking things, but still faithful to scripture, still faithful to Jesus. I said, okay. The other person literally last night said, my daughter came to me, didn faithful to Jesus. I said, okay. The other person literally last night said, my daughter came to me, didn't use the term deconstruction, but said, my daughter

said to me, I'm no longer a Christian. When I talk with people face to face, the warfare language is not helpful. These are people that are hurting and they're crying and they're broken. And in fact, a lot of people who have deconstructed and deconverted, it's a painful process for them. Many have expressed that. So I'm really just curious how the two of you try to live in this tension. And maybe the answer is you just live in a tension where we stand up against something we have concern with, but also lean in and listen to the hurt and the pain that's out there without creating an us versus them warfare on an issue that's so personal for many people. How do you live in that tension, Lisa? What are your thoughts

on that? Well, I really appreciate you bringing that up because there's definitely a what, and then there's a how. And I think that's how I navigate that tension. So, you know, John Cooper is a good friend of mine, and I know that John is one of the most tenderhearted people in the world. And if somebody called him and said, John, I'm deconstructing my faith, John would respond with so much compassion.

He would sit with that person. He would love on that person. He would try to get to the bottom of what's going on and seek to understand. And yet the same John would get up on that stage and say it's time to declare war on this movement and so i think what it is is we have to understand the what and there's a warfare in the what understanding what it is what it's doing to people so spiritual warfare it's a spiritual warfare that is going after i mean this movement and listen i'm not talking about an individual person in the

movement. I'm talking about the doctrines of demons that are underneath these things. I mean, we're Christians. We know that there are doctrines of demons that are trying to lead people away and the enemy will take advantage of people. And, and, and so we want to go to war with the ideas. We want to go to war with these, these ideas that are pulling people away from the faith and keep it very clear about that. And at the same time with the, how then do we walk and navigate this with people we love? Well, of course, you're not going to use warfare language when your precious teenager calls you up and says, I'm deconstructing. I don't know why my youth pastor was abusive to me. Well, goodness, you're not going to use warfare language with that person

at all. But I would still have that war in the back of my mind, though. I am going to war by ministering to this person, by meeting them where they are, by showing them compassion and love and trying to understand and truly minister to them, that's another way of doing warfare as well, is to speak truth into the lies and bring clarity for people who are genuinely hurting. So I think it's just like anything else. I mean, think about a pandemic, right? You wanna go to war with this disease

for the sake of the people who are suffering with it, right? Because you wanna, but if somebody comes to you with the disease, you're going to try to treat them. You're going to give them compassion and hope and help and medicine and whatever it is, but you're going to war against this disease. And so that's kind of the way I see it. One of the distinctions that we make in the book is we distinguish between the deconstructor and deconstructionists. And the deconstructionists are those who we we have labeled leading the movement. Okay, these are the wolves. They are not hurt sheep.

They're not doubting sheep. They're not questioning sheep. These are wolves. And there's a way you respond to wolves. Again, this is the war metaphor isn't something Cooper came up with. It's not something Childers or Barnett came up with. This is Paul's language, right? The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. So we are, we are standing strong and firm, ready for battle against those wolves,

because we know those wolves are trying to lead the sheep away. And the way they do that is with false ideas, with bad arguments. And so when I get the red pen out, I got no problem red penning naked pastor and his, because he's got 120,000 followers on Instagram and he is leading people to the slaughter. This is a wolf who's feeding on the sheep. Now, of course, you wouldn't characterize it that way, but that's what is a wolf who's feeding on the sheep. Now, of course, you wouldn't characterize it that way, but that's what he is. And that's what he's doing. Now, when a 14 year old tweets something, I'm not getting the red pen out, you know, because I want to like, you know what I'm saying? Like that's people who know me and they know my heart. No, that is not, you know, Tim actually is a lover, not a fighter. Okay. I'm Canadian. You know, I'm a relatively, you know, I want to be liked know i'm a relatively you know i want to be liked

by people i you know this kind of thing and so i i will sit down and we talk we open the book actually with a conversation i had with um one of my friend's kids 14 years old and he's struggling he's on tick tock and he's watching these videos and he's like tim you know i'm losing friends here over my faith maybe we got it wrong and so we're kind of walking we walked through that together um just at a coffee shop it was very sweet time but i didn't have a sword out while i was doing that i was man this is a kid who because he held to a biblical view of sexuality he was losing his friends literally being called homophobic. No one at high school, public high school, he goes to would talk to him. And so this was like real life. This was

tragic. I mean, I felt for this kid. He felt completely alone. And this is like, okay, this is where the rubber meets the road for this kid. Is he going to continue to remain faithful to Jesus and at the same time lose these friends just because of his beliefs? Or is he going to compromise those beliefs, get his friend back, but be unfaithful to God? So again, that's not a war situation. That's get the tissues out, you know, that kind of thing. And just being there for him and trying to answer those questions. But But I mean, advice is cheap, right? I'm not I'm 40, not 14. And so I you know, I got friends and and I'm not worried about losing some, you know, like, you know, I got kids, I got, I got stuff going

on. That's, you know, it's, it's hard enough, you guys know, keeping keeping friendships as we go here and like the business of life. Whereas when you're 14, that's everything. That's everything. So yeah. So that distinction, I think is helpful. Deconstructors versus deconstructionists. And you respond to those appropriately depending on that situation. I think that's really helpful that it's not either or spiritual warfare or loving somebody. It's both. It depends on the context on the relationship and the timing. I think that's valuable. And that's the trick being Christians, truth and grace. In some ways, your book is kind

of a 30,000 foot view of this movement, of how things have changed, kind of a cultural look at it. Whereas the book I wrote with John Marriott really is the book I wish somebody had given me 25 years ago when I was questioning my faith. So in some ways, we're writing to different people in different contexts, which does shape the way you approach and frame an issue. Now, I want to ask you, I'll come back to you, Lisa, a controversial statement in your book. I want you to unpack this. And like you said, every line in here I know is very intentional. You said the deconstruction movement isn't about submitting to the truth. Instead, it's about

people choosing their own truth. Now, let me read it again. And I know you know this line, but some people listening are going to say, wait a minute, I'm just following what I think is true. This is going to trigger some folks. So you said the deconstruction movement isn't about submitting to the truth. It's about people choosing the truth. Tell me what you mean by that and give me some cases or maybe evidence to back up why you characterize the movement that way well i'll tell you about an article i wrote a couple of years ago maybe a year ago now uh and i wrote it for the gospel coalition about how why we should not redeem the word deconstruction and in that post i referenced uh one of the deconstructionists uh on tick tock she's really popular her name's melissa stewart and she had um you know the deconstructions were just tearing my article apart it was just you know like just triggered whatever happened in there but she kind of came on twitter and said no actually listen to what she's saying she's saying deconstruction is not about having correct theological beliefs because i actually agree with that because i had quoted her on the ex-evangelical

podcast where she said you know my best my biggest experience in this space was, um, just meeting people and hearing their stories. It wasn't about fixing your theology or getting correct theology. It was about just walking through this together and in this kind of community. And I thought that I really appreciated the way that she worded that because that really reflected what I mostly see in the deconstruction hashtag is you see people basically saying, we're not going to tell somebody whether or not what they believe is right or wrong. We're not going to try to lead them to what is, you know, quote unquote, true or false beliefs. We just, we just want to hear your story. What resonates with you? Where do you want to land? What do you think works for you? What resonates

in your heart and in your spirit? And, and that's all over the deconstruction hashtag and i think that melissa stewart had put it really well and so she actually was kind of interesting how she went on twitter and said no actually i think i think she's right about this and so i thought that was kind of a huge win because i think she was able to see past how they're supposed to think about the article and what i was really actually saying was that I'm agreeing with you in the deconstruction hashtag I don't I don't think deconstruction is about saying okay are you are your beliefs correct more is it have become whole has has your beliefs and your heart all kind of been integrated into one holistic you know being that's really more the goal in the deconstruction hashtag rather

than hey you know great question if you ever have a conversation with a being. That's really more the goal in the deconstruction hashtag rather than, hey, you know, great question. If you ever have a conversation with a deconstructionist, Sean, might be to ask them, you know, if they were to push back on what we're saying right now, or if you were to suggest that and they push back on it, just say, okay, well, let me ask you a question. If you did have access to what the creator of the universe says about sexuality and you didn't like it would you still believe it would you follow that great question because you know that i think that would really indicate whether or not this is about correct beliefs or if it's about really what

resonates in my own heart i i love that question i've asked this to a group of atheists probably a dozen years ago kind of of a, there's probably about 12, a skeptics group that invited me in and asked the question, I said, if there were a God who existed, would his opinion be more important than yours? And I was stunned. They're like, I don't know. What's this God like? I'm not sure.

What is his opinion? And just, I'm like, wow, this is the heart of the difference. Is there an authority outside of me? Will I submit to this authority? So one of the things you argue, Tim, I want you to weigh in here is that at the root of this really is biblical authority, isn't it? Yeah, totally. I actually think that, I mean, I was going to pull up a tweet. I took a screenshot just this morning that I saw. And basically the person said, according to the Bible, and they crossed out Bible, they had an orange pen, not a red pen, crossed out Bible. And then they put, you know, a book written by an ancient book written by men that was passed on by whoever,

and it just went on like that, you know, it's a human book. And then it said in the kind of the comment, the kind of the tag underneath said, if the Bible said that, um, you know, uh, affirming that we, that we shouldn't affirm queer people, then I wouldn't care. If the Bible said we should affirm queer people, I wouldn't care either. So it was like, I don't care that the base, the bottom line was, I don't care what the Bible says. I'm going to determine what's true. Along the lines of the question that Elise asked and you asked, I've been thinking about this too. And I often wonder, are there any beliefs that, I would ask

maybe a progressive Christian or someone who's deconstructed, but still maybe thinks that there's a God and that there's some moral rules to follow or something, ask them the question, is there anywhere that what you believe about God and his, you know, his teaching, his commands, is there anywhere where it disagrees with your own beliefs? Or are they all the same? Like, are all your beliefs the exact same as what Jesus believes or what you think God believes? Because frankly, there are things that I, there are commands and there are doctrines that I don't necessarily like.

You know, for example, the doctrine of hell, that I still believe because Jesus taught the reality of hell. And so who am I, right? I may not like something, but that doesn't change reality. I think that kind of going back to this whole idea of truth, a couple of things came together when we were researching this book. I know, Sean, I think you probably do this in your talks too. Did you do the ice cream versus insulin kind of the truth test? Sean O So, and you know that when you do the kind of the truth test and you ask the question, say, you know, um, abortion is wrong. Is that an ice cream subjective claim

that just depends on you? Or is it an insulin claim, like an objective claim that depends on something outside of you on reality. And, and when you make a moral claim, oftentimes, I mean, we do this in churches, the the room, the hands go up for ice cream, it's a subjective thing. And the same is true when it comes to a lot of religious claims. If I put up Jesus is the only way. Yeah, ice cream is what they yell. And so it, it, what kind of like this is where the coin kind of fell in the meter for me. And I think for Elisa too, it was like, there's, it's no surprise that people

are using the word deconstruction and this idea, again, this has postmodern roots. I get faith deconstruction, postmodern deconstruction. They're kind of two different things, but they actually are related. It's not surprising that people are talking the way they talk in the deconstruction world about preferences and feelings. And that's just true for you, but that's not true for me. It's not surprising because our culture has been so influenced by this subjective way of thinking about morality and religion. And so, you know, when you bring up, you know, Jesus being the only way, that isn't considered an objective truth claim. That is considered a subjective ice cream claim. And since it's a subjective ice cream claim, I'm going to deconstruct it.

Well, what does that mean? Well, on our definition, that means you call it toxic and you choose whatever you prefer. At the end of the day, whatever is true for you. And so we think that this idea of relativism and subjectivism and deconstruction actually kind of come together and make sense of everything we're seeing in the culture. You know, it's interesting, this question of authority, you guys point out so well in the book, and I just resonated with this. We all have an authority. The question is not if, it's what. Is it culture? Is it the self? Is it the word of God? And the

deconstruction movement, and frankly, I told my wife, I've been thinking about a lot about the last week or two, how little fear of the Lord there is in just taking scripture and making it a wax nose. And yes, I do see this in the deconstruction movement. I see it amongst a lot of evangelicals too. So I don't want to poke somebody where we are not doing this better ourselves. But at its root, is the Bible the inspired word of God? Do we conform our lives to it or do we not do so? I think it's at the heart of it. And you guys lay that out well. I have two last questions for I know I'm pushing the time here. I literally got lost in time. But I'm curious, both of you could weigh in what questions you would ask somebody who's deconstructing. And I'm curious, both of you could weigh in. What questions you would ask somebody who's deconstructing? And I'll tell you a couple of the questions that I like to ask. When someone

comes to me and says they're deconstructing, what do you mean by this? And then I listen and I ask a lot of questions. For example, so some people deconstructing are part of this community you're describing. Some are completely separate from it, of course. If they're a part of this community you're describing. Some are completely separate from it, of course. If they're a part of this community, I'll just simply say, is this a healthy community positively encouraging you towards discovering truth and becoming a better person? Is this movement based upon rejecting something else and critiquing it, the best posture to take. And I'll ask questions like, do you really understand the faith that you have left behind? Are there any other questions, either of you, this is an open question, so to speak, like to ask when you're in conversation

with deconstruction, somebody who's deconstructing just to bring clarity? Well, I think one of the questions I like to ask, or is any kind of question that's going to get at the heart of where the doubt is coming from, because I met with somebody who was deconstructing and they thought that their deconstruction was purely intellectual and so but as i asked more questions that what they were doubting it wasn't like oh well i listened to this you know scientific lecture on evolution and i couldn't reconcile that with what the bible said and i really would love resources on how to do that and i mean you might hear some of that but most often moral sort of objections and so what I pointed out to this person, what, what is your issue? Well, it's with the Bible, the reliability of the Bible. Well, can you be more specific? What is, what is the actual issue? Well, I just, um, I don't understand

God's character as he's written about in the, well, that's not an intellectual problem. That's a moral problem. That's an emotional problem. And so if we can get to the bottom of what, so really, is it that your brain, your intellect is having trouble reconciling facts in reality with what the scripture says, or is it that you're really just uncomfortable with something or it's rubbing you in the wrong way? And I think those are really important to diagnose even how to go about helping the person that you're talking to. I absolutely love that. And the way I frame this is it's the question beneath the question. And what we say is often not the heart of the issue.

Before we wrap up, any last thoughts, Tim, or questions that you would want to add? Yeah, just an example of what you're describing. I was in Texas doing a Q&A after a talk, and a guy came up and he basically said he was on a truth quest, and he'd been on a truth quest for three or five years. And so we went back and forth on a couple things, and started i was answering some of his he said that faith was just blind and i said no actually i think biblical faith isn't blind here's some examples from scripture he kept pushing back i thought man i'm spinning my wheels here and then i used a question that actually i got from frank turek and he says you know if christianity were true would you become a christian and without even thinking he said no, no, he said, no. And I couldn't. And then he literally took a step back.

Like you could see that he was he was thinking like, wait a second, because he shot back. He kind of spoke too soon. Then he he kind of gathered himself for a second and said, well, I become a Christian, but I wouldn't worship God. And I thought, man, this is telling me something. There's there's more going on than just a truth quest here. And so this is where the question that I would want to ask, and maybe it's not really a question, but it's just, tell me your story.

You know, I just want to listen. I love it. I just want to know. So you're deconstructing. Okay. We define what that means. How did we get, how did you get here? You know, what's life been like?

Have you get here? You know, what's what's life been like? Have you experienced suffering? We know that suffering and evil are big. It's a big deal for everyone. But it's it plays a role in these deconstruction stories, testimonies. And so you know, I want to know exactly what's going on. Is it just an intellectual thing? Or is there more going on? The only way I'm going to know that is if they share their story. And so my goal in that moment isn't to answer all their challenges. I just want to listen. I just want to find out where they're coming from. Well done. Well, I want to commend your book, The Deconstruction of Christianity, which is coming out soon. It's well-researched. You guys position yourselves beautifully in the sense of we're going to stand for truth, but we want to lean in and engage people. Even at the end of the day, if people differ over the term, you've created

conversation, you've made your case, and we need to be careful and thoughtful about the words that we use. So again, pick up a copy of The Deconstruction of Christianity. And both Elisa and Tim are on YouTube. If you follow my channel and don't follow them, shame on you. Hit subscribe right now. Follow both of them. And if you want to study apologetics, come study with us at Biola. We've got the top rated full distance program completely online. Information is below. Would love to have you in class.

Both of you, thanks for your time. I got lost in the conversation and pushed it, but thoroughly enjoyed this. Appreciate you guys coming on. Thanks, Sean.