Deconstruction Defined

Dannah Gresh: Our culture tells us we’re perfect, that we only need to look inside ourselves to find all the answers, but Alisa Childers reminds us that’s not reality.

Alisa Childers: We all know that inside there’s something wrong with us. The good news is that there is something outside of you that you need to become whole, to become healed, and that is Jesus!

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe: And the Truth That Sets Them Free, for November 2, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: In recent years you may have heard the term “spiritual deconstruction.” It has become a popular term and is something of a trend in the Christian world. People talk about “deconstructing their faith,” or “going through a deconstruction experience.”

Our guest today is going to help us understand what deconstruction really is, and she’s also going to share her own experience about when she found herself in a place of doubt. You may know someone who’s facing a lot of doubt about their faith or who’s struggling to believe that what God's Word says is really true.

Maybe it’s a son or a daughter or a relative or a close friend or somebody at work . . . or maybe that person is even you. If you’re wrestling with questions, or you want to know how you can help those around you who are in that place, you don’t want to miss today’s conversation with Dannah Gresh and Alisa Childers.

You may have heard of Alisa in the past, as she’s been a Christian recording artist, but today she’s an apologist, and she’s written a book called Another Gospel? The subtitle is A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progessive Christianity. Now that’s a long title, but it’s a really important one.

It’s important for those of us who know Christ to be seeking the truth of God’s Word as we respond to what some would call “progressive Christianity.” You’ll learn more about that today. Here’s Dannah to start us off.

Dannah: I don’t know the last time I was this excited about a conversation in this studio than I am today, because I think there are so many people listening right now who love the Scriptures but they know someone who is really questioning them and their hearts are breaking. They’re wondering how to talk that person.

My guest today is going to help you do that, and do it with confidence. Alisa Childers . . . you may know her as an apologist if you’re young, but if you’re not young you might know her as a contemporary Christian music artist. And if her name doesn’t ring a bell, maybe ZOEgirldoes. I was a ZOEgirlfan, Alisa, a fan! I’m a little fan-girling right now! 

Alisa: That’s great! It’s great to be here. I am very excited about this conversation. I’ve been looking forward to it. 

Dannah: You know where I want to start? One of my favorite things to ask people is, “I want to hear when you came to know Jesus as your Savior.” Take us back to that day.

Alisa: Well, that was a very, very long time ago. I have known Jesus my whole life, in fact I don’t actually remember a time in my life before I was aware of the fact that Jesus was real, that He was God, that He was my Savior, that the Bible was God’s Word. 

I was convinced deep in my bones, as far back as I can remember, that all of that was true. I committed my life to Jesus at a very young age. In fact, I remember my mom coming into, I think it was the living room, and she asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart (or however she worded that).

I remember feeling a little bit confused, because I already had a relationship with Jesus. I already knew Him and had trusted Him for my salvation. So, of course, I prayed with her and sort of made that the official day. But yeah, the Lord has been with me my whole life. 

It’s not been a perfect ride. (I just turned forty-seven a couple days ago.) I can just honestly say I have tasted and seen, and the Lord is good. He has never left me, and He has relentlessly pursued me, and dragged me along at times. I’m just so thankful for His faithfulness and goodness and His love.

Dannah: You said your mom was talking to you about your faith. What kind of faith did you see your parents live out as a child?

Alisa: That’s a great question, because I think one of the things that makes my story unique in some way. I did go through a faith crisis as an adult, but as a child, my parents modeled for me a really authentic faith.

What I mean by that is, not that they were perfect—they certainly weren’t—but they modeled what it was like to walk with Jesus every day. That meant reading the Bible, studying the Bible, with us. I have three sisters, and we would have regular times of Bible study together as a family. 

It meant loving other people. My parents had us out working the soup lines at the Fred Jordan Mission in Los Angeles where I grew up. In the summers my dad would take us out, and we would do what we called street ministry. 

We would set up some sort of a concert stage, and we would sing and go out into the crowd and share the gospel and witness to people. I was doing this at a very, very young age. But I think the other thing that they really modeled for me was repentance.

I think that was maybe the key to really showing me what an authentic faith looked like. Like I said, they weren’t perfect, but when there were mistakes made—when they sinned against us or each other—there was repentance, verbal repentance and action repentance. And so all of that was a real integral part of the Christianity that was handed down to me.

So I think, where I said it was a unique part of my story, is that I had generally a good experience with Christianity as a kid and even as a teenager and into my young adult life. I realize now, in listening to a lot of people’s stories, that’s not the case for everybody, not everybody had . . .

Again, it wasn’t a perfect experience, of course. The church is made up of a bunch of sinners, so it’s not going to be perfect. But for the most part, the Christians in my life were people who lived what they said. 

They loved other people, they loved God, they loved His Word, and it was just a pretty good experience with Christianity. I think I didn’t have any reason to want to intellectually doubt it. That wouldn’t come until much later in my story.

Dannah: Tell us about that, because you did come to a place where deconstructionism and progressive Christianity started to create some doubts in your heart. When did it start to unravel?

Alisa: You mentioned that I was in ZOEgirl, so I spent about seven or eight years touring around the country and even other parts of the world getting to sing songs to young girls, encouraging them to stay strong in their faith with Jesus. It was such a great experience.

And still even in my mid-twenties, I never had any intellectual doubts about what I had believed my whole life. So it wasn’t really until we came off the road and my husband and I were attending a nondenominational evangelical church right in the heart of the Bible belt here in middle Tennessee, where we live. 

We loved this church! We connected with the pastor, we connected with the people. About eight months after I had started attending this church, the pastor singled me out. He invited me to take part in what he described as a smaller study, a discussion type of group.

It was going to be in this group that we were going to go deep, we were going to learn all the things that you would learn had you gone to seminary. This sounded very exciting to me because I was in a phase of life where I had just spent all this time touring around, and I had never really engaged the intellectual side of my faith.

I had a new baby at home. So you know new moms, you spend a lot of time with that baby and you’re looking for some interaction with some adult humans sometimes, and so that sounded great, too. I remember coming to the first class and the pastor said, “What we talk about in this class, we’re going to keep in this class, we’re not going to talk about it outside.”

He let us know that one thing that the rest of the church was not aware of—that he was an agnostic. And that really shocked me, of course, when I heard that, because I thought, Wow, a pastor who isn’t sure about what he believes about the question of God and Christianity?

But immediately I felt like, “Oh don’t be so judgmental, he’s just being honest; this is a safe place,” all of that. So I kind of pushed those thoughts down and said, “Just keep an open mind, and let’s just see where this goes.”

Well, I wouldn’t find out until years later that he had already been through this process called “deconstruction.” He was hoping to get people in his church into deconstruction so that he could convert them to a more progressive type of Christianity. 

He actually made a video a couple years ago saying that that was his goal, and that makes perfect sense, because he was really, really good at it. So in this class, everything I had ever held precious and dear about Jesus and God and the Bible . . . I’m not talking about secondary issues or how we baptize people or something like that, but I’m talking about the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, the Deity of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth. These kinds of things were sort of picked apart.

Dannah: The authority of Scripture?

Alisa: Oh, big time! The Bible was the biggest thing under attack, if I’m honest. Think about it: if you can get the Bible out of the way, you can make up your own rules. You can create a religion in your own image if you don’t have the authority of the Bible over you. 

 

That was a huge thing. All these beliefs were sort of deconstructed, they were picked apart, they were explained away. 

Dannah: Can you define deconstruction for anybody who’s heard the word and they’re like, “I hear that a lot; I’m not quite exactly sure what it means?” How would you define it? 

Alisa: Yes, that’s an important thing to do, because the word “deconstruction” is being used in various ways right now. It’s being used in a wide variety of ways. Some people, when they say the word, they don’t mean anything more than just, “Hey, I’m taking what I believe, and I’m lining it up with Scripture. I’m deconstructing any views that don’t line up with Scripture.”

People can mean anything from that to completely walking away and falling away from the faith. Typically, though, I prefer not to use the word deconstruction when we’re talking about some sort of healthy process of refining our beliefs or reforming our beliefs to Scripture, or lining up what we believe with reality.

I think those are things Christians should always be doing, that’s something that every Christian should do every single day.

Dannah: That’s what the Bereans did, with Paul. They said, “Let’s see what we think about this guy Paul. We’re going to read the Scriptures!” (see Acts 17:9–11)

Alisa: I don’t think we should call that deconstruction, because deconstruction in this context is a newer word and it is really born out of postmodernism, which is marked by an approach to truth that would say that there is no objective truth, or if there is objective meaning in the text or objective truth to be known about God, nobody can actually claim to know it. And so that’s really what marks what we see emerging as the deconstruction movement online, and it really is a movement. 

Some people say, “It’s not a movement, because people end up in different places.” And that certainly is true, but the one thing it all has in common is that it is a movement away from historic Christianity. 

I have never to this day met somebody who said, “Yeah, I deconstructed my faith,” but yet they still hold to the authority of Scripture. In the couple of cases where somebody was a little cloudy, they agreed, “You know, I shouldn’t use the word deconstruction if I still hold the authority of Scripture.” I think that was something else that happened to me. 

So I think, really simply put, deconstruction is the process of systematically dissecting and pulling apart your beliefs. Often that has been accompanied with discarding the authority of the Bible, moving to more of a personal conscience type of authority.

Dannah: So it’s a red flag word; we should definitely be discerning when we hear that word. So this pastor was intentionally inviting you in to deconstruct your faith. I think anytime a pastor starts out with, “What we talk about in this room we’re not going to talk about outside of the room,” that should be a red flag, too.

Alisa: Agreed! 

Dannah: So take us further in this story. You’re hearing these things. He’s trying to get you to question the authority of Scripture, question the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, the virgin birth. What’s happening in your heart?

Alisa: Well, while I was in the class, I was kind of in fight mode. I would go home and I would Google stuff. I would come back, and I would try to refute what he was saying. But I had never heard any of this stuff before, so I didn’t know where to look for answers. I didn’t know if there were answers. I didn’t even know that these were questions people were asking. 

Certainly, I didn’t think these were questions that people who called themselves Christians would be asking. That was naivete on my part, of course, but I did my best to refute what he was saying. But it really wasn’t until after we decided to leave the church . . . 

Of course, after me leaving the class, I found myself isolated again. Then all of the doubts that he had sown and that the discussions in the class had sown in my own heart—that I had pushed away because I was fighting—all of those sort of took root in my own heart and they grew. Then it propelled me into my own process of deconstruction.

I look back on it now. I didn’t know that word. I had never heard it before; it wasn’t really a thing yet. All I knew was, I was losing my faith and particularly losing my faith in the Bible. So, it was like a snowball. 

I describe it in my book as being plunged into a stormy ocean of doubt, with these tidal waves crashing over my head. I just trying to keep my head above water. I didn’t know where to go to find answers. I remember crying out to the Lord and really feeling like I was just talking into nothingness. I did not really think He was there.

And I just said, “If you exist, if everything that I’ve believed my whole life is true, then You have to show up!” But I needed Him to show up in an intellectual way, not just with feelings or some sort of transcendent experience. I’d had plenty of those, I was covered in that department. 

And so, God was so faithful to lead me to the study of apologetics. It was years of reconstructing, years of rebuilding, wounds healing. I came out on the other side of it six or seven years later, really settled on the fact that, “Yeah, those core beliefs that I was given as a child, those are true in reality! That’s not just true for me. Those are true in reality for everyone.” 

I made some course corrections along the way, some beliefs, maybe, I was handed that I decided weren’t as biblical as others. There was a lot of that going on, a lot of reformation going on.

But that core, that core gospel I was given, I came on the other side of it saying, “It’s true!” And the Bible stood tall above the rubble of accusations brought against it!

Dannah: Okay, I have questions swirling through my head. I have a thought first. One of the thoughts I have is, what you did in that process was you ran to the Lord and you said, “Help me!” What an important thing to do! 

I just want to point out that you said, “Lord, I’m calling upon You. I don’t even know if You’re listening, but prove yourself.” And we can do that. But then you cooperated with Him by pressing into resources. I think that’s what we’re supposed to do.

I think what you’re doing is what we read about in 2 Corinthians 10:4, that you were taking every thought captive. That Scripture reads, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” That’s why we have to call upon the Name of the Lord and say, “Help! I’m fighting a battle here that is not physical. It’s not really a mental battle. It’s a spiritual battle at its core: ‘Help me, Jesus!’” 

Then you took time to learn, “How do I destroy these arguments and these opinions raised against the knowledge of God?” You said you got into that class and you thought, I don’t know what the answers to these things are!

Many of us are feeling that way when we hear terms like deconstruction or progressive Christianity. And that can sometimes sound like a good thing. It’s presented in a good light. What do you think when you hear the words “progressive Christianity?” 

Alisa: Well, that phrase has a particular meaning to me, because the church that I was at where this whole process happened, years later went on to rebrand themselves as a “progressive Christian community.” By this point my faith had reconstructed, but I remember thinking that was the first time I’d heard that phrase.

At that point I thought, “Okay, I need to figure out what this is, what this progressive Christianity is.” So for a couple of years, I read all of the progressive Christian books I could in that amount of time. I listened to a bunch of their podcasts and read their blogposts. I was just trying to get my hands around, “What is this movement of progressive Christianity?”

A lot of Christians, I think, when they hear that phrase, they might think it’s a political term, or they might think progressive Christians are just a group of Christians who are embracing more grace in their lives, or maybe they’re just opening their minds up on a couple of social issues or something like that.

What people need to understand—and this is why my book is called Another Gospel?—is that progressive Christianity is not just a group of Christians who are changing their minds on a couple of things. This is a different religion.

This is a religion that gives you a different God; it’s a different Jesus; it’s a completely different gospel—and it’s not a gospel that can save you. That’s what I hope to open people’s eyes up to, that while they call themselves progressive Christians, it’s neither progressive—it’s actually very regressive to old heresies—and it’s not Christian!

I use the phrase because that’s how people understand the movement—with that term—but people need to understand it is not Christian; it’s a completely different “gospel.”

Dannah: To the points you made, one of them had a lot to do with the gospel. You mentioned atonement. Let’s define “atonement” first, just to make sure. Let’s go back to Vocab 101 for the Christian Faith. What is atonement?

Alisa: Atonement is a word that is generally used to refer to what Jesus accomplished on the Cross. In the Old Testament there were sacrifices: there was a Day of Atonement, there was the guilt offering. There were lots of different offerings, but there was the guilt offering, the sin offering.

This is where a lamb or a bull would be brought and slaughtered, the blood poured out on the side of the altar, to make atonement for the sins of the people. In the Hebrew it connotes cleansing from sin. In the English it sort of means “at oneness,” so it’s being reconciled to God, being at one with God.

But it really is a term that’s an umbrella term for lots of different ways that the Bible talks about what Jesus accomplished on the Cross. There are views in the Bible that talk about Jesus dying and rising to defeat the power of sin and death. And yes, we affirm that, that’s what He did, that is biblical.

There is ransom language in the Bible; we affirm that. There is moral influence theory that talks about Jesus being an example of forgiveness for us to follow. Certainly He is that, one hundred percent. But there is one way the Bible talks about the atonement that is denied in progressive Christianity, and it’s really the foundational view. If we don’t have it, then we don’t have Christianity. 

The idea that Jesus died in our place as a substitute, and then implicit in all of that is that He took the punishment for our sins upon Himself, paying the price that we could not pay. This is what is largely denied in progressive Christianity.

Dannah: A piece of Scripture that comes to my mind when you talk about that is 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 12: 

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

Okay, we could start right there to say, “Uh, yeah, maybe this progressive Christianity is off its rocker.” 

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. (vv. 12–13)

We’ve got nothing without atonement! We’ve got nothing without the sacrifice of Jesus.Now let me read verses 17–19.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only . . . 

Which I think, a lot of times, progressive Christianity is about solving the problems of our heart, right now, bringing peace to our heart right now. 

If in Christ we have hope in this life only we are of all people most to be pitied. 

How pitiful our faith is without the atonement of Jesus Christ! 

Alisa: Yeah, and I mean, this is something that gets argued against from all sorts of different angles. There’s an argument that says, “Well, the idea that Jesus paid the price for our sins, or took the punishment for our sins, this wasn’t even developed until the Middle Ages.” But it is right here in the words of Scripture.

I mean, Hebrews 9:22 says that, “. . . without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” There is no forgiveness. And you go on to the next chapter, Hebrews 10:9–10 says that, 

He does away with the first [talking about the first covenant] in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

It talks about Jesus making that final sacrifice once for all and then sitting down at the right hand of the Father. I don’t know how we can get away from that, but the only way you can is to discredit the Bible. And that’s so often what we see in progressive Christianity.

Dannah: I want to talk about that tomorrow. Can you come back?

Alisa: I can.

Dannah: I want to talk about that tomorrow. I also want to talk about how do we talk to our loved ones and our friends who are in some process of deconstructing their faith? They’re leaning into the progressive Christian theology.

As we talk about atonement and as we end today, what would you say to the person listening right now who has never heard what you and I just talked about: that Jesus died for her sins, that Jesus died so that those can be erased! Talk to her right now. What is her next step if she feels that tugging at her heart?

Alisa: This is one of my favorite things to talk about! We’re living in a culture . . .and you know, women, this is aimed at you. The culture is telling you you’re perfect just as you are. You are enough! 

All you have to do is plumb the depths of your heart and then you’re going to find a pot of gold there. You need to find that inner goddess, unleash her into the world, and just become who you are. But I’m telling you, that’s not reality, and I think deep down we all know that. 

We all know that inside there’s something wrong with us! I mean, just look throughout human history; there is something wrong with humans, and if we’re honest we know there’s something wrong with us, too.

Allie Beth Stuckey, in her book You’re Not Enough (And That’s Okay), said, “The self can’t both be the problem and the solution.” So the good news is that there is something outside of you that you need to become whole, to become healed, and that is Jesus!

Here’s why this is such good news: Jesus lived a morally perfect life. He lived the life that none of us could live up to, none of us can. As much as you tell yourself you’re enough and you’re perfect just as you are, you can’t be perfect. 

But Jesus was, and what He offers to you is the opportunity to repent of your sins, which means turn away from them and turn toward Him, trust in Him for your salvation. Then what happens, according to Scripture, is that the righteousness that He accomplished, that moral perfection that He accomplished when He lived on this earth, is actually put on to you so that when the perfect and Holy God looks at you, He doesn’t see a sinner anymore. He doesn’t see someone that He is separated from, because Jesus paid that price. 

He sees the righteousness of Jesus imputed—that’s the theological word—it gets imputed on to you. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t still struggle with sin; we all will for the rest of our lives. But positionally, before God, He sees the righteousness of Jesus covering you. I think that’s the best news ever! Because we all know in our own strength, we can’t do it on our own. But we have Someone who was absolutely perfect who already did it and then gives us His righteousness.

It’s a beautiful story. If you know you’re a sinner . . . That’s the thing I would say to everybody listening, “Ask God to show you if you’re a sinner, and He will.” But then you have this good news waiting for you!

Nancy: And that is indeed good news! Alisa Childers has been explaining how as a believer in Christ you get to live in His righteousness! As Alisa mentioned earlier, her book is called Another Gospel? You’ll find the link to that book in the transcript of today’s program at ReviveOurHearts.com.

You know, it’s easy to get bombarded with lies from the enemy. As we heard today, one of those lies is that, “We’re enough,” or “We can be perfect on our own.” But when we get our heads and hearts into God’s Word, when we turn our focus to the Lord and remember that He is in control, that Heaven rules, our perspective changes.

And that’s why we chose Heaven rulesas the theme for our 2023 ministry calendar from Revive Our Hearts. Each month of this calendar contains Scripture and quotes from my newest book Heaven Rules. And each page also includes photos of God’s creation that I had the joy of taking on my phone. 

I’m so thankful to be able to share with you, not only those photos that mean a lot to me but, even more importantly, these monthly reminders of what it means to live under Heaven’s rule. This calendar will be a means to help you dwell under Heaven’s rule all your life and to cling to the promise that God is sovereign and He reigns over all.

It’s our way of saying “thank you” when you send a gift of any amount to support this ministry and what God is doing through it in the lives of women all around the world. To make your donation, you can visit us at ReviveOurHearts.com, or give us a call at 1-800-569-5959. When you contact us, be sure to ask for your Heaven RulesCalendar.

Now, can asking questions about the faith be a good thing? Alisa Childers will be back tomorrow to tackle that topic and to continue today’s conversation about faith. As we wrap up today’s episode, once again here’s my cohost Dannah Gresh talking with Alisa Childers.

Dannah: I wonder if you’d maybe pray for that woman listening who’s like, “This is tugging at my heart; I need to do something about this!” 

If that’s you, I want you to know what you need to do is phone a friend—a friend that knows Jesus, a friend that you’ve seen in her life some of what you’re hearing in my heart and Alisa’s heart today.

You need help figuring all of this out, but what you need more than anything right now is to just call on the name of the Lord and say, “Jesus, help me! If you’re real, I need to know. I need You to bring clarity. I do feel my sinfulness, and I do think You died for that. Will You help me understand it fully and help me surrender my life to You?”

We’re going to pray for that for you right now. Alisa, would you pray?

Alisa: Father, we come to You with so much thankfulness in our hearts for the beautiful plan of salvation that You have laid out. Forgive us Lord when we think we know better. Forgive us for when we are ashamed of the gospel, which is such a beautiful message! I know to many in our culture it’s not a beautiful message, because they’re being told—and they’re promoting—lies telling everyone we’re perfect just as we are, and we just need to look into our hearts and find that pot of gold. 

But we know that if we do that, we’re going to continue to dig down and down and down. We’re going to find a sinner down there that still needs a Savior, and then in the meantime, there will have been all this wasted time.

So for the woman listening to this who is feeling the conviction of the Holy Spirit on her heart showing her, revealing to her that she is a sinner. We know that it is the Holy Spirit when it’s conviction and not condemnation, because You Word says that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (see Rom. 8:1). As You call people to yourself, it’s Your kindness that leads us to repentance (see Rom. 2:4). 

And so we pray, Lord, that conviction runs deep. It’s sharp and it hurts sometimes, but Lord it’s always at the end of it with hope and life, because that’s what is offered to us, that we can repent from our sins, turn from them, turn toward You, trust in You to save us, and knowing that we can’t do it in our own strength.

I think sometimes we think repentance means picking ourselves up by our bootstraps and doing it all by ourselves. That’s not repentance. Repentance is literally falling at Your feet saying, “I can’t do it! I don’t even want to do it unless You make me want to do it. Please, turn my heart, make me want to repent!” 

Sometimes that’s as much as we can pray. But for every person listening, may they begin that process today by saying, “Lord, I want to be convicted over my sins. I want to be convicted! However far back we need to go, but please do that work in my heart!” And do that work, Lord, in every heart who’s listening. We ask all of this in the name of Jesus, amen. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants you to find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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