Navigating Faith and Doubt: Understanding Deconstruction in Christianity - With Alisa Childers

Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Alisa Childers, a renowned author who delves into the intricate world of deconstruction within Christianity. Alisa shares her unique insights and personal experiences, shedding light on the alarming trend of young people walking away from their faith. Together, we unpack the complex term "deconstruction," distinguish it from mere questioning, and discuss practical ways for parents and mentors to effectively support young people during these challenging times.

Alisa takes us on a journey through the philosophical roots of deconstruction in postmodernism and underscores the crucial role of biblical authority. Through compelling analogies and real-life examples, she illustrates the life-saving importance of addressing sin and salvation. We also highlight valuable resources like apologetics and historical evidence to bolster one's faith. Whether you're a parent, mentor, or someone wrestling with your beliefs, this episode equips you with the tools to navigate the choppy waters of deconstruction and stay grounded in your Christian faith.

Transcript

Rick Green

Welcome to the Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's the WallBuilders Show and we're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thanks for joining us. Today I'm going to have a special guest, that's well. She joined me in the tavern, which is my show I do for Warrior Poet Society Network and it's just too good of a topic not to share here on the WallBuilders Show. Alisa Childers, a great author and just some really powerful information. The book is called the Deconstruction of Christianity and we've watched this happen so much over the last few years and I've just been trying to get a handle on the terms, what these things mean, how they're managing to get so many young people to walk away from the faith, and Elise has got just a great perspective on this. So we're going to jump right into that interview. We're not going to have time to do the whole thing, but I think it'll give you at least a taste of it, enough that you're going to probably want to get her book and read it. Especially if you have young people in your life that are deconstructing, you need to be able to ask the right questions and to navigate this, because there's a lot of young people going through this. So anyway, we will jump into that interview. If you want to listen to the whole thing or watch the whole thing, it's on Patriot U, so you can go to patriotacademy.tv and see the full interview on Patriot U. Or if you're part of Warrior Poets Society Network, we've had John Lovell on here on WallBuilders a couple times. Fantastic guy. Does great work over there at Warrior Poets Society, so you can watch it there or you can watch it at the tavern, but today at least you'll get a taste of that. By the way, I'm Rick Green, America's Constitution Coach and a former Texas legislator, normally here with David and Tim Barton. David's America's premier historian and our founder of WallBuilders. Tim's a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and today we're just going to hear from Alisa in the tavern. So let's jump right into that interview.

And for those of you that are wondering, by the way, the Tavern it's called the tavern because of all the historical taverns that were so important in the revolutionary period. In fact, our show on the tavern next week is going to actually be with the Colt Heiss and I'm in Delaware at the spot man. I got to actually stand in the spot where the Constitution was first ratified, which was in a tavern in Delaware called the Golden Fleece Tavern. So there's just a lot of rich history there, with the Sons of Liberty, where George Washington actually said goodbye to his officers at that Francis Tavern, I believe it was. Anyway, we just love all of that history and love going to those places and I envision, when I'm doing the show, The Tavern. I'm envisioning that it's like in the revolution You're fighting away to the corner of the tavern and having a secret conversation with folks about what we can do to save the nation, what we can do to save liberty, and that's the type of conversations that we're having in the tavern and they're just not secret. So we share them here with you on WallBuilders as well. All right, we're going to jump right in.

This is Alisa Childers with me in the tavern. Alisa Childers with us. I found her on Cooper's you know Cooper Stuff podcast, I think the best podcast in the country. I tell John all the time and he's like why do you like my podcast so much? But anyway, Alisa, thank you for coming on and thanks for your new book on deconstruction. You've got some really good answers for not only the young people of today, parents, everybody that's concerned about where the country's going and where Christianity's going. So anyway, thanks for some time with me today.

Alisa Childers

Oh, I'm looking forward to it. And yeah, john is a very notoriously humble person. Like I'll text him every once in a while like hey, listen to your podcast. It was so good He'd be like you listen to my podcast? Just like so surprised.

Rick Green

Well, you know, cause? You've known him forever and he just has this knack for talking about these deep subjects and it's it's easy to listen, it makes sense, it's just good common sense. And so when he does, he'll do his commentary on some Constitutional issue and I'll text him and I'll be like John, that was amazing man, I'm around all these you know, hoity-toity senators and all these people that cannot explain it the way that you just did. So leave it to the rockers. Y'all are going to save the country before it's over.

Alisa Childers

Let's hope so.

Rick Green

The book is out, everybody, hopefully, will get a copy of it. We're going to talk about the need for this, not just for, like I said, parents or people concerned about the country. I want to talk first about the young people, because that's what we do at Patriot Academy, more than anything is work with 16 to 25-year-olds, and your book is just like I mean, when I listened to it I did it on Audible and man, I'm telling you, Alisa, I was like every kid that goes through my program I have 600 kids go through this summer needs to listen to this and needs to get a hold of this, and those of us that are working with them need to get a hold of it, because I'm all about questions, man. We've always did that with our own kids who are grown now.

Thomas Jefferson said to his nephew question with boldness even the existence of God, because then you'll believe even stronger once you go through that thought process. So I'm all for asking questions. What you revealed to me that I didn't even know was going on was something totally different. What they've done with this word deconstruction is very different than the idea of, of course, ask questions, of course challenge, of course dig deep. So let's just start with that. What's different about deconstruction now and what we've always encouraged our kids to do in finding their faith?

Alisa Childers

Right. Well, and this is the million-dollar question, because people are using the word deconstruction in so many different ways. If you ask especially students about the age that you're working with, if you ask 10 students what is deconstruction, you'll get 10 different answers. I've actually done this where I'll go speak to students and say I just want five people to raise your hand and tell me what you think deconstruction is, and very often they'll be giving complete opposite definitions. One person will say it's walking away from the faith and then the next person will say it's just asking questions and trying to figure out what you believe.

So it's this word that has gained a lot of popularity in the faith context, especially over the past I would say 10 years, and so my relationship with the deconstruction sort of movement has gone back even past 10 years, because I went through my own personal, pretty significant faith crisis over 10 years ago it's about 14 years ago now and this was a result of being a part of a small class in a church that would end up labeling itself a progressive Christian community, and that's what really woke me up and caused me to dig deep, and I honestly went to almost the edge of agnosticism myself and cried out to God if you're real, I need answers, and I studied for several years to try to figure out what I believed about reality. Well, in my first book, I described that using the word deconstruction, because that's what I thought happened that was the best word I had at the time.

I thought, well, I deconstructed. But unlike most of my friends who deconstructed, I came back to a biblical worldview, a historically Christian worldview. Well, when I started to talk about my quote unquote deconstruction online, the deconstructionist would say, no, you didn't deconstruct. And I would be like now that's interesting because I went through a very similar process that all of them went through, but we just landed in different places. And so I would ask them why do you think I didn't deconstruct? And they would say because you still hold quote unquote toxic theology.

And that's when I realized okay, so the deconstruction isn't just questioning your faith, it's not simply even the literal sense of the word, deconstructing the worldview your parents and pastors and churches gave you. And then you know, testing it against reality, looking for evidence, going to scripture, figuring out what scripture teaches on those things that's really not what's happening in the deconstruction hashtag. So I actually don't use the word deconstruction to describe what happened to me anymore. In fact, I say no, I actually didn't deconstruct, I thought I did. But now that I've really learned the real definition of deconstruction, I realize that's really not what happened to me. So my co-author, Tim, and I. In our book we define deconstruction as a postmodern process of rethinking your faith, but not regarding scripture as a standard. And we can dig down into that if you'd like to, because there's a lot in there.

It was very important we had that word postmodern in there and not regarding scripture as a standard for truth.

Rick Green

Well, you also said something that sounds to me like, for them at least, because they said you still held toxic beliefs that theirs is not a deconstruct and end up wherever you end up. It's almost a predetermined outcome for them that you have to end up without those beliefs that they say are toxic. Obviously, they're describing what we would say is truth, but that's a predetermined outcome then. So that's not deconstructing and then figuring it out, that's you're deconstructing so that you can go our path. That's what it sounded like to me.

Alisa Childers

Yeah, it's a very specific way of assessing your beliefs because it's not regarding scripture as a standard. It's really a shift of authority from an external source of authority for truth like objective truth outside of me: the subject. Now, that source of truth is moved in deconstruction to the inside, to where each individual person assesses beliefs, not based on whether or not they line up with what scripture teaches or even lining up with evidence you might find just looking out into the world. But in deconstruction people are looking to line up their spiritual beliefs with what resonates with their own personal conscience.

So that's where the word toxic comes in, because certainly I'm sure you don't want to hold toxic beliefs. I don't want to hold toxic beliefs, but we can't know what's toxic until we first know what's true, and that just is not a discussion that's going on in the deconstruction movement. So in the deconstruction movement it's just assumed, and I think this is where the postmodernism comes in, it's just assumed that hell isn't real, that humans are not sinful, and when you tell people they're sinners and that hell is a real place, well, that's a toxic belief that you have to deconstruct. You have to just tear that thing down, get rid of it, come into the freedom I'm speaking as a deconstructionist the freedom of letting go of those toxic beliefs that are really in their minds, just beliefs that the church invented to control people with fear, to prop up their institutions of power to protect their kind of control over you. So that's, I think, where that postmodern angle comes in, because it's very much coming from that oppressed versus oppressor narrative, where it's not about what's true, it's about what feels right to you.

Rick Green

Do they require, then for their deconstruction? That the Bible cannot be a source? In other words, it's not. Let's just look at the whole world. Let's study everything and find truth. It's okay now for you to really be able to look at everything. You have to completely reject traditional religion and church and the Bible, and if you bring any of that into your discovery process, you're poisoning the well. Is that kind of where they come from, or am I taking that too far?

Alisa Childers

Yes and no. So they use the Bible very conveniently I have found so. Some deconstructionists will appeal to what they believe their new interpretation of the Bible is saying. But I haven't found many deconstructionists that would say the Bible is authoritative, inerrant, it's the inspired word of God from Genesis to Revelation. They might assign kind of like in progressive Christianity. They might assign different levels of authority to different parts of scripture.

Or they might just try to argue their view from scripture, but it's a completely postmodern interpretation, like, I'll just give you an example. There's a progressive Christian quote unquote pastor I put that in quotations because he's not a pastor, but he is also kind of popular in this deconstruction movement. His name's Brandon Robertson and he had this viral TikTok video, I guess about a year ago, where he claimed that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and said Lazarus, come out, that that was Jesus sort of in a way prophesying the LGBTQ plus affirmation and inclusion of the church, and so that we can kind of take that scripture and reinterpret it to be like Jesus prophesying this you know, come out, come out of the closet, rather than raising, you know what it was actually about. So that's just kind of an example where they'll use it conveniently.

Rick Green

I saw a little bit of this. I don't know, maybe even seven or eight years ago, where I started hearing these stories about Jonathan and David that now they're supposedly homosexual in this love of each other. And now anybody that's a warrior will tell you you know, you love your brother in the trench and that you're fighting to defend your lives and your country. But I started hearing that from the LGBTQ community that Jonathan and David were homosexual. That's what that was all about. And so again, just using these areas of the Bible completely distorted, to basically get the foregone conclusion that they're after in the first place. Let me shift a little bit here. So if you're talking to a 20-year-old, that's they think they're deconstructing. What's the angle? What should I be asking them? What kind of questions can I ask them to help them think through this the right way?

Alisa Childers

Yeah, that's an important question because, especially with young people, if they're talking to you about their deconstruction, that's actually a pretty good sign. Because what we see in the deconstruction movement is people typically don't talk to their conservative Christian pastors and family. In fact they'll disconnect. They think those people are unsafe, they're toxic. I meet couples night after night where their adult children have deconstructed and then cut them out of their lives because they are quote unquote toxic people. So if a young person even says to you I'm in deconstruction, that's a really good sign that they're probably just defining it a different way. And that's because I've been kind of watching this movement for over 10 years. But what I have noticed in the the past two or three years is that there has been a slew of, albeit well-meaning Conservative evangelical leaders who have tried to sort of redeem the word and co-opt it and make it into something that can be positive, like books, will come out and say deconstruct in a healthy way, here's how to deconstruct but still remain a Christian, and things like that. And I get where they're coming from. I appreciate their heart, but I do think it's confusing a lot of young people.

Rick Green

They're trying to reframe it.

They're trying to reframe it the right direction. Yeah but it's, yeah, it's confusing. Yeah.

Alisa Childers

Right it is very confusing. Because if any of those young people go online, you’re going to find just these wormholes of misinformation that operate very much like propaganda, very cultish, so I just advise, let’s not even use the word unless we are talking about someone who's doing this particular method of switching the authority from the Bible and from even evidence to themselves and their own feelings? So the first question I would ask a young person, if they said they were deconstructing, is well, what does that mean? What do you think deconstruction is? When you say you're deconstructing, what are you doing? What is that? That's a really good first question.

Don't panic, because there really is a good chance that they just heard that word, or maybe they found one of these books or something and they think well, I want to make my faith my own, I want to test all things. I want to be like a Berean, I want to make sure that what I was taught as a child is true and that it's biblical. And so in that case, what I would do is kind of what you did at the beginning encourage them like that's a really good thing you're doing, it's a good thing to test all things. We want to make sure that everything we believe is biblical, lines up with God's word, and so I would encourage them that that's a really good process. And then possibly and this is what I do with students when I speak to them is I say I'd really like to persuade you to stop using that word for the process that you're actually going through.

And here are my reasons because the dominant manifestation of what's happening when people use that word is this over here, and it's a very specific thing. It's got a history, it has a philosophical history. It traced back to postmodern philosophers from the 60s. In fact, jacques Derrida is considered the father of deconstruction. I mean he was applying deconstruction to text and words. But there have been other guys, like John Caputo, who took the ideas of Derrida and frankly so has Rachel Held Evans and other progressives and applied them to Christianity and tried to bring that sort of postmodern hermeneutic into Christianity. So explaining to the young person like this word means something.

It means something in culture and it has a history in this context and there's no biblical precedent for it. The Bible doesn't say get saved, get baptized and then deconstruct your faith. No, it doesn't say that we don't need a postmodern word to describe a biblical process of discernment or sanctification or study and growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.

Rick Green

I like that discernment, sanctification. That discernment really is what we're encouraging in them. Deconstructing is what the left is using to destroy it. And you said something again back then when you first started talking about that. You said perfectly fine, to study these things and test them. And I heard in that, test them against something which would be the word of God right. So if we're testing that these teachings that we had, the plumb line hasn't changed, we're still saying the plumb line's there. We're not deconstructing the plumb line, taking the plumb line out.

We're saying the plumb line is still there and we're testing what we were taught as we grew up or in our church or in our particular philosophy, that it's still. Was that right? Is it okay to still say you know, listen, the plumb line still? We have to start with the agreement that God's word is what we are striving to study and to measure these things against.

Alisa Childers

Yeah, and so my co-author and I. We talked about the fact that because in my case I had been so this pastor in this class that I was in in the progressive church had so successfully deconstructed my trust in the Bible that I mean he had me intellectually persuaded that we didn't even have an accurate copy that it's myths and fables, contradictions and all that stuff.

Rick Green

Yeah, no, I went through all of that too. I know exactly what you're talking about, because I went through that at about 19.

Alica Childers

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there may be somebody out there going well, wait a second, but I am questioning the Bible. I don't know that I can trust the Bible. So what we see in the book is like that's okay too. But what we would encourage you to do is still don't use the word deconstruction. What you need is apologetics. You need to go investigate evidence. You need to go read a good book on the reliability of the Bible. Take a look at the archaeological evidence. Look at the markers of historical reliability.

There's so much great information out there that you can honestly test the Bible as well and books by people that went through that thought process, right I? Mean the Lee Strobles and all those people out there that were like, came and said we're going to investigate this thing, and they even came from a secular perspective. But as they investigated the evidence, came to the conclusion that, yes, it's true, our folks got to interrupt for a quick break. We'll be right back. You're listening to the WallBuilder Show.

Break

Rick Green

 Welcome back to the WallBuilder Show. Today we're sharing with you an interview I did with Alisa Childers when she visited me in the tavern, and we're talking about her book Deconstruction Very, very important book for right now, such a time as this. To be equipped, you need to know the right questions to ask of your kids and grandkids and other people in your life that are, quote unquote, deconstructing. And so let's jump right back into that interview.

Alisa Childers

Even if you doubt the Bible, you still don't have to deconstruct, because deconstruction, remember again, is when you shift authority to your own sort of idea of what you feel oppressed or liberated by, where you feel wholeness or you know harm. These are words that you hear a lot in the deconstruction hashtag, but, like I said, you can't know what's harmful unless you know what is true. And one example we give in the book is you know, if you imagine you walk into a room and there's somebody laying on the floor and another person is beating on their chest, I think everybody would agree that's toxic and harmful. Well, unless you know the whole scenario, which is that the person laying on the floor has just had a heart attack and the person beating on their chest is doing CPR compressions, and so it's like the same action. But the truth of the diagnosis determines whether or not the action is actually life-giving or harmful.

And so it's the same with telling people that there's a hell or that human beings are sinful. If it's true, it's the most merciful thing to tell someone that they're actually a sinner. If it's not true, then I might agree If humans are inherently sinful and the church is just trying to make them think they're broken so they can control them, I'd be against that too, but if we really are sinners and the gospel really is the cure, well then the most loving thing we could do is actually tell people that they're sinners, and so in that case it's not harmful. It might feel harmful, but it actually isn't harmful because of what's true.

Rick Green

Yeah, that's so good. I'm trying to remember and I should have gone back and reread as we got closer to the interview Do you give recommendations that people can then turn around and say, if you're questioning biblical authority, here's some good sources. If you think you're deconstructing, here's some good sources. I mean obviously your book. But do you also kind of say, hey, here's a good series to go through or a particular podcast to listen to, because I'm telling you, man, this is huge right now? There's a lot of people looking and I want to point them in good direction, because there's also a real danger of, like you were saying earlier, the left is really good at wordsmithing and really good at taking our words and starting that person thinking they've got a good source and going on a good path and by the time it's done, they've been totally deceived.

Alisa Childers

Yeah, so in our deconstruction book I'm trying to remember if we made a list of resources or not. I don't believe we did, but throughout the book we do recommend a few different books, like I think we do recommend one for biblical reliability books. I think we do recommend one for biblical reliability. But in my book my first book, another Gospel I do give a list of resources that helped me in my process at the end of the book and I also have one on my website. So if you go to alisachilders.com and click under resources and then I have podcasts, I have books and I have websites and general ministries that I think are doing a really good job in this area.

Rick Green

Awesome, that's huge, because I think I know you're hearing it and seeing it. But people are like where do I find truth anymore, man, I don't trust anybody. Everybody's lying to me now, and you know they don't trust the media, they don't trust government, they don't trust their pastor, they don't trust they, just, man, it's like quicksand, and so they're trying to find reliable sources. So if we've got their ear, that's the first one right. Have we built trust with them so that they're willing to take our advice? That's step one. But if we get there, I've got a lot of hungry young people that are willing to gobble that stuff up if I can just point them in the right direction.

Alisa Childers

Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's the thing too, is that a lot of people who are actually in deconstruction are not really hungry for the truth.

Rick Green

They just want an excuse to go sin.

Alisa Childers

Yeah, they're wanting to read the books by the deconstructionists. They're wanting to read all of the skeptical scholarship the Bart Ehrmans. They love anything that will tear down the Bible so that they don't have to yield their will to it. They don't have to bother any to it.

I haven't found many now, some certainly, but I haven't found many deconstructionists who are like well, I want to see what Lee Strobel has to say, or I'm going to read J Werner Wallace, or I'm going to read even somebody like a Peter Williams or a more conservative evangelical Bible scholar. They're not really imbibing those sources, they're just diving into the Bart Ehrmans and seemingly— they're purposely avoiding anything that might bring them back around.

Is what you're saying? I mean, they kind of know 

Alisa Childers

Certainly not everybody?

Certainly not everybody. In fact, one of the most famous deconstruction stories was Rhett from the Good Mythical Morning podcast and I do believe that he went through a lot of different you know. He read Tim Keller, he read Ravi Zacharias, he read, you know, different. He mentioned different apologists and different even scholarship that he read and then ended up basically kind of going a little bit postmodern even at the end if you pay attention. But there are certainly some who do, but for the most part you don't see them engaging with that stuff because they think it's harmful. They actually think it's toxic and they view apologetics like just circling the wagons For some reason. When you mentioned the word apologetics in that world, it's like they just all they think is like some kind of maybe wacky homeschool curriculum that tells a bunch of lies about science, and that's obviously not what we're doing. We're talking about people who are debating atheists, people who are debating scientists or debating other scientists. This isn't just like some kind of, you know, protecting your thing at all costs.

Rick Green

I mean this is like people actually in the public square having these conversations.

You said in that world, that deconstruction world is that. You know, in my mind I always thought that's just the university world, that's just the communist campuses that are indoctrinating kids in the classroom. It's beyond that. Now, right, I mean I'm guessing, or is that still kind of the hotbed of this stuff is coming out of the college campuses?

Alisa Childers

Well, sadly it's a lot of Christian colleges. I've had numerous people tell me that I mean, if I you know, they would name this Bible college, this one and this one that you would otherwise think are like that'd be a good place to send my kid. And they're like, yeah, they deconstructed my kid.

Rick Green

Our folks out of time for today. That was Elisa Childers. The rest of the interview is available right now at PatriotU. That's PatriotAcademy.tv, patriotacademy.tv, or you can go to Warrior Poets Society Network and watch it. At either of those places. Get the full interview in the tavern. I do that once a week, by the way, so it's a Tuesday night show for Warrior Poets Society and then we also post it at Patriot U, with a lot of great guests and longer conversations than what we can do here on the WallBuilders radio program. So check that out at Patriot U, which is patriotacademy.tv, and you can get the full interview with Alisa

But be sure to check out her book and just look for ways to ask the right questions. I know I keep repeating myself on that, but that's the key. It's not enough. You just can't how do I say this? You just can't pound the bully pulpit in these conversations. You have to ask questions that make people think through this process. All right, we're out of time for today, folks. We will be back with you tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening to the WallBuilders Show.