1. When I first heard of deconstruction, I started brainstorming for an article about how it’s a just another flashy trend. Even exvangelicals can’t shake the branding bug. About how everyone, no matter what denomination you come from, has to revisit the faith of their youth when they become an adult. When unformed or immature ideas of God and the world are abandoned in search of a deeper profundity, that’s just what life with God looks like. How faith is not a stagnant assent to propositional truths, but a daily reenactment of death to self and resurrection to new life, a taking up your cross daily. I imagine most people look back on the youthful faith with a mixture of nostalgia and nausea. Its simplicity and vitality counterbalanced against its naivety and ignorance.
I might still write that article, but in the mean time, Richard Beck offers his thoughts on the aspiring movement, which put into words many of the fragments I have stored on a sticky note. But Beck also goes further, I think, to identify a dynamic that many would recognize but few (myself included) would dare to say out loud:
There’s nothing wrong with deconstruction as a developmental process. As we mature spiritually we all have to confront beliefs about God, faith, and the church that were immature, in error, or dysfunctional. As Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” Spiritual growth is a developmental process.
Also, “deconstruction” isn’t a new thing. St. John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul, where immature and idolatrous conceptions of God are burnt away in a painful, disorientating process. During the dark night of the soul we feel God-abandoned, not because we are abandoned by God, but because the idol that we took to be God is “deconstructed.” This purgation leaves behind a void which we experience, for a season, as the death or loss of God.
My point here is that “deconstruction” is Biblically, theologically and spiritually legitimate. Vital, even. We shouldn’t stigmatize deconstruction out of hand. Every mature Christian has been involved in some deconstruction at some point or another.
And yet, I want to suggest that some (much?) of what is passing as “deconstruction” among ex-evangelicals perhaps really isn’t deconstruction but is, rather, people who were raised Republicans becoming Democrats. […]
Given all the drama around “deconstruction,” aren’t we mainly just watching former Republicans become Democrats? Because when I look at the ex-evangelical crowd, that’s mostly what I see as the end-game of the journey: A change of political parties. You were once a Jesus and John Wayne Christian, and now you’re a woke, social justice warrior Christian.
… I am deeply skeptical about calling this journey “deconstruction.”
Why?
Well, if changing from Republican to Democrat is ultimately what we mean by “deconstruction,” then God is still trapped by the idolatry of politics. We’ve changed teams, to be sure, but we’re still playing the same game. You can see this in how, among both evangelical and the ex-evangelical Christians, there is little daylight between their faith and their political views. The political views held by evangelicals are not prophetically troubled, criticized, or contradicted by Jesus. Neither are the political views held by ex-evangelicals prophetically troubled, criticized, or contradicted by Jesus. For both groups, Jesus legitimizes their preferred politics. For neither group does Jesus subvert their politics.
And that’s why I don’t think what is currently passing as “deconstruction” is truly deconstruction. People are just being angsty about changing political parties, describing a political change as a religious journey.
If what we are witnessing were truly deconstruction, real dark night of the soul journeys, we’d see a whole lot more people landing in strange, peculiar, and hard-to-define political locations. We’d see evidence of the Holy Spirit blowing people around unpredictably (i.e., not neatly captured by the confines of a two-party political system) rather than people simply shifting from one voting block to another.
Oh my. Without casting too wide a net here, the idea that exvangelicals are just switching sides while maintaining some fundamental similarities with evangelicals strikes me as obviously true — culture warriors of different stripes (though I’m sure there are at least a handful of law-gospel, exvangelical libertarians out there).
2. Elsewhere this week, our favorite post-punk turned philosopher Nick Cave offers a reflection on creativity and art that echoes much of Simeon Zahl and Sarah Hinlicky Wilson’s thoughts in the past week’s roundups. Cave is asked for advice from a reader in search of her artistic identity and Cave responds with his familiar brilliance:
You don’t need to know who you are to become an artist. Art moulds us into the shape it wants us to be and the thing that serves it best. As a songwriter, I have come to understand that the more I try to make art that somehow reflects what I perceive myself to be, or the identity I wish to project upon the world, the more my art resists. Art doesn’t like being told what to do. It doesn’t like me getting in the way. When I attempt to impose my will upon it, the work becomes diminished and art takes its better ideas elsewhere.
Art is a divine and mysterious force that runs through all of us. It is a thing of supreme spiritual potential that only comes into its true and full being if we abandon all those cherished ideas about who we think we are or are not. Art is entirely indifferent to our self-annihilating excuses, special case pleas and circumstantial grievances. We must cease to concern ourselves with our unique suffering — whether we are happy or sad, fortunate or unfortunate, good or bad — and give up our neurotic and debilitating journeys of self-discovery. Art of true value requires, like a jealous and possessive god, nothing less than our complete obedience. It insists that we retract our ego, our sense of self, the cosmetics of identity and let it do its thing. We are in service to art, not the other way around.
As the website editor, I often get asked by contributors for tips on writing the best Mbird-styled article. My usual advice is to “Lean into the weirdness of what you want to write about.” It’s not the job of writers to conform to some ideal and the more self-conscious a writer is the worse it goes. Or in theological terms, the law elicits fear, killing any latent creativity before it has the chance to take root.
3. Speaking of creativity, elderly rockers, and divine muses, Paul Simon’s latest, “Seven Psalms,” is an inspired journey of an album that explores the same questions and themes as the biblical Psalter. Writing for the New Yorker, Amanda Petrusich plumbs the depths of Simon’s ode to God:
Simon’s willingness to engage so directly with unanswerable questions is bold; his inquiries linger in the air, like warm mist after a summer storm. In the wake of the pandemic, it can sometimes feel as though Americans have become more proudly reclusive, less open to the benefits of community. Yet, for Simon, the distance between people has never been less significant. “It seems to me / We’re all walking down the same road,” he sings on “Trail of Volcanoes,” over anxious strings. “Seven Psalms” made me think of the Trappist monk, poet, and mystic Thomas Merton, who wrote often about the loneliness of our path to comprehending the sublime. “Although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling,” he observed. Merton also believed that it was possible to see God everywhere. “We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time,” he said, in 1965. Merton was a Catholic, but he seems to be saying that God — whatever, whoever that might mean — will always appear to a person who is looking. In fact, Merton was sure of it: “This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true.”
The whole article is worth a read, which covers a number of the album’s God-haunted struggles and doubts.
4. Time for a humor interlude! Reductress captures the social media zeitgeist with their, “REPORT: Friend Is in Europe and You’re Going to F*cking Hear About It.” And then McSweeney’s wishes all the parents a happy summer vacation with, “A Parent’s Dream Summer Camp.”
But the Hard Times really buries the lede in: “Text From Dad Reveals Job ‘You Should Maybe Think About Applying For’“:
“I don’t see what’s so bad about sorting parcels and loading trucks for the UPS,” said the father of three defensively. “I mean, a good paying job, healthcare, I think you even get federal holidays off, what more could you want? A dream job you’re passionate about?” […]
UPS hiring director Hank Stevens spoke on their current hiring struggles.
“The more soul-crushing the job is, the more likely it is their dad told them to apply,” Stevens explained. “Dad applications are a real problem, we estimate about a third of applicants are only doing it to appease their parents. It’s pretty easy to tell. Like this one right here, under ‘Why are you interested in a career with UPS?’ this candidate wrote, ‘To get my dad off my fucking back., and because I heard you don’t do drug tests’ then wrote out the link to his Soundcloud. Not exactly the attitude we’re looking for. Although I have to admit, we’re getting desperate.”
5. Switching gears only slightly, Plough published a Father’s-Day themed reflection on fatherhood that far exceeded my expectations. Broadly speaking, fatherhood is often depicted culturally either as a failure, those who check-out from parenting by leaving or through workaholism, or as a thankless, sacrificial drudgery (e.g. literally any TV show, movie, or article written by a midlife male, with Friday Night Lights being among a few notable exceptions). Even now, despite the oblique protestations over toxic masculinity, the ideals of manhood remains that of adventure, exploration, courage against the unknown — to do great things by which one may be remembered. The kinds of activities that are starkly opposed to domestic responsibilities.
But perhaps the unencumbered life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Perhaps the limitation of possibilities is more the opportunity for flourishing of a different kind.
There is a weight to a life of fidelity. But it need not be experienced as a crushing load … fidelity can be playful, joyful, even boastful. […]
Perhaps it’s better to think of a man’s vows not as a shackle but as an anchor, an anchor that attaches him to something solid so he does not drift off into callow dissolution. […]
The proper use of vows of fidelity is to bind oneself to particular loves: committing to love another person not only with a general charitable disposition but with the specificity of deliberately weaving your lives together. … We are finite beings, and there are infinite things in the universe worthy of affection, attention, and care. Instead of trying to embrace, say, every woman in the world (the approach of Zeus and other mythical men on the make), the husband embraces the world in the person of one woman.
With children, too, we have the opportunity, in loving particular people, to express our orientation towards the broader universe. Abstractions like posterity, legacy, and the future become incarnated in tiny human beings we get to care for and raise.
A father’s promises to his children are less scripted than a husband’s promises to his wife. They may take the form of a whispered plea in the bleary-eyed wee hours of a maternity ward stay: “It’s okay, little one. No need to yell. I’m here, I’ve got you, you’re safe.” Once again, promising more than can be known. Only as the years unfold will a person understand all those words entail — the late-night vigils kept, the tantrums endured, the first steps cheered for, and the first words treasured.
6. While we’re on the subject of choice and freedom, it’s worth wondering whether an insistence on the freedom of choice — aka a high anthropology — actually makes life worse. In an article that reminds me a bit of David Brooks’ The Social Animal, Jake Meador adds a healthy dose of low anthropology to his ruminations on public policy.
Our internal resolve to do a thing is limited. Our attention is limited. Our willpower is limited. This has always been true, of course. … But in an era of always-on computers with access to a virtual infinity of information, our own paltry resources of internal resistance and focus feel meager indeed. What’s worse, there is ample reason to think that these new technologies, already far too powerful for our internal resolve, are actually weakening that resolve.
It is for this reason that any social order premised on choice maximization as the chief good and strongly opposed to trying to “stack the deck” as it were in favor of some choices and against others is doomed from the start. … What things do we make it easy to do as a city, as a country? What things do we make it hard to do?
The list of easy things is obvious: We make it very easy to buy lottery tickets and gamble on sports and veg out for hours in front of Netflix (or porn) and, increasingly, to buy and consume a variety of drugs, most prominently marijuana. In short, we make it very easy to do things that are bad for society, bad for common life, and bad for our personal finances.
Meanwhile: What are the things that we make it hard to do? Well, it’s very hard to afford a family because most jobs don’t pay a living wage, because our healthcare system is hopelessly dysfunctional and exorbitantly expensive to access, and because we have no coherent system of providing paid family leave for new parents, amongst many other reasons.
It’s also very hard for many people to have a healthy home life, due to reasons of workism and long commutes. It’s very hard for many people to have a regular day of rest because their work schedules constantly change and, often, they work multiple jobs so they can get by. Is it any wonder, then, that so many of our young people are so miserable?
In other words, if you hold that people are fundamentally free to act morally, then the proliferation of choice does not appreciably tip the scales. People will do as they please. But if humans are foible and limited, if we are bound by our more base desires, then the increase of less virtuous alternatives gives one more opportunity to choose poorly. Of course, we all regret watching Tiger King during lockdown, but what other choice did we have?
7. On the more devotional side of the ledger, Brian Bantum wrote poignantly about the meaning of life after the dog he didn’t want changed his life. Which, to me, feels like a perfect analogy for grace:
How did I become this person? And how did I exist without a dog for so long? This was a different kind of feeling than life with a partner or kids, because I had always wanted to be married, always wanted to be a father. But this dog life was a surprise.
Sometimes it is not the ends that we dreamed of for years and years that most change us. Sometimes it’s the surprises, the tethers we ran from only to find they were always what we needed, that help us to find our truest selves, to find peace. […]
I wake up to my dog’s joy that I am there, and I realize I am changed. What is life without her, without this creature to live life with? If she were to die tomorrow, would I feel relief that I could return to the mirage of the life I thought I was parched for? Then I am reminded of a craving for kimchi, soon du bu (Korean soft tofu soup), my partner’s laugh, and the ways the cherry blossoms all seem to open at once in one warm shout in April. God is in this life, too.
The newness of this animal in our life wasn’t just comfort or a little bit of joy. She was a point of transformation — of who I would be and what a whole life would look like. There are times when a little grief creeps in. Why had I not wanted this earlier? How much did I miss simply because I thought I knew what I wanted? But somehow the peace swamps the regret, and there is simply gratitude for what is. […]
Why this life? I suppose we can’t answer that for everyone. We can only hope for the surprise that awaits them, their grudging yes to a pandemic puppy. We can wait for our own surprise, too. And in this life, every day, there are ways of seeing how God abides. Each day that we cling to her in all of the myriad surprises, the membrane between time and eternity stretches a little thinner.
Strays:
- John Mulaney and Public Confession
- French Parents Don’t Know What They’re Doing Either
- I Lost My Faith in God’s CV, So I Did a Reference Check
- Also, to repeat last week’s plea, if you or someone you know works for Facebook-Meta, then please do get in touch with us. Mbird has become a bit lost in the faceless gears of FB and could use your/their help. Email us at info@mbird.com for more details.
COMMENTS
3 responses to “June 24-30”
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The clarity that Richard Beck brought to the current movement of deconstruction is so spot on. Thanks for sharing!
…in reference to that I was thinking about the connections between St John of the Cross & the dark night of the soul and Jesus’ telling us to consider the lilies of the field and our idols burning away…anyway, something I’ve been contemplating on
Love this week’s wrap-up. From distilling Beck, to Nick Cave calling out all the BS, to anchors that hold us in the storm. And how we are to write for MB. I didn’t know. I maybe simply report on a depressing effort to “lean into my weirdness,” from a guy who has spent a lot of effort trying to lean away from it.
[…] this week to Hannah Anderson at Christianity Today. Last week, we featured Richard Beck’s, erhm, deconstruction of the exvangelical deconstruction narrative and Anderson does an admirable job of describing a healthier version of this phenomenon, […]