deconstruction

It was freeing for me to realize one day that, when challenged with a theological question, I could simply answer "I don't know."

I had come to understand that I had to have all my ducks in a row, be strong in my faith, and be able to answer anyone who came at me in order to be a strong Christian. 

In fact, I hardly had a choice. When I ventured into the world, they would hate me, and they would do anything they could to bring me down and debunk Christianity. I had to have answers so that I would 1) stand on my principles in the face of opposition and 2) change the minds of everyone around me.

My entire objective from the age of 16 until... well, very recently, was to learn the right answers.

I read all the books and listened to all the YouTube evangelicals and apologists. 

I wanted answers to the objections that others would have. I wanted to appear knowledgeable and have objections to the issues that atheists and agnostics might bring up. I wanted to sound eloquent and brilliant. I was ready to give defense with guillotines, bastions, and flamethrowers. 

Not in "meekness and fear." Not even due to the hope within me. I was going to stand on gospel truth (read evangelical conservative complementarian interpretation) and verbally bludgeon its antagonists.

But it's with truth so it's all good, right? I wanted clean, tidy, palatable answers that made me look good and would stump my opponents in their eagerness to disband all of my religious convictions. In short, I was a self-righteous religious prick. 

I did want to give the Bible credit in its infallibility (also known as its "inerrancy," these being the primary descriptive terms of the Bible in the apologetics world), but in all truthfulness, I wanted to appear wise myself. 

I also wanted to prove myself correct. Frequently, growing up, I found myself thinking with no small amount of skepticism, How is it that I was born into the one religion that is correct, out of all the people in the world, out of all the prevalent religions everywhere? What exactly makes my parents think they can tell me that this is the only truth? 

If I was born to a poor family in India, one of the 270 million already there, what are the odds that I would come to the same conclusion? What makes them think that they are any less correct in their stances?

I intended to find out.

Well, I still haven't, not really. 

I found some wonderful things. I discovered a wonderful Jesus, a brilliant God, a thriving Holy Spirit, and evidence of His actions in a beautiful world. I did find a faith worth standing on, a Jehovah worth worshipping, and enough Truth to assure me that this was a good and correct thing. It has been an exciting journey. 

What I also found in the pursuit of apologetics was that easy answers, the kind that I could regurgitate when others voiced their scripted oppositions, did not exist. Or if they did, they were incomplete, often problematic, sometimes unloving. I realized that my own stances on some pretty important theological topics were fundamentally wrong.

I got smacked with a healthy serving of humble pie with almost every new apologist that I encountered. And then, once I felt that I was on the same page with all the conservative apologists, wham, other valid takes on Bible passages manifested themselves from all across the every single political, theological, eschatological, and philosophical spectrum.

I eventually got over trying to defend my stances, and moved into learning exactly what I believed in the first place. My whole search for answers to give to other people who didn't know the truth like I did ended up showing me where I was faulty on "the truth," what I needed to believe, what I didn't believe enough, and my own arrogance in my religious zealousness to appear righteous. 

I have no conclusion to this. I am still looking for answers to a lot of things. I spend a lot of free time exploring these topics and there are many more I haven't gotten around to. 

I often don't have tidy little answers that sound both intellectual and spiritual. Ones that don't utilize a God of the Gaps argument, or some vague specimen of the Evangelical vernacular, or a misused portion of scripture.

It's ok to say I don't know. To say I don't know is, for me, a necessary act of humility. I like answers. They don't always exist. 

It levels the playing field. "I don't know about that one. Let's look into this and reconvene next week." 

"I don't have a good answer for that." 

"Christians have struggled with that one for centuries. Let's discuss."

To quote Phylicia Masonheimer, there are hills to die on, and there are hills to dialogue on. I have been trying to die instead of dialogue on most of my hills without knowing if it was worth it.

I say this as a prelude to anything else you may read here: I am going to spend my life seeking "answers" and you will get bits of my never-ending search in these posts.