How to Talk About Jesus With a Friend Who's Deconstructing

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What do you do when a friend starts deconstructing their faith and stepping away from church? Can you still talk to them about Jesus? In this episode, Mary Jo shares her own deconstruction story, including the moment at a church door that set it all in motion. John, Blaine, and Mary Jo walk through how to stay in the conversation with someone who's questioning everything. It's less about having the right answers and more about being the right kind of friend.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Deconstruction. Deconstruction. Deconstruction. Deconstruction.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

You know, it's just not it's not my bag of chips. Don't conflate Jesus with the people who wounded you.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

The first step isn't to like try to get them back into church.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

I started seeing Christians that didn't even look familiar according to what I was reading a Christian should be in the Bible.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

This is from Amanda in Portland, Maine. Amanda says, I've got a friend who's deconstructing her faith, stepping away from church. Can I still talk to her about Jesus? And if so, how? Mary Joe.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Yes. So we're done, right?

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Yeah, that's a short episode. It could be like a real.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Yeah, it's just a 30-second TikTok. Uh yes, you can. But we're going to talk today a little bit about how to do so in a way that, you know, kind of mirrors our vibe here with search and our resources at Reach, that it's always focused relationally about caring for that individual person. And so we're going to kind of walk through deconstruction in that light.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Let's just start from the bottom up, really. But what is deconstruction or deconstructing? It's hip, you know, cool word. People are throwing it out all over the place, but what does it actually mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Yeah. I see it more as um reverse engineering of the faith. So being an engineer's daughter, this is kind of how I look at things, in that it's when people are picking apart the faith to see what they actually believe. Um, do they actually believe all the things they've been taught? Where is that coming from? How do they know that? Deconstruct is kind of reverse engineering their belief in God to see is this what they really believe. I have probably one of the more charitable views of deconstruction, I'll just say that. But that's how I see it because that is familiar to me with my own story of going through this process. So deconstruction does not definitionally mean deconversion.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Deconstruction sometimes can mean that someone abandons the faith that they once had, right? But at other times, and I think this can even be healthy deconstruction, right, is they begin to question, like, is this really true? So I've just been told it, but is there any evidence behind it? Is there any good reason behind it? And I think in a lot of cases that can be very good, right? That can dri drive someone to deeper faith because they're beginning to now unfold the good reasons for um believing something, not just because they were told it.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

When somebody's deconstructing, how would we know? Like how does this start to show up in real life that we might be able to pick up on?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Aaron Powell Ten Signs You're Deconstructing by Search Ministries. No. There are some signs. I'm not going to say this is like this is how you know, but some of the things that you'll see is that a person is asking a lot of questions about their faith, right? One of the ones that comes up frequently with people who are deconstructing is the problem of evil. Why is there so much suffering in the world? If he's so good, then why does this world seem to be so bad? Do I believe this? Do I believe God is good? What do I think about God? Why do we say these things in church? What has my church taught me? Then they're starting to do that sort of peeling back the layers of what they've been taught and getting at the root of what they believe. Now, another thing I would say is that as we look at people who are deconstructing, you um you don't always see it begin with the intellectual questions. For what I've encountered is it usually starts in pain. Um somebody is dealing with something very hurtful or a long pattern of hurt coming from a source, especially from their church. They're starting to say, I don't know if I agree with this. And it's not always because one day I sat down and went, What's the origin of the universe? You know, they it's more of, hmm, some kind of pain has been going on. Uh now they're addressing it.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

So one sort of picture that'd be someone's been taught, you know, Christian orthodoxy, right? I mean, they've they understand the main ideas about Christianity, but then maybe someone in their church or maybe someone in their family who professes Christianity does certain things, right, that are very hurtful. And so they're they're saying to themselves, I don't know if I want to be associated with the people that have those beliefs.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

It's really important that Christians understand that the way that they communicate to others, as far as their witness and as far as their life, it's not just affecting whether or not people believe in God. It's a it's affecting how they view truth at all. And I think that's part of the story of deconstruction is how can you say you believe this when you act completely differently? After I was witness too, and I started to go, hmm, I wonder if this is true, because it started to make sense to me. So I go off to college and I do completely opposite of what we worry that kids are gonna do. I go to a state school and I start looking for faith. Like I started going to church for the first time on my own. Like, what is this all about? I met my husband while I was in college, and I like to say, and I met Jesus. Like so very in a very short time frame. I met both. And my husband was a born and raised Southern Baptist uh from a small town in Oklahoma. We're a young married couple, we're going to church. I'm from the Pacific Northwest, I have no Southern church culture. So I'm stepping into the uh church service where I'm going to have to walk up in front of everybody and say, Hey, I've accepted Jesus. Because at this point, I'd had a pastor come visit me and talk to me, and I had trusted the Lord. But now I got to publicly profess it. And as I'm walking into that service with my husband, um, the pastor's wife is out there and she's greeting everybody, smiling. How are you? How's how are you doing? How the kids? And uh I walk up with my husband and she looks me up and down, and then her smile drops and she says, Oh, honey, we need to find you better clothes. Like immediately. Yeah, that was not what I expected. Uh, and it really, it really made a big like impact. What that did was it's like the beginning of a long pattern of watching Christians say, God is love, God loves you right where you're at, come to Jesus as you are, and never meaning that. I picked up on that over time. I started seeing Christians that didn't even look familiar according to what I was reading a Christian should be in the Bible. And so over time I start to get this pattern that Christians don't really believe what they say they do. Um, and that makes me go, oh no, why do I believe it? Okay, because they're not seeming to care to live it out. So why should I? So that's when I started doing exactly what I described. I started picking apart things like, well, why do I trust the Bible? How do I know God exists? Um, why would I say Jesus is a savior? And I I realized I had no good answers, like none. Uh so that's when I started investigating what I believe. Now, not everybody does that. Some people just allow those questions to fester and eventually they fall away from faith. But um I knew I couldn't be intellectually honest if I did that, so I had to find answers.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

You know, one of the things that your story kind of shows me, Mary Jo, is that oftentimes if we say, oh, their person's deconstructing, and we point the finger at them in a sense, right? Like look at what they're doing, they're losing their faith, right? But in your story, in many ways the finger should be pointed at the people who were stirring the deconstruction, right? So so um maybe you know, part of us kind of talking about, you know, what do we do when people are deconstructing is we want to make sure that we're not one of the people that's actually c furthering you know deconstruction with the person, right? So we we want to be Christians who are authentic and take our faith seriously, live out following Jesus, otherwise we can be contributors to that which we might point to and say, isn't that bad, they're deconstructing.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really important point. And and as we will always say, we're not asking anybody to be perfect. Just to represent the humility of Christ, right? Where we can do more harm than good is when we we go in too fast with answers rather than trying to build trust and build a safe emotional space for people to actually be yeah, to be real with us and be honest about what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, one of the things we talk about at search is these barriers that keep people from faith. And one of the barriers is intellectual, right? They have questions that they haven't been able to answer. But there's there's the emotional barrier too. And I think some of what you're explaining here is that people are beginning to deconstruct their faith, but it's not really an intellectual issue oftentimes. It's an emotional issue because of hurt. So if we do answer just go out trying to answer all their questions, we may not actually be addressing the barrier to their particular faith struggles, right? Like we we need to address the emotional barrier. We need to see that hurt. And oftentimes I think that means stepping into it with them, agreeing with them, saying, you know what, you experienced that. That's I I feel I'm so sorry that you had to go through that.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah. I think it's kind of like a both ends. Sometimes people I I've had guys smoke screen me with intellectual um questions when they actually have a church hurt. But it could also be that the whatever the church hurt was was the instigator for the intellectual questions. So yeah, we should be able to answer them, but we should know at we should be careful as to the timing on when those come into play.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Aaron Powell The first step with those people isn't to like try to get them back into church. Because that almost seems like a danger zone for them. Just even getting them back into a one-on-one conversations or into a small group setting where it seems safer. That might even be a an easier road back on the bus, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Aaron Powell Yeah. This is one of the reasons that I vibe so well with search as model is because we are about the one person and creating those one-on-one conversations where people can have that a little more emotional safety, right? To open up. We're not just throwing them into a church and saying, good luck, you know. We're we're actually having that one-on-one. And yeah, I think that's very poignant.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Okay, so I can imagine Amanda from Portland, Maine, wondering, you know, wanting some practical help here, right? That's what we're trying to do. So are there are there some mindsets, uh insights you can maybe give to her ways to be able to think through how to have these conversations real practically?

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's what um I will call mindsets because uh looking back on the time when I was going through this, I realized that I had some mindsets going on. You might call them attitudes, whatever you want to call them, a posture, uh, about how I was going about dealing with my doubt or my questions. And so I think if we can think this way that we can really help like frame the conversation. So, like the first mindset would be is the person skeptical, but not become cynical? So I might talk to them about the difference between that. Like, skepticism is great. Uh, the Bible encourages it. There's lots of places in Proverbs where you're told to, you know, to question the person that tells you something. Uh Paul even says that to test everything and hold on to the good. So that's a good thing, but we can move into sort of a cynicism where there are no good answers. Nothing could ever satisfy us. And we, yeah, like we don't even know at that point, maybe even what we're looking for. So help the person see if they're being skeptical or if they've moved into a cynicism, which might be questioning everybody's motives all the time, uh, might not be able to receive any kind of answers. I talk about, and this comes out of me from because I didn't say this in my story, but you're gonna hear it now. Be realistic, not unrealistic about your expectations as to what human beings are, whether they're Christian or atheist. Uh so I think I went into the church with having read the scriptures on my own, and I was like, wow, this is amazing. Christians are gonna be the greatest people ever, right? Because we're supposed to put others before ourselves, we're supposed to keep a tight rein on our tongues, we're supposed to demonstrate that Jesus is God's son by the way we love one another. I mean, you know, these tiny little commands that we're given. So I was like, oh, these are gonna be people who are really trying to uh do the best that they can with their Christian faith and to love others. And that was really naively idealistic. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

So someone who's deconstructing like this friend that Amanda has here, she might have that kind of unrealism. So part of Amanda's job, so to speak, and conversations with her is to help her friend get a little more realistic picture of what the church should be like. In fact, one of the things that I've I've thought about is that a that a healthy church in a way actually has people all across the spectrum. In other words, right, I mean, if you have a church that's all full of mature people, you have to wonder, well, how mature are they? Because they haven't really brought any new people on board.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

But in a in a healthy church, you're probably gonna have some people that, you know, they just heard about Jesus the first time and their life's really messy and a mess, and they don't even treat people well, right? And you're gonna have people all across the spectrum. And so in some ways it would seem that Amanda would want to be sharing with her friend, like, hey, uh a lot of churches, there's a lot of mess in there because people are still trying to figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah. We have these, and probably I had these unrealistic expectations of what humans are. That doesn't go away if you leave the church or you leave behind Christianity. Humans will fail you in every way possible. You're gonna fail others. And I think for me, getting that mindset of being more realistic about what am I doing here? Like, who am I? What am I? I'm a human. What are these other people? Oh, they're regular people and they're just gonna do all the things. They have all the problems common to man. That really helped me to become more compassionate towards people, um, and not always to take the most like retributive view of what was going on.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

What's our third mindset that'll help us out?

SPEAKER_00 14:58

I think this is the one we really need to talk with people who are deconstructing about, um, which is if you were to leave Christianity, leave it behind, what are you leaving it for? So what are you going to? Because what I'm hearing um is most people are talking about the faith that they're walking away from and they're critiquing it. What I'm not hearing is critiquing the worldview they will be adopting if they leave Christianity. Be extensive in your search. Don't restrict it to just critiquing what you're walking away from. Be so extensive as to say, well, I've actually looked at, for me, it would have been atheism. Um, and I started to basically deconstruct atheism, and I realized that foundationally my beliefs in good and evil, that there's hope for mankind, that humans have meaning, purpose, and value wasn't at home in atheism, but that I solidly had a Christian worldview or philosophical framework. And so my views were Christian. Uh, even I would say back before I knew, before I trusted Jesus, I had this philosophical foundation based in Christianity. And I think that's so important to ask your friend, what do you value and where is that coming from? And does your view of the world support that?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah, in your case there, if you would have abandoned Christianity and sort of gone back to where you were, um you would have still had those problems and those issues of sort of answering those other questions, like, well, well then where do I get meaning and purpose from? You know, where's beauty coming from, right? So so you've left something to something else. And the question is, is that something else really answering the questions that you have? I mean, you mentioned earlier that some people leave Christianity because of hurt, right? Because people have disappointed them. Well, what are they going to? Because what they go to, they're probably going to find a whole bunch of people that hurt them and disappoint them, right? So I think that is good for people to examine not just what they're leaving, but what they're heading to. And does that what they're heading to, does it really answer any more questions or answer them better than what Christianity does?

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Yeah, well said. What do we want people to not do, if I could say it that way. And this can be kind of kind of quick, but some practical things like, hey, whatever you do, don't do these things. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Well, I think one of the things that you brought up before, Mary Jo, was um don't be quick to just answer people's questions. So if they begin to express that there are doubts there. Oh, well, let me give you this book here. Read this book, and then we'll answer your questions. Because there's probably something behind the question. And so we we need to begin to get into conversation with that person again. What what's what's driving that question, or what what's brought that question to mind, and try to surface the the issue behind the question.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah, I like that. And then um don't treat doubt like it's uh either a problem to be solved quickly or that it's a sin. I have heard people tell me that they've been told if you just have more faith, this wouldn't be an issue. And I mean, nobody says that. And people keep telling me they've been told that. So don't treat doubt like it's a sin for them to have that. For the person who's deconstructing, I might say don't conflate Jesus with the people who wounded you because they're not the same. Now I'm not telling them to stay in a situation where people are hurting them because I think there's a biblical case for walking away from people who are um very what what word should I use? Um toxics is all that's coming to mind.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

But that's emotionally abusive.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Emotionally abusive, thank you. Um but at the same time, just don't conflate them because they are not the same person as Jesus, right? So that that's an important piece.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

All right, so let's land the plane here. Amanda, she's listening. Hopefully she's made it this far. Uh what what do you want her to take away? Just just one sum it up final takeaway. Here you go. What is it?

SPEAKER_00 19:09

I I would want her to know that she can talk about Jesus and to do it uh thoughtfully. Um I will say carefully, um, with keeping the other person uh in mind that it's about them. And help, and they can help frame this for the other person that um that other person, when if they're deconstructing, they don't need to do it alone. They shouldn't do it alone. They need to find people who can um critique their ideas. So if that's if that's not Amanda, then Amanda help them find somebody else, right? Like they need to find somebody they trust to critique them um so they don't become cynical. And then we need to help deconstructors see that it's okay to be idealistic about Jesus, but also realistic about humans. And so that's something that we, as walking alongside deconstructors, can help share with them. Um, let's be more realistic about what we expect from humankind uh and then keep that idealism about Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Thanks for listening to the Reach Podcast. If you've got a question that you'd like to submit, go do that on reachothers.org slash podcast. And that whole website, reachothers.org, was developed by Search Ministries, which is our parent organization. And Search has been doing relational evangelism in the United States for almost 50 years, and we want to give the best of what we've learned away to you, and that's what we've done on reachothers.org. Hope you enjoy it. Come back and listen to the next episode.