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What is Deconstruction? *With Special Guest* Episode 36
79 Plays1 month ago
In this episode Danny and his mom Jennifer discuss what is deconstruction. They dive into what it is and is not, why it's dangerous and matters in our context and how to combat deconstructions lies with scripture.
Desiring God Article: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-does-deconstruction-even-mean
Here are some video links for referencing deconstruction AND why we can trust God's word as Truth.
The Deconstruction Movement How Should We Respond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr4RD95RCwI
9 Reasons People Deconstruct and What to do About it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul8tjenO-xI
The real reason so many are "deconstructing" their faith? Wes Huff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3onwVlQBvI
Playlist from Wes Huff on Why the Bible is Truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMufJZeRdCI&list=PLNOXJdb0gACFBB43j4YwG9fYGE-YtRzhG
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction with Jennifer Price
00:00:32
Danny Price
Hey everyone, welcome to episode 36 of the Table Talk Recap Podcast. My name is Danny Price and I'm here with my mom again, my mom, Jennifer Price. If you guys might remember, she came on an episode a while back in December when we were talking about Christmas, which was a really fun episode.
00:00:49
Danny Price
She talked about Advent and we talked about just some of the myths leading up to Christmas and what people say and how it's a you know associated with pagan holidays. So that was really fun having her on.
00:00:59
jennifer
Hey, hi everyone.
00:00:59
Danny Price
I'm having her on again. Mom, go ahead and say hi to everybody.
What is Deconstruction?
00:01:03
jennifer
everyone
00:01:05
Danny Price
So we are going to be doing a podcast on deconstruction. I was asked by one of our regular listeners, Dan, to do this podcast on deconstruction a while ago. was maybe about a month ago.
00:01:17
Danny Price
And obviously, it it was a big topic. So we decided you know we're going take some time. I'm going to research this. And then I talked to Shane. And you know Shane, ah he's interested in this in this topic. But with his voice and with everything going on,
00:01:30
Danny Price
we thought it best to kind of pivot a little bit of a different direction. My mom is really, really knowledgeable about scripture and about specifically the way it applies to our lives and how we view truth. And so I was like, man, this would be a cool opportunity to have her on.
00:01:44
Danny Price
So that's what we're gonna do. we're gonna i' might It's not as much of an interview. We're gonna be working through a lot of material and content. And my mom and I are just really just gonna, we're just gonna comment on things and kind of work through a process of defining deconstruction, what it is, what it isn't, how it affects our lives, about you know specifically in our Mountain View context. For you guys listening, I'm hoping this is beneficial for you because especially if you've heard this word
Jennifer's Background and Biblical Insight
00:02:09
Danny Price
and you don't quite know what it is, I think that's where it's really gonna help.
00:02:13
Danny Price
The second we start talking about some of this stuff, you're going to understand and go, oh, I've heard of this, or I know what you're talking about. But a lot of times this word, it gets a little bit fuzzy. Mom, do you want to set anything up? is there anything else you want to say um or add?
00:02:26
jennifer
No, I think we'll have a great conversation just digging into what this word means, the effect it has on people, and then our response as a takeaway.
00:02:37
Danny Price
Yeah, that's perfect. Um, mom, I know we, we did this last time, but just ah a little bit about you. Um, I know I was, i was so funny last time I just rattled off. I started off right away with how old are you?
00:02:50
Danny Price
Won't do that this time. Um, so give me a little bit of background on yourself. Um, just like, I know you you know you went to Bible school, talk a little bit about that. And then just a little bit about your history and then kind of where you, like, what brought you to this point where you, where you are today.
00:03:04
jennifer
Yeah, and I grew up in the Chicago area. And then if I fast forward to Bible school, that's where I met your dad in Bible school in Missouri. We met there and then we spent almost 10 years on the mission field.
00:03:18
jennifer
And then of course, we have three adult children, you, um Jonathan and Olivia, and then two wonderful daughter-in-loves and four grandchildren with two on the way. um About Bible school, and that was a great time. ah Maybe it would be good to just reference that I grew up in a Lutheran church and then kind of had some charismatic, I would say, leanings. And then now have is you know i am part of the Evangelical Free Church.
00:03:18
Danny Price
Mm-hmm.
00:03:52
Danny Price
Yeah, that was perfect. Yeah, so my mom goes to Mountain Life Church, just up the way from Mountain View, kind of a sister church with Mountain View. um Really similar beliefs, really similar, you know, almost down to the teeth, theology and all that stuff, same tenets of faith that we follow. So when we did the whole EFCA core doctrine, that's what Mountain Life follows too, so...
00:04:11
Danny Price
Awesome.
Origin of Deconstruction with Derrida
00:04:12
Danny Price
Let's dive into this deconstruction.
00:04:12
jennifer
Thank
00:04:14
Danny Price
um So what is deconstruction? This is such a hard topic because this word has so many different definitions depending on who you ask.
00:04:27
Danny Price
um One person will say it's this. One person will say it's that. One person will say, no, no, it's really this. Another person will say, no, what what i mean is what I mean is that. So I wanted just to kind of go backwards and go all the way kind of to the beginning of when this word first started. And it's really interesting. What people use this word for now is not really necessarily what it was intended to mean but way back when. So this word deconstruction comes from this French philosopher named Jacques Derrida.
00:04:54
Danny Price
i I'm guessing how you say that. There's an E-S at the end of Jacques, but I'm i'm not French. i don't know how you quite pronounce that. But Jacques Derrida, he's this French philosopher. He founded this idea of deconstruction.
00:05:06
Danny Price
if you're really familiar and and I don't know if any of you guys have taken like a philosophy class in college or even in high school, but man, it is really difficult to understand some of their thoughts because they're, they are so, you know, some of these philosophers are so lost in their belly button. I always use that word, but like, they're so inward focused. It's, it's just like navel gazing. It's like, what is this? What is that? So when i read this definition and we talk about what he thinks deconstruction was, it's going to sound confusing. Don't worry. That's not what we're going to be spending our whole time on. So if you're a little bit lost here at the at the beginning, that's okay.
00:05:36
Danny Price
So Jacques Derrida was born in 1930. He lived 2004. So he had a pretty long life. um And he took a lot of his teachings and a lot of stuff from different people like Friedrich Nietzsche.
00:05:47
Danny Price
I think it's Friedrich Nietzsche. But anyways, Nietzsche and a couple of the other philosophers around Nietzsche. you know that time in early 1900s Europe. And he developed this idea of deconstruction. What's really funny, and I think is so hilarious, is that when people would ask him to summarize what deconstruction was, he would get kind of weird and be like, it's my whole life's work and I really can't summarize it, which gives you everything you need to know about philosophers sometimes. um But I will read what a lot of people have said about him. So there's this article on Desiring God. If you've heard of them, they're a publication. They do different articles on things. And they...
00:06:23
Danny Price
One of their um articles, I'll link it down below. The author says, this is essentially what he means by deconstruction. And again, it's going to be a little bit mumbo jumbo, but number one, there's two points that he kind of draws from Derrida's claims. He says, number one, a literary philosophy arguing that we're wrong to assume by merely reading an author's words, we can understand something about absolute truth. Since our conception of truth, our constructs of what everything means will be significantly different from the author's.
00:06:49
Danny Price
Right? So if just to, again, just to kind of clarify, that means when you're reading something from an author, you can't really know what they really meant because you're not in their context and you can't really understand. And so we can't really take truth from, ah from reading something because who knows what they meant.
00:07:03
Danny Price
Right? And then number two, deconstruction is a method of literature, literature you go grief literary criticism that takes apart and analyzes an author's use of language and efforts to discern his construct of meaning. So again,
00:07:16
Danny Price
That just means this is, again, philosophical. You take an author and you go, what are they trying to say? Let's use their language. Let's use their this. And you kind of break apart what they're trying to mean. So that's what originally deconstruction meant um and in philosophy terms. And if you look at this word, like if you, i don't know if you guys know this, when you Google a word, you can actually see the use of that word over time on like ah like a graph. And you'll see this word really wasn't a word until, yeah, mid-1900s. And it starts to rise a little bit. And nowadays, it's very high.
00:07:45
Danny Price
If you were to say, for example, to go to Instagram or TikTok or X, and you were to type in hashtag deconstruction, you are going to get a plethora of different things about what deconstruction
Contemporary Views on Deconstruction
00:07:57
Danny Price
means. Now, I wrote down in my own words, I didn't use ChatGPT for this. I just wrote down what I have seen people mean by deconstruction. And I kind of just listed it in five different tenants.
00:08:07
Danny Price
This list is not exhaustive. This is just what I found. So number one, one of the beliefs that when someone says deconstruction, they might mean that truth and theology is unknowable. We must tear down completely what we previously held to be trustworthy. Nothing is truth. Nothing is right. Only my experience, right? That's one common like framework. The next common framework is number two, blank belief about God or the Bible is unpopular socially or doesn't sit well with me. Therefore, can I really trust the Bible or my traditional theology? I need to remove some of these beliefs that contradict my idea of truth, right? That's another common belief.
00:08:38
Danny Price
idea of what someone means by deconstruction. Third, I have some beliefs about theology that are potentially incorrect. I'm going to make sure I believe the right things and not just take someone else's word for it, right? So that's what someone else might mean by deconstruction. Number four, I've been sold a cultural lie about theology. Theology has been mixed with other things, and I need to separate the two into what is my faith and what has been mixed in. For example, the United States is God's chosen people. Tattoos are demonic. Blank denomination is the only denomination. Stuff like that.
00:09:06
Danny Price
lot of these beliefs come from childhood. Number five, I need to examine some of my beliefs and make sure everything is in the right order because I've treated certain secondary issues as primary issues. Right? So that's, those are five. And again, that's not exhaustive. There's other beliefs, but those five, a lot of deep, when people say I'm deconstructing or I, but or I'm into deconstruction, lot of people, that's kind of what they mean by that word. Mom, do you want I'm to leave it open for you for a second. Do you want to comment on what deconstruction is as a definition?
00:09:34
jennifer
I think what I would add, it's really good what you said. What I would add to that is when we're talking in a biblical framework that I like this quote from Tim Barnett from Standerism.
00:09:47
Danny Price
m
00:09:48
jennifer
He says, a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without regarding scripture as a standard. So I think in a nutshell, we can say that someone who is deconstructing from their, they're deconstructing from their faith.
00:10:06
jennifer
Self is more an authority and they're deconstructing from true deconstruction, from core doctrines, from those essentials of the faith, which would, should we define what, what core doctrine, what essentials are, or just have
00:10:18
Danny Price
Yes.
00:10:24
Danny Price
Yes.
00:10:26
jennifer
If I listed them out really briefly, those would be things that are the foundation of our faith, like the Trinity, the deity of Jesus, the inspiration of scripture, the fall and original sin, the atonement of Christ, the resurrection. There's a few more, but you get the idea. These are our core doctrines that that make up Christianity. Once you leave those, you don't have Christianity anymore.
00:10:56
Danny Price
Yes. um So when it comes to deconstruction, we're going to, again, we're we're trying not to fumble through this and make this as clear as possible. So just so you guys kind of have like a framework of what we're trying to do here. This is not in an attempt to be confusing, but we're going have to use a lot of these words. And it's going to sound a little bit confusing at first.
00:11:16
Danny Price
I'm going to really quick list some reasons why people might
Why Does Deconstruction Happen?
00:11:19
Danny Price
deconstruct. And then we're going to go into what can deconstruct and deconstruction is not. And what are actually some good things that people will sometimes label as deconstruction. I already kind of did that with that.
00:11:28
Danny Price
um those like those five different reference reference points. But some of the reasons someone might be deconstructing, and again, what we're going to go with that definition my mom just went with, and then again, keep in mind the core doctrine and the core essentials of faith.
00:11:42
Danny Price
Some of the reasons people might deconstruct and walk away from faith would be because of pain in their life. So something happens, it's a painful experience, there might be some kind of disillusionment. So they're confused about something and they don't quite understand what's truth and what's not. Maybe there's hypocrisy in the church and they are like, I can't reconcile a church that does this or whatever.
00:12:04
Danny Price
And, like there being truth that comes from that church. So that truth that church, for example, I know that the Christian church at large, there's beenep there's been you know pastors that fall into moral failure and have sexual assault on their kind you know their con congregation. And because of that, I can't reconcile that with a God that loves. and So you know that's like an example. And a lot of times there's intellectual tension.
00:12:26
Danny Price
Most people would say that dis um deconstruction is not just a mere intellectual thing. It really comes down to what you actually but what you actually believe and how you live that out. But it does start a lot of times with intellectual tension of having a hard time holding different beliefs together. And then obviously cultural pressure. There's a lot of cultural pressure to conform to this world. And if you're in this world and you're trying to have friends and relationships and all this this stuff in this world, it there is pressure. And it is hard to hold some of the beliefs that Christians hold.
00:12:54
Danny Price
For example, sin, hell, very unpopular. And it's hard to hold those beliefs and still maintain relationship with people in the world. So those are some reasons that people might deconstruct. We're going to move now from what deconstruction has kind of been defined as. And again, notice it's a little muddy. And we're we're trying to bring some clarity here. So now we're going to move into what deconstruction is not. And again, this is my opinion.
00:13:16
Danny Price
This is my mom's opinion a little bit more too. You might talk to someone that doesn't share what we what we say about this. But what deconstruction is not is when you go to reinforce or like re-examine or refine some of your beliefs.
00:13:33
Danny Price
I personally don't believe that that is deconstruction. I would argue that Christians should be very wary of using this word. I know what a lot of Christians mean by using this word. And I actually listed some of those reasons earlier of like, hey, is my faith my own?
00:13:42
jennifer
Thank you.
00:13:46
Danny Price
That's a great idea. That's a great perspective to come in from. I would argue that because of all the charged the chargedness, the electricity around this word deconstruction, and what people are going to think you mean by it often, I would argue you should not use that word. And so again, to kind of set this up, I have this example. I was sharing this moment with my mom earlier. I hope I'm not stealing this from anyone. In my mind, this is totally original, but maybe I subconsciously stole this from someone. But picture, if you will, a pyramid, like the food pyramid, right? so you have
00:14:21
Danny Price
a large bottom layer with like some big stacks, and it ascends in order all the way up to the to the tip, um all the way up to the top. And picture, if you will, like building blocks. And you could even you could even do this on your floor with your kids, like Legos or something. But picture on the bottom layer, there's all these building blocks in it. Those are the big ones at the bottom, and then it starts to get smaller as it goes to the top until there's finally this little little capstone at the top.
00:14:43
Danny Price
Your beliefs. in theology, your framework and worldview of theology is like a pyramid, right? And there's things at the bottom that make up the foundation that keep it strong. And a lot of people, and, you know, in past times, they've used things like a systematic theology to kind of determine what are the core beliefs and what are like the the tenants. A lot of church churches have doctrine, like my mom just read, There's like core doctrine. of That's part of Christianity.
00:15:08
Danny Price
But a theological framework of like a systematic theology, it'll help set you up with stuff like this. But here's some like potential things that might be at the bottom of your pyramid. For example, there is a God. There is objective truth. God is truth. He has revealed the truth to us in the Bible.
00:15:22
Danny Price
The Bible is God's truth. It is is God's inspired word. It is the truth. We have sin. And then it starts to build up from there. And you can kind of see how you have to like, with a systematic theology, you have to believe one thing and get to that point. And then the next thing builds upon that. And then it builds upon that and it ascends in order. So by the time you get to the top, you might have beliefs like, for example, yeah, tattoos are a sin, or i don't love the idea of getting tattoos or,
00:15:45
Danny Price
I think baptism should be not infant baptism, but adult baptism. And and as you start to get towards the top, you start to get to beliefs that are maybe secondary issues, social things, things that you might hold loosely, but you're not willing to die on.
00:15:59
Danny Price
But at the bottom, you have core tenants. You have core things. The problem with deconstruction and what we've what we're what we're talking about right now is that when you start to take the bottom pieces of the pyramid out,
00:16:12
Danny Price
it's gonna crumble, things will crumble. um It's like removing like weight bearing, like ah like a load bearing wall in your house. like it's It's going to cause issues. What it is not though, is for example, let's say you were to take one of those tenants, like let's let's let's say there is objective truth and you pull that out just just a little bit from the pyramid and you look at it and you go, you know what, there's some dust on that. and you brush the dust off, I need to re-examine what that is.
00:16:36
Danny Price
You look at it and you go, perfect, I'm going to slide that right back in. You don't pull the whole thing apart. um If you are were to arrange for arrange, for example, the top pieces, like let's say you take some top pieces, you move some of the top pieces around, you'll notice there's a lot less consequences because all the pieces below that aren't going to fall apart. But when you start going deeper and deeper and lower and lower on the pyramid and you pull things out, it's going to cause issues and it's going to cause your faith to crumble.
Theological Beliefs Pyramid and Risks
00:17:01
Danny Price
And because of that, again, i'm I'm saying, I'm arguing that we should use different words for what we mean when we say sometimes deconstruction. And I think we should use words like, for example, refinement. We're refining our beliefs. We're reexamining our beliefs, et cetera. Mom, do you want to talk about this? I just droned on for forever. do you want to talk about this for a little bit?
00:17:17
jennifer
But it's really good what you're saying, Daniel. It gives a great word picture that that helps us just formulate and picture that so we can you know, relate to it. So I love that picture.
00:17:30
jennifer
um Another way that we can describe some of these terms is called a theological triage. And so what Daniel's talking about in that bottom layer, I would just add, we we call those the essentials, the core, just like what you're saying.
00:17:38
Danny Price
Mm-hmm.
00:17:48
jennifer
And then we have our convictions, which our convictions are our convictions. So the core, like we said, would be who Jesus was, the definition of sin, that the Bible's true, the divinity of Jesus, that he rose again.
00:17:59
Danny Price
okay
00:18:04
jennifer
Our preferences might be what we think about end times or baptism. Those are preferences where it's it's not, it doesn't relate to our salvation.
00:18:12
Danny Price
Yeah.
00:18:16
jennifer
Those are the core doctrines relate to salvation.
00:18:16
Danny Price
Mmhmm. Mmhmm.
00:18:18
jennifer
So then you have the preferences. And then at the at the very top, you have the non-essential, excuse me, The middle layer is convictions. The top layer would be preferences. So that's another way to just look at that core. Like you're saying, that's our foundation. And then we have our convictions about a different elements of faith. And then the top would be preferences, worship style, different things like that.
00:18:49
jennifer
um so I think that's really good what you're saying.
00:18:49
Danny Price
Right. Yeah.
00:18:51
jennifer
The core, we don't want to mess with the core. That's what we stand on. That's what anchors us in our faith.
00:18:59
Danny Price
so i want Mom, I want you to talk a little bit about, you read Ginger Duggar's book. It's not Ginger Duggar anymore, but I want you to talk about that a little bit, what the word the word that she uses here in a second. Just a reminder, again, um I'm trying to get you guys to understand is, when you if you use the word deconstruction, but what you're trying to mean is something else by it, I would argue that you would you would want to use that different word.
00:19:23
Danny Price
because of the chart the, again, the electricity around this word. And I hope you guys would do this on your own. If you guys just, again, like I said earlier, go to social media, type in hashtag deconstruction, you're going to see some crazy things and some beliefs that you're like, oh my goodness, like that's not at all what I mean when I'm just saying, I just want to re-examine or reaffirm some of the things that I believe or understand, or maybe, you know, um now I wouldn't say, I would say question with the idea of the Bible is truth, but come into the Bible with questions. I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says don't have questions or don't, um you know, for example, the Bereans, like were were praised highly in the New Testament because they examined what Paul was saying and they held it up to scripture and said, does this measure up?
00:20:05
Danny Price
That is not wrong. So I really want to just get this hammer, this across deconstruction is it's, it's not, all these, these good things we're talking about. When you say, is it wrong to believe this thing? Or as a child, I was told that God is love or God is good. I don't know if I believe that I'm going to dive into that.
00:20:24
Danny Price
That is not deconstruction. I would say that that's a reexamining of your, of your faith. And if you've been told lies along with faith, you might have to pull those apart. Mom, do you want to talk a little bit about that with what Ginger in her book was?
00:20:38
jennifer
Yeah, that was Ginger Wolo. um I read that book because I was interested in her story. And in one part of her book, she had a really great example that hit me personally with some things I was going through. Like you mentioned, not a deconstructing of my faith, not a subjective. I want to just go by my experience now, but just...
00:21:01
jennifer
um undoing some areas from things that I grew up in and learned. And she had a great picture. She has long hair and she talked about a piece of gum and just getting piece of gum stuck in your hair. And okay, you've got kind of this mess, this tangle of gum in your hair. so you have a couple options. You can just take the scissors and, you know, lop it off, cut it off, or you can kind of pull the strands apart and untangle that. And she talked about she had things to disentangle from her faith. And that that word picture resonated with me because I felt like I was doing a similar process of just disentangling, not
00:21:48
jennifer
walking away from my faith. I felt solid in that, in believing God's word and who he says about who he is. And then, you know, my life in light of that.
00:22:00
jennifer
But I think that all of us along our spiritual journey, there sometimes is, like you mentioned, a personal crisis, and something going on, a form of pain, and it can even just be dissonance. Dissonance with we read something in scripture and we're like, that's not the Jesus I know or I don't picture him that way. Pastor Shane talked about that and I thought that was so good. He talked about the deconstruction, Jesus, and that we want Jesus and not just Jesus. Sometimes we want theology, which theology is just our belief. We all have theology about God. Whether you're a Christian or not, or wherever you're at in your faith walk, you have a theology about what you believe about God and the word and, you know, just all the aspects of religion and faith. And he mentioned that a lot of times we want Jesus to fit our narrative.
00:22:57
jennifer
You know, we have an ideology And sometimes when we're confronted with that, and I think young people, my heart goes out to them because I think they're searching and they read something or they see a conflict, that dissonance in the Bible or in their faith.
00:22:58
Danny Price
Hmm.
00:23:13
jennifer
And it's like, what do I do with this? Wait a minute. This doesn't match up. That's the time. Instead, I believe, instead of walking away and just kind of pushing it to the side, like, well, I'm not going to believe that.
00:23:27
jennifer
to press in, to press into God's word and find the answers. I think doubt and questions are part of our faith in growing and spiritual maturity, but it's where we land.
00:23:36
Danny Price
Yeah.
Subjective vs. Objective Truth in Deconstruction
00:23:40
jennifer
Danielle, I think it's where we end up at the end of that, because there is, like you said, a foundation, a core. There is I call it an anchor for my soul. And that there is truth that holds true. And it's not just a philosophy. You know, we talk a lot about we have our theology, then it's our philosophy and then our belief. We will always behave and act out from what we believe.
00:24:08
Danny Price
Hmm.
00:24:09
jennifer
So does that does that help?
00:24:09
Danny Price
Yeah, that was really good. That was perfect. Yeah, that that was great. And i I do love that example from Ginger. If you don't know, they they were part of, um, she was part of the family, you know, the Duggars and they had, what is it, what was it?
00:24:21
Danny Price
19 kids, something like that.
00:24:22
jennifer
19 kids and counting.
00:24:24
Danny Price
Yeah. And they experienced, I mean, they, they had some fringe beliefs with theology that they were wrapped up in and that's what she was kind of disentangling.
00:24:24
jennifer
Yes.
00:24:31
Danny Price
And then there's stuff that happened with her family. Um, And they kind of fell from grace. They were like this, this popular homeschool family that was kind of held up on a pedestal. And then they had some sexual assault in the family and some things that happened and it kind of, they dropped them out of, um, kind of the grace of the public. And so, you know, for her, I think that was,
00:24:50
Danny Price
that was part of that disentangling. I love that framework of the gum in your hair because you could totally go scorched earth and just you know go Britney Spears and just shave your head, be like, I'm done, I'm tearing it all to the ground.
00:25:02
Danny Price
And it's honestly, it's the much harder work of going, you know what, instead of just tearing it all apart, I'm going to find out what is real and pull apart the gum out of the things that I believe.
00:25:13
Danny Price
I love that frame of reference because, again, for a lot of people listening, you might have beliefs that you're questioning or you're and then the Bible does not say it again.
00:25:21
jennifer
you
00:25:21
Danny Price
it's It's not wrong to struggle. I would say it's wrong to question everything and go, I don't believe in anything. I don't think that that's biblical, but it's okay. And there's there's Bible verses that talk about struggling through unbelief. And I'm i'm just going to list a couple here.
00:25:37
Danny Price
This is, again, the the father where his daughters died and Jesus is going to go raise her from the dead, but he doesn't know that yet. The the father doesn't. and He's struggling and, and you're in Mark 9, 24, immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe help my unbelief, which I think is like, i get emotional reading that verse. It's like one of the most powerful verses in the Bible. I think for someone who's just like, I struggle, I believe help me in my unbelief. Um,
00:26:00
Danny Price
And there's different places where Thomas doubts and Jesus shows himself to Thomas. And there's, I really want to just this disassociate the idea of deconstruction with, I struggle with something and I need to re-examine it. I need to understand it better. I need to go back to scripture and find out what I believe. That is not what deconstruction is. And even though what you might, what some people do mean by that, and even very popular authors will will use that word, people that I love and respect. And again, I'm not charging them to do the same thing that I'm doing. I'm just urging people in my circle. I'm like, you don't know what you're saying sometimes when you say that word because of what other people mean by that mean by that word. And there's better language that we can use to be clear to associate meaning with what we're trying to actually do.
00:26:40
Danny Price
So we're going to move on. Hopefully that kind of gives you guys a little bit of an idea of what deconstruction is and then what it's not. um Back to kind of a little bit of what deconstruction is, we're going to go into why is it dangerous and what are some of the common pitfalls that people fall into and what's happening with deconstruction. so again Some of the beliefs that someone might be deconstructing.
00:27:02
Danny Price
I've wrote written down a list. This is not, again, an unexhaustive list, but this is some of the beliefs that someone might be wrestling with when they're examining deconstruction and they're going through that process in their their life. and like my mom said, this especially happens to young people because I believe sometimes the church has failed them. The church has not discipled people to be in God's word and understand truth and even believe that there is a truth.
00:27:23
Danny Price
And they go out into the world and they experience this this varying degree of of stuff, of opinions, and they have to find a way to coexist with it and a lot of times it it really... pushes in upon you know individuals, especially young people's worldviews. So here are some beliefs or some commonly deconstructed topics that people wrestle with. um Number one is sexual ethics. So this is the whole LGBTQ movement. Sex outside or before marriage, gender roles. Is there gender is there a more than one gender? That kind of thing.
00:27:51
Danny Price
Number two, abortion. um This is a commonly deep you know belief that people hold that abortion is okay and it's good, and it causes them to struggle with their faith because they believe and they come with this presupposition that abortion is good.
00:28:04
Danny Price
um Number three, truth. Is there truth at all? Is there objective truth? And specifically, is the Bible God's revealed truth to us? um Number four, the church's function and the church's authority. How is the church supposed to work? How is the church supposed to function? Should I go to church? Those kind of beliefs. Number five, hell, specifically eternal conscious torment. That's really it's a struggle for some people.
00:28:26
Danny Price
Number six, heaven. And a lot of people thinking, you what if heaven can be achieved here on earth? Or what if there really isn't a heaven? Or we're kind of already living in heaven. um Number seven, politics and faith. How do those coexist? We talked a little bit about that in the last podcast with Shane, but that's a commonly deconstructed belief is How much should my faith and my politics work together or be separate?
00:28:44
Danny Price
um Number eight, the exclusivity of salvation. Why can't just everybody just be saved? Why why is there an exclusivity of things that have to happen and I have to put my faith and believe in Jesus to be saved? And why doesn't why is that not just, i mean, it's available for everyone, but why doesn't everyone just be saved because Jesus wants everyone to be saved?
00:29:02
Danny Price
um Number nine, the nature of scripture. and This is, again, is this is a very common one. a lot of people will look at scripture and then they'll start seeing dissonance with certain things. Like me and Hannah were just talking about this and the the different gospels. There's different accounts of after Jesus is resurrected, the woman that goes to the tomb and there's different accounts. Now, some people have tried to marry those together and there is you know explanations chronologically, but they don't always add up. One person said they saw one angel, other someone else they said they saw two.
00:29:27
Danny Price
you know, both could be correct, but there is a little bit of dissonance. And a lot of people will look at that and look at scripture and go, oh, it's a, there's, they're using literary devices and they're using this and that we can't really trust what scripture says because, you know, again, because the canon being, because of what was in scripture and some of the dis the differences that we see in some of the gospels, stuff like that.
00:29:48
Danny Price
um so Those are some commonly deconstructed beliefs. We're going to get into why specifically is it dangerous? Mom, do you want to take this for a second? Why is deconstruction dangerous? What happens?
00:29:59
jennifer
Well, I think in our definition of deconstructing biblically, the danger is instead of the authority of God's word in our life, an absolute, like something you can you can bank on, you can go, this is true. I can stand on this. We turn from object from that objective truth to a subjective truth.
00:30:24
jennifer
So the danger in that is then it's filtered Through our eyes, it's filtered through our definition of what is wrong. You know, our standard of determining what is good, what is evil.
00:30:39
jennifer
And it it leads us astray, Daniel. It's like we're tossed back and forth.
00:30:44
Danny Price
yeah
00:30:46
jennifer
We're and filtering it all through what we view as right and wrong. So we have set ourself up. Honestly, it's a hard realization, but honestly, is that position sets you up as I am the authority.
00:31:03
jennifer
i am the authority. I am the arbiter of truth. And it's a dangerous place because,
00:31:13
jennifer
wow, it's hard to even put it in words, I guess, the danger of not, of just putting ourselves in charge of what we we think is right and wrong.
00:31:26
Danny Price
Yeah, there's going to be some things. And again, we can't get into all of this on this podcast, but when it comes to truth, when it comes to Christianity, when it comes to the Bible being God's infallible word, I wish we could dive into every single proof for that and talk about the reasons why we believe all this stuff. Again, i we can't quite do all that in this podcast just for time's sake. i mean, it would take a long time to do all this.
00:31:51
Danny Price
I will think carefully. I'll see if I can put some resources in the bottom if you're struggling with, for example, trusting God's word is truth. Because I i want to address that. And I do want to talk about some of these pitfalls and some of these areas of why this is so dangerous.
00:32:05
Danny Price
um has to do with the fact that when we hear a lot of people, when they hear questions, they dismiss them and they don't actually engage with people who are asking questions that are struggling. And we just dismiss it and go, just believe, just believe it's okay. Just believe. And there isn't always going to be an element of faith that we have to have in God's word and him, but there is a lot of reasons. And I don't want to just pin it all on, um, um,
00:32:29
Danny Price
like logical reasoning, because there is, again, there is an element of God that's not necessarily, it doesn't, like, it's gonna make sense to us in certain capacities, like the Trinity, for example. Like, we can explain it-ish, but it's hard to understand. It bends our brain a little bit. And there is a little bit of that with,
00:32:45
Danny Price
our faith but there is so much re there's so many reasons there's so much proof there's so much you know even if you're looking at prophecy if you're looking at god's revealed word and and what has happened um in fulfilled prophecy even through the bible i mean you can totally tell they were written at different times different authors all this stuff i can't go into all of it right now but there is a lot of reasons that we believe what we believe it's not just because we're having this quote unquote blind faith um i love what my mom said about that i really just want to hammer that in again when we make our experience, the ultimate authority is when we begin a lot of times, this is the beginning process of when we begin to deconstruct. So when you say, instead of saying, what has God said about this in the Bible, you say, what feels just, what feels right to me.
00:33:31
Danny Price
And you see this happening in in the Bible in different times. And there's different times where the Bible says, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. It says that in judges, people love to make themselves God. And My mom we talked about a little bit, but we are very crappy gods. We are fallible beings. If you don't know that about yourself or if you can't see that, you're a little blinded or maybe a little prideful, but we are incredibly incompetent to handle some of these things, and we are not eternal in the sense of like how God is. We are not...
00:34:00
Danny Price
we are not all known. We are not all powerful. we We make very crappy decision makers a lot of times based off of our frame of reference because we're so confined to just what we believe and what we know. So i would really encourage you if you're struggling with some things that are that God is saying, this is where it gets dangerous is when we struggle, instead of examining the struggle, it's a lot of times easier to go scorched earth, cut off your whole all your hair and go, you know what? I am just going to make myself God. going to put myself on the throne and I'm going to listen to myself.
00:34:30
Danny Price
um Some of the things that deconstruction will cause us to do that I've seen and in the past is Elevating the idea of questioning to the highest example of like, that's like the highest brain function that you can have. So for example, what I mean by that is someone will, you'll talk to someone who's deconstructing or struggling and they'll go, I'm just asking questions or what about this? What about this? And there's never an end game in mind. They elevate the idea of questioning.
00:34:59
Danny Price
over anything else. To doubt is the best thing that you can do. To question is the best thing that you can do. And that causes you to live in this, again, we've been talking about this, this wishy-washy experience of there is no truth, there is nothing I can ground myself to, and you just are constantly swayed to and fro.
00:35:17
Danny Price
which some people love because again that means you can you can you can live however you want to live because you're the authority um another thing that i've noticed that deconstruction does is it will start especially online and it'll start to pull you out of your community and out of the church This is, again, is we're talking about the dangers of deconstruction. This is something that I've noticed in some of them. I've had friends that have deconstructed their beliefs, and I would say used to be faithful Christians, um and now and now I would say I don't know if I can say that about them.
00:35:47
Danny Price
And I do notice a lot of times what they'll do is they'll they'll turn to online resources. They'll be being discipled online by somebody else. So this could be TikTok.
00:35:55
jennifer
you
00:35:56
Danny Price
This could be YouTube. And by the way, parents, if you're listening to what youre some of the things your kids are listening to on TikTok or watching, be careful. There's a lot on TikTok. People say the the the wildest things. There's no accountability to that.
00:36:07
Danny Price
You could say anything about faith or about Jesus. And so many people, I personally know people because of TikTok theology that struggle with huge questions in theology because of what's been like told to them on TikTok.
00:36:18
Danny Price
And again, it's not wrong to go, oh, that's an interesting question. I'm gonna look into that. But they literally have walked away from the faith because of that. So if you're being discipled online, a lot of times it starts online. It starts in isolation. And a lot of times it starts to pull you away from your community and church. Instead of going to people that you trust, like maybe your pastor, your parents, or your mentors, you start, again, to go inward.
00:36:41
Danny Price
So if you're listening to this and you're like, when I have a hard thing, I go inward. And I don't go to some to a different authority, specifically God and the Bible. or someone that's going to push me to God in the Bible, I would say that's a warning sign for you. So if you're like, I struggle with X belief, I don't know what I believe about X belief. And your first thought is, hmm, what do I think?
00:36:59
Danny Price
That should be a warning sign to you. You want to be doing the opposite. You want to be saying, hmm, what does God say about that? What does his truth say about that? um And then, let's see here. Is there anything else I wanted to add on that? The other thing i would add is a lot of people...
00:37:17
Danny Price
when it comes to deconstruction, and I talked about this before, we we mean different things by it. A lot of people want to hold this tension of, I'm a Christian, but I'm also deconstructing. And somehow it's seen as a good thing. And again, what some of those people mean can be a good thing by what by the word deconstruction. Again, language is messy.
00:37:34
Danny Price
But a lot of people actually, they don't mean the good thing. They mean the bad thing. They mean I'm pulling apart on my entire beliefs, but I still want to be known as a Christian And again, just a reinforcement of this idea, there are certain beliefs that you need to hold to be what we but most people would call a Protestant, you know an Orthodox Christian. I'm not saying Orthodox Christianity, like Catholic and Orthodox this is different. I'm saying an Orthodox beliefs, right beliefs.
00:38:01
Danny Price
It's really hard because a lot of people, and this again is a pitfall, this is a dangerous area, is what they'll do is they'll try to hold these two things in tension and not even realize that those things are not compatible. what they What they're saying, what they're questioning is clearly said in God's word and it's not compatible to hold that view of I'm a Christian i am you know and i and i and I believe I'm a Christian and say certain beliefs. like For example, and this this is just, i'm you know I'm making this up on the fly because I'm trying to come up with an example, but Some people will say, well, I'm a Christian, but I also believe that marriage is not just between a man and a woman.
00:38:32
Danny Price
And you go, okay It's interesting that you that you say that. Let's examine that. And this is where it becomes dangerous is because a lot of people think truly think that they're Christian, truly think that they are following Orthodox Christianity. But again, they are they're trying to work around some of these things that are uncomfortable socially, and they're trying to hold these beliefs. And they don't realize that what they're doing is not – it can't actually be held logically together like because of what Jesus says and what God has revealed to us in the Bible. they can't You can't hold that view alongside scripture and call yourself a Christian if you believe that. Now, again, i want to back up and say we're not all going to have 100% correct beliefs about certain things. For example, there might be something that we think about the Trinity that's not actually how it is. it might be a little bit different. um we We don't have like the full understanding of it because, again, we're outside of eternity and we're outside of heaven.
00:39:22
Danny Price
I'm not saying, and i want to be clear here, that you have to have every single secondary issue, every single preference, every single conviction, every every single thing perfect and just right to be saved. I'm not saying that. I'm saying there are certain core doctrines of the faith that if you don't hold to or don't believe,
00:39:38
Danny Price
It's going to cause you to stumble away and you're, and I would be doubtful and I would be questioning if you were, if you were a Christian. Now, again, you can struggle with these things and you can examine these things. I'm not saying you have to have a hundred percent correct theology, a hundred percent correct belief on every single thing to be a Christian. That's not the case at all. and that's not what Jesus says either, but.
00:39:58
Danny Price
to try to hold Christianity in tandem with some of these other beliefs that people often deconstruct, again, is logically, it just doesn't hold up. It doesn't make any sense because they contradict each other, even though a lot of people try to pretend that they don't or try to get around the fact that they do. And a lot of times people will do that by saying, well, that was for that time in culture. That doesn't make sense for us now. Or, you know I just don't think that God would say that. I don't think that God said that. Or I don't think that that verse really was in the Bible. Stuff like that people will use to get around that.
00:40:25
Danny Price
Mom, do you want to add to any of that about like the correct theology beliefs and whether or not you need to know or believe everything 100% correct to be a Christian? You want to talk about that for a second?
00:40:34
jennifer
I think we're all in process and that our spiritual journey, for our spiritual journey, we're growing and we're learning. And the more we learn about God's character and nature,
00:40:50
jennifer
the more we have understanding about ourselves and his word informs
The Gospel as the Anchor
00:40:57
jennifer
that. And so it changes us because we encounter beliefs within ourself or you know, yeah, our beliefs, I guess I would say our belief system in ourself. And we encounter something in God's word and we have to measure. There has to be some standard outside of ourselves where we can measure and go, is this Is this true? And wow, I was believing this. And now I see in God's word, whoa, that like shed light on that. I have more understanding. God, help me. Like you said, God, help me in my unbelief. Help me to know you and who you are. And I want to add something, Daniel, to backtrack a little bit on something you were talking about, like why this is dangerous
00:41:43
jennifer
And I wanted to just reiterate that we have an enemy. So the enemy, Satan, is attacking the gospel and attacking our beliefs. He's the one that came to Eve in the garden and said, did God really say? and whenever we're posed with a question we have, we really need to go, where do I go to find the answer for this? So we want to remember that he he wants to rob, steal, and destroy.
00:42:13
jennifer
Right. And that he or rob, kill and destroy, excuse me, and that he is prowling around seeking who he can devour and pull away from the truth. And that that's an element also besides self and people elevating themselves and their own thoughts and experience.
00:42:32
Danny Price
Yeah, no but that was really good. Is there anything else that you want to go over when it comes to why it's dangerous or why it should be you know why but we need to be careful and avoid it?
00:42:43
jennifer
I think we want to, yeah, I guess the one thing that comes to mind is that we're tossed to and fro and we're not stable.
00:42:44
Danny Price
we we We can keep going if you want.
00:42:54
jennifer
We're unstable when we just are blown away by every wind or whatever, you know. um Shane mentioned, Pastor Shane, in his sermon about these empty philosophies and ideologies and how we want to be rooted and grounded.
00:43:10
jennifer
And the danger of that is that then we are carried away. We are carried away by culture, by our own thoughts, by what people say, because we're always looking to something supplemental. And when we can when we can fix our eyes on Jesus and have the word and go, this is the truth. Jesus is the truth. Okay, I don't understand it all. I have questions. I'm unsettled about this or that, but there but we can We can, so I don't know, this is maybe not a good, you know, sink our teeth into something like know that. But the answer is here. And I can ask and find an answer. And I might struggle with the outcome of that. but
00:43:52
jennifer
But God's word is true. And I can rely on that. That's that's such a settling, an anchor.
00:43:57
Danny Price
Yeah.
00:44:00
jennifer
Instead of just going, well, everyone just has their own truth.
00:44:00
Danny Price
Yeah.
00:44:05
jennifer
I mean, how do you rest in that?
00:44:05
Danny Price
Right.
00:44:06
jennifer
How how is that an anchor for your soul? it It brings up so much questioning and anxiety and uncertainty.
00:44:14
Danny Price
Mm-hmm.
00:44:15
jennifer
And when we can be certain, that that's the hope that we have, that God's word is true, even in the questioning.
00:44:21
Danny Price
Yeah.
00:44:25
Danny Price
That's really good. I love that. The next point that we are trying to just kind of tackle here is why does it matter to us in our
Addressing Deconstruction in Local Contexts
00:44:33
Danny Price
context? Specifically, and I'm talking to Mountain View, maybe even if you're listening from Mountain Life, Mountain View, Mountain Life, you know Utah context, why does this matter to us?
00:44:42
Danny Price
um Because again, we're talking about all these things and I hope you guys are realizing it's fun to talk in like you know mumbo jumbo philosophy stuff sometimes and talk about like you know logical arguments and processes.
00:44:54
Danny Price
But if you don't bring it home, if you don't bring it to yourself, We run the risk of just, again, empty philosophies. And again, Paul warns against this. like don't Don't get caught up and swept up in all these like useless arguments. And I would not say this is a useless argument. But there can be the fear or the, you know you just keep it up in your head and it doesn't actually practically influence the way you live your life.
00:45:18
Danny Price
So I think the reason mainly that this is important it's because people you know, hopefully you guys listening, people you know, maybe even you yourself are struggling with this stuff. You're struggling with the idea of deconstruction. You're struggling with questions. You're struggling with the idea, is if is my faith real? Do I really believe what I believe? Or maybe, this might be in common for someone listening, you just walked away from a different faith. Maybe you just walked out of the LDS church and you're like,
00:45:42
Danny Price
I need to find, i need to disentangle. what am i What do I believe versus what is um Christian doctrine? And what have i what am i bringing over from my previous experience of faith?
00:45:50
jennifer
Thank
00:45:53
Danny Price
And it's entangled and I need to disentangle it. That could be where you're at too. So this applies to so many people in so many walks of life. It's very important. The other thing I would say is it applies to our young people.
00:46:04
Danny Price
Parents or youth pastors or whoever's listening to this, please know We really need to encourage our young people, especially I would say between ages 18 to like like you know late 20s, when you go out into college and you don't have a a good framework for a Christian worldview, and you've been told, just believe this, just believe that, but you've never actually been told why,
00:46:28
Danny Price
or you've been told poor concepts about why we we believe what we believe, there is so many hard, worldly arguments that are going to stumble your children and stumble. I'm not saying don't send them to college. i'm not I don't quite believe that. Some people i don't send them to anything. don't you know Keep them keep him safe.
00:46:46
Danny Price
um your Your kids are going to interact with the world, so I don't believe that's possible. but A reason that this matters in our context is because we're sending our young kids to college. And yes, we we live in conservative Utah, and it's a little bit easier. And there's a lot more you know there's a lot of faith based off of you know the LDS religion here in Utah too. So it's a little safer to have some faith beliefs. But still, you're going to run into questions. Kids are going to run
Engaging Youth in Faith Discussions
00:47:07
Danny Price
into these questions. And if we have not set them up, and if we have not laid a good foundation for what it looks like to question or to have questions in the home,
00:47:16
Danny Price
we're setting them up for trouble. If every time someone has a question and comes to you, your kids, for example, or if you're you know a youth pastor, you're youth student, whoever it is, if you treat a question as, hey, that's an you're so stupid for asking that question. Why would you ask that question? Just believe. If that's how you answer, kids are going to learn, I just blindly believe. And then when they're put up against a framework that is like, no, we have answers. We have we have things, we have ideas for this.
00:47:44
Danny Price
When they come into like worldly philosophy or when they come into postmodernism or deconstructionism, all these things, they're going to be swayed by some of those arguments because some of those arguments are really darn good. They're really difficult to understand. And if their idea of questioning has always been turned back with, don't question, don't don't ask questions, don't don't say anything, just just believe.
00:48:05
Danny Price
it causes a lot of dissonance in those kids. So again, again trying to bring this home to home for us, we need to be practicing open dialogue in the church, open dialogue in the family, open dialogue in our communities, and examining when people have questions. And like, hey, that's such a great question. Let me dig into that with you. I don't know quite how to answer that.
00:48:25
jennifer
Mm-hmm.
00:48:25
Danny Price
that's That should be a response as opposed to shove it down, cram it down, just belief. Because again, there is some element of faith. We talked about that before, but don't fall into the trap of dismissing questions that are difficult. Because again, online, on on campus, all over, kids and adults, um this is not just for kids, but also adults are experiencing these questions and things, and it's really, really difficult to pull them apart and disentangle ourselves.
00:48:51
Danny Price
when you've always been told, just believe. Mom, do you want to about that a little bit, why it matters in our context?
00:48:56
jennifer
Yeah, it does matter. And I love what you said, Daniel, about the younger generation and, you know, asking questions and not to push those away. I think have the conversations.
00:49:09
jennifer
Go, let's talk about that. Who was Jesus? What did he come to do?
00:49:13
Danny Price
Hmm.
00:49:14
jennifer
what does that What does that mean for you today in light of what we learn? And I think what you said is sometimes we present the church as a whole you know, the big C church, present maybe not a gospel where people can go or kids graduate and go, i know what I believe. I know the gospel, who I was before Christ, what Christ did for me, and now what that means and how I live in light of that.
00:49:42
jennifer
um I agree that, you know, just learning stories of the Bible, sometimes there needs to be a deeper teaching and discipleship of, hey, the Bible is one big story.
00:49:54
jennifer
There's a theme through the whole Bible, like sometimes we don't understand that. And then we are posed a question and we're like, I don't know. And I think the goal
00:50:03
Danny Price
But I can tell you about Jonah and the big fish.
00:50:05
jennifer
Yeah, I can tell you about Jonah or Daniel, you know, Daniel in the lion's den. And the goal of that is, you know, be so be courageous, be strong. And we we miss the story that it's his story and it's the story of redemption and what it took to two accomplish that redemption.
00:50:19
Danny Price
Hmm.
00:50:25
jennifer
And that in light of that redemption, how does that affect me? I i would love to read this verse, Daniel, quickly.
00:50:33
Danny Price
Please, please do.
00:50:34
jennifer
it It kind of talks about the gospel because I think deconstruction, true deconstruction from the Christian faith um is a false gospel. It isn't true. And so if we go back and just look at Titus 3, this is who we were before Christ and then what Christ did. It says, for we too were once foolish disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another.
00:51:09
jennifer
But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us, not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy,
00:51:24
jennifer
Through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit, he poured out his spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by his grace, we may become heirs of with the hope of eternal life.
00:51:46
jennifer
And I think we need to remember what forgotten who were we before the gospel and then what the gospel did. So the danger of not presenting the true gospel is that we don't know it. We don't understand it. We want to know what we believe and who we believe in so that then we can proclaim, right?
00:52:09
jennifer
I have this written down, these words, know We first know, then we believe, then we guard that and want to proclaim that the truth.
00:52:19
jennifer
So the danger is that when you don't know what's right, you're not going to believe what's right.
00:52:20
Danny Price
Yeah.
00:52:24
jennifer
You won't guard what's right or live out what's right. We have our, that like you going back to that pyramid, that bottom layer needs to be right for everything else to be right from that.
00:52:38
Danny Price
Yeah. No, that's that's really important. That's good. um i I did use ChatGPT a little bit, and I'm so cautious with it. But I did i pulled up some some things, and I just threw my points in there that I was trying to talk about, and I asked ChatGPT.
00:52:48
jennifer
Mm-hmm.
00:52:54
Danny Price
And again, it has my frame of reference of all the questions I've asked it, so it you know kind of spits back at the answer, some of the answers that I want. But it did pull from a lot of different websites that talk about deconstruction. And I did like this one point about why it matters in our context.
00:53:09
Danny Price
Because specifically, families are affected. And I really am just like, I got to hammer that home. Your family is being affected by this. Whether you know it or not, your kids are getting questions, and they're having to deal with this. Or you know as adults, you're getting questions, you're having to deal with this.
00:53:23
Danny Price
But I love this point that that was, again, this is ChatGPT, so I can't take credit for it. But it's so good. It says, parents are watching kids walk away. If elders, pastors, parents don't address this carefully,
00:53:35
Danny Price
And then there's just two points. Either we become harsh, and we don't allow questions, or we become vague, we don't answer questions fully. And then it says both lose people. And I would think that that's that's the biggest danger. And that's why why it matters in our context is people will fall away from faith, deconstruct their beliefs, and end up not, they again, lot of people will will say, I'm deconstructing with the with the attempt or the idea of reconstruction. And I have found that is very rare. Very rarely do I see people deconstruct and pull away And again, going back to what deconstruction means, a lot of people, what they mean by deconstruction is traditionally what we've held, traditionally what I've been told, traditionally what we've said about the Bible and about God and about all these things, it can't be trusted. It's not true.
00:54:21
Danny Price
And as people pull away from those things, again, a lot of people be like, well, I'm trying to find out, you know, I'm trying to just I'm going to pull, it I'm gonna go Britney Spears. I'm to shave my head. I'm going to go crazy scorched earth. And then I will grow back. I'm going to grow it back.
00:54:35
Danny Price
And I find a lot of times, and this this is my circle. So I don't know about your circles listening. I find a lot of people don't. I find a lot of people, what they grow back into is just whatever they want faith to be. they They grow back into whatever they think faith should be.
00:54:49
Danny Price
and what they think about the Bible and what they think about XYZ topic, all these topics that we talked about earlier, why people will start to question in the first place. um that's why this matters in our view That's why this matters in our context, because people are are going to come to questions, and they're going to have to do something with those questions. And if we don't have a place for them to land, a lot of times they will walk away, and they won't ever come back.
00:55:10
Danny Price
So that's something that I just wanted to, again, draw home to practicality of why this matters for us. um Last point that I wanted to touch on and kind of to kind of end this in a good note is how do we combat deconstruction's lies with scripture?
Using Scripture to Counter Deconstruction's Lies
00:55:26
Danny Price
How do we go on the offense? As my mom would say, she was talking about this and she's like, I want to go on the offense. How do we not just go, okay we're going to be defensive and we're going to try to maybe answer some questions. How do we proclaim scripture? How do we use scripture to go on the offense and go, no, this is what I believe.
00:55:40
Danny Price
ah Mom, I'm kind of let let you take it from here. i wanted you wanted to hear your thoughts on this.
00:55:45
jennifer
Well, think we go on the offense by believing and upholding God's word and the gospel.
00:55:53
Danny Price
Yeah.
00:55:54
jennifer
It sounds so like trite and it can sound religious, but it is truth. The
00:56:01
jennifer
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And when we can uphold that, it is an anchor for our soul. It is a firm foundation. It is truth that combats lies, truth that would come against who Jesus is and what he's done.
00:56:18
jennifer
Because those are the two biggest things we want to uphold, who Jesus is and what he's done. Because if we say Christ is different than who he says he was or that sin is different, than I think it is, then we don't end up, we don't have Christianity anymore. So if you're talking about how do we combat the lies with scripture, because there are a lot of lies in this culture, and even lies that we can believe, even lies that I can believe in. I just want to say, if you're questioning your faith, go to God's word.
00:56:54
jennifer
Find someone little older, a little more settled in their faith and go, you help me? Like, help me learn how to open up the word and understand it. Like, I open my Bible and I'm not sure how to read it or I'm struggling. And there's all these things that I feel I'm supposed to know and I don't know or understand. Find someone that could walk alongside of you and open up a book of the Bible and tell you the big story of scripture from beginning to end and where we're at in the middle and who Jesus is and what he's done for you. And pray for faith. I think we pray, like you said, there is an element of belief. This isn't just, this is the right thing, and so just believe it. No, there's an element of faith. And, you know, it talks in Corinthians that the natural man can't see. You mentioned a word earlier, he's blinded.
00:57:50
jennifer
the The enemy and Satan has blinded the eyes, and we need to pray that God, open my eyes, help my spirit see truth, help me understand. um There's a verse I want to read in 1 John 5 20.
00:58:04
jennifer
I feel like it says it so much better than my words. I hope that I'm being clear and helping reiterate and, you know, support the things you're saying, because you've said some really great things, Daniel. But in 1 John 5, 20, it says, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know him who is true.
00:58:30
jennifer
And we are in him who is true. In his Son, Christ, Jesus Christ, this is the true gospel and eternal life. You know, in John 17, it says that the gospel is knowing him.
00:58:43
jennifer
is knowing Jesus. And so I think we can the way we combat lies simply is with truth, but it isn't our truth. There is a truth that is true, that stands above all things. And it's not a philosophy, it's a person.
00:59:00
jennifer
It is Jesus and what he's come to do. and if you're struggling in your faith and and you can't sit down and write down, and I don't mean this like a test, but just like to challenge yourself,
00:59:13
jennifer
what is the gospel? Who is Jesus? What has he come to do? What has he come to do? What has he done? And then how do I live in light of that? How does that matter for me today? We have to settle those questions. Young people are looking for purpose and hope. And I'll tell you, Daniel, it is outside of ourselves. We don't find that in ourselves. We can question and ask questions, but the answer isn't in ourself.
00:59:41
jennifer
And it certainly isn't in what we think about something. We want to base our belief on something that we know holds up and is true.
00:59:51
Danny Price
Yeah.
00:59:52
jennifer
And so that, is that answering? Is that helping?
00:59:55
Danny Price
No, that does.
00:59:56
jennifer
And, you know,
00:59:56
Danny Price
That's really good. That was perfect. Yeah. um Yeah, i don't I don't have much to add to that just because like that was I feel like that was a a good full picture of how we're using scripture to combat the lies.
01:00:09
Danny Price
So thanks, Mom. I really appreciate that. um Just to kind of close this out in summary, I just want to revisit some of these things really quick and just, I'm i'm hoping that we were clear and this made sense, but again, just answering what is deconstruction.
01:00:24
Danny Price
um Truly what most most people mean is it's a walking away from traditional faith, traditional values, traditional beliefs about scripture. What it's not, again, hopefully this this came across clear to you guys, what it's not is disentangling or reexamining, refining some of our beliefs. Again, think back to that pyramid that I mentioned earlier. Are you pulling some blocks out and looking at those blocks, maybe figuring out, you know hey, you know is my foundation secure?
01:00:49
Danny Price
Or are you just pulling out blocks willy-nilly, kind of like Jenga, and then the whole thing crashes down? And again, reminding you, The bigger the issue, the more important the block, the more foundational the belief, the more it's going to rock up above on all your other things when you pull that out. And you have to be careful because like just like Jenga, you pull out one of those small little bottom pieces thinking that it's not going to be a big deal.
01:01:12
Danny Price
But really, that's a core belief and you just ruined a lot of things. And then all of a sudden, things start to fall apart. And then again, back to what deconstruction is, you know, and some of the dangers, a lot of people will say deconstruction is just asking questions.
01:01:23
Danny Price
And what they're really doing is they're walking away from faith. And we need to again, we need to call them back into faith and say, Hey, what does, what does the Bible say? And we do that by allowing for open spaces for questions, by allowing people to come to us with, with doubts and with fears and,
01:01:38
Danny Price
And that allows us to examine examine our own doubts and fears as well. um I would say nobody, including myself, including my mom, including Pastor Shane, including anybody you can think of does not experience struggles and doubts and you know questions and have you know having to examine those. I mean, nobody, quite literally nobody is just perfect and does not struggle with some of those things. Yeah.
01:01:58
Danny Price
Just again, a re reaffirmation of that. And then again, why it matters in our context, you know just to reaffirm, we have kids in our lives. We have people in our lives that are struggling with these things that need answers to questions that are are searching for truth.
01:02:12
Danny Price
And if we're not giving them truth by pointing them to God's word, we're doing them a disservice. And then again, just going back to my mom's, you know, ah offensively combating some of these lies with scripture, there are so many lies out there that deconstruction is selling.
01:02:27
Danny Price
And again, i keep saying this, but go out to social media and just look at some of the things that people are struggling with and the lies that they believed about the church, about God, about faith, and the things that they're deeply searching for they're searching for peace. They're searching, they're searching for their soul to be able to rest in something like my mom was saying. And oftentimes what they end up resting in is, you know what? The only thing I can trust, the only thing I believe in is myself.
01:02:51
Danny Price
My, and I just can just trust my heart and follow my heart. And that's all I can do because that's all that I know. And again, read the Bible to see where that ends up. I mean, you know the heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it? That's what the Bible says. i Again, i just, for practical for practicality's sake, I really want to just keep driving this point home is let's spur each other on towards goodness, towards not just towards good works, but towards knowing the truth, towards the gospel, like my mom was saying.
01:03:16
Danny Price
um And you know clearly defining by clearly defining what this is and calling it out and calling what it is, hopefully you guys can now go forward. And when you hear these beliefs, you might not they might not be saying, I'm deconstructing, but you hear this stuff that people are saying, these lies that are being spread or these questions that are popping up. And you can go, oh, that's what you're struggling with. Let's let's talk about that. You can kind of, you know when you name something, it loses power. I really do believe that. Like when you say,
01:03:42
Danny Price
in your head when you know what this is, it allows you to interact with people in your life that might be walking through through this problem, through this process. So hopefully this was good for you guys. Dan, I hope we answered your question. I know your question was pretty vague. It was just kind of generally like, what is deconstruction? Can you talk about that? um I don't know if you were expecting this to be this long or this, I don't know how helpful this was for some of you guys listening.
01:04:06
Danny Price
Hopefully this gives you guys, again, ah frame of reference to go from now. I'd hope this is not just a, theoretical, logical, you know, brain, you know, brain exercise for you guys, but that this is actually helpful.
01:04:19
Danny Price
And it gives you guys a really cool place to be able to take people and go, you know what, hey, like, are you experiencing some deconstructed beliefs, even though they might not be calling it that? Are you doubting that traditionally what we've held to in Christianity is is right? let's Let's look at that. Let's look at the gospel. Let's look at this. Let's look at that, whatever it is to interact with them.
01:04:37
Danny Price
Mom, as we close, is there anything else you wanted just to kind of wrap up and add to put a bow on this maybe?
01:04:43
jennifer
I would say eternity matters. And that's why this topic matters because it matters to God, right? Eternity matters in our life, what we believe and how we live. And I would just close with a prayer in Psalm 25 that says, guide me in your truth and teach me.
01:05:05
jennifer
And he'll do that.
01:05:05
Danny Price
ah that
01:05:06
jennifer
We ask and he'll do that. He'll meet you where you're at.
01:05:10
Danny Price
that That's really good.
01:05:12
jennifer
Thank you for having me on, Daniel.
01:05:14
Danny Price
Yeah, this was so fun having you on. Hopefully you guys enjoyed listening just to us banter back and forth about these things. Again, theres you know we we both spent some time researching this. If you're questioning or you have questions about this specifically, I'd love to share some of my resources with you. I'd love to share maybe you know i've wrote I wrote a lot of stuff down. So to my mom, she has a lot of notes. i have a lot of notes. I'd love to share some of those with you guys if you're like, I'd love to see your notes or just see what you were thinking through. Again, hopefully that really clears clears up deconstruction for you. i'm like I'm going to put down that Desiring God article that I talked about at the beginning.
01:05:49
Danny Price
It goes back to Jacques Derrida, but it also defines you know very clearly what deconstruction is in the kind of classical postmodern context that we're we're talking about. And i'll I'll try to link some videos. There's a few videos that are podcasts, I guess, that I've listened to that have helped clarify some of these issues.
01:06:07
Danny Price
Again, note that I am an advocate for not using deconstruction to mean some of those good things. And some people, they don't see those things they don't see that the same way, and so they'll use that word. in a lot of different senses. And you'll see that based off some of the podcasts I'll send you guys, or I'll put in the in the description. You'll notice that some people continue to use that word, meaning that. But again, we'll have to they ah you know go on to define it multiple times because, again, it's such a confusing word. So hopefully, we took some of this confusion, some of this mess, some of this mumbo jumbo, and kind of married it up with some of the truth and went, here's what this is. And we made made it make sense for you guys.
01:06:41
Danny Price
Really appreciate you all listening. Hopefully this podcast finds you well. And this was a good time for you just to be able to kind of take some of this in and digest some of this. I'd love to answer in your questions personally. I know Shane has a lot of thoughts about this as well. So you could always go to him as well. And then if I can put you in contact with my mom if you want to talk with her on the phone or something.
01:06:59
Danny Price
um She lives in the area. So if you guys are curious, but again, appreciate you all listening. Appreciate just again, just the viewership or the listenership, I guess, of a lot of you. And it's really encouraging for me just to hear about some of the impact that's made on some of your lives. So really enjoying doing this and hoping this is beneficial for the church, beneficial for you guys. So we'll close off. Mom, anything else you want to add to say bye to everyone?
01:07:22
jennifer
Bye. Thank you. it was great. Good conversation. Have those conversations.
01:07:27
Danny Price
Awesome. all right. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.