How do we rightly handle questions about our beliefs? We don’t want to go down the road of complete Christian deconstruction. We don’t want to uphold faulty beliefs just for the sake of tradition. Learn more about what our pursuit of truth should look like.
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Examining Our Beliefs
Welcome to A More Beautiful Life Collective. I’m your host, Cayce Fletcher, and I’m here to walk hand-in-hand with you as we grow in grace, build with purpose, and live beautifully.
We just finished up our first week of homeschooling with Memoria Press. Each year, the rhythm gets a little bit easier as I get a little wiser about what is worthwhile and what is not. But as the rhythm gets easier, the actual content gets harder. There are times when I look at what I am teaching — phonics rules and phonographs — and I just think: I don’t know.
This feeling of not knowing just continues as our children get older and ask us questions that wow us and floor us. We may be able to communicate why the sky is blue, but we may have a harder time with why God first created evil in the world. We may understand how flowers grow, but it’s harder to comprehend the nature of Christ and why he was able to pay the price for our sins.
There may be some who can say with certainty that they know the validity of every truth they believe—and can articulate that truth well. But, for most of us, our understanding of beliefs is more like a journey.
My son loves to watch one YouTube channel where the host finds and takes care of animals in aquariums and terrariums. Sometimes, he takes his show on the road. In one video, he walked a nearby trail and flipped over 100 rocks to see what he would find underneath, whether that was snakes, scorpions, or other creepy crawlies.
In many ways, we are also walking on this trail of life. There are truths on the road that we can uncover and inspect—understandings that will add depth and richness to our lives. But, all too often, we just walk right on by, preferring to live a life of shallow distraction over deep meaning.
In our last episode, we talked about the fact that we are all passing down a faith. We’ve inherited a faith tradition, and we will give our faith tradition to someone else. We must be aware of what we think and believe in order to pass down the best things to our children.
We need to ask three questions of ourselves:
- What did we inherit?
- What do you want to keep?
- What are you questioning?
We do this to sift our faith and make sure that what we believe is truly in line with the truth of Scripture.
Today, we are going to look at what might happen if you ask yourself these questions. Yes, you will gain an appreciation for the beliefs you hold, but you will also begin to wonder: What do I actually believe?
What happens when you don’t know what you believe?
Related: The Faith We Inherit
Belief Examination vs. Christian Deconstruction
In this post-Christian era, more and more people are wrestling with this question. People are leaving behind the traditions that they grew up with. They are leaving behind the feelings of duty to familial faiths. They are going out to the rough, choppy waters of the open sea. The Christian Deconstruction movement has permeated most evangelical, mainstream spheres today.
Two in five Christians say they have deconstructed the faith of their youth. What is deconstruction? Simply put, it is the process of taking apart and critically examining the religious beliefs, traditions, and cultural practices one was raised with.
According to this Barna study on how “Ex-Christians aren’t the Only Ones Deconstructing Faith,” “Overall, 42 percent of adults say they have deconstructed the faith of their youth. Of today’s Christians, it’s 37 percent, with little difference whether they’re practicing (36%) or nonpracticing (37%) Christians. That means more than one-third of committed, churchgoing Christians relate to the idea of having deconstructed the faith of their youth.”
I believe that you must take hold of the faith that you have—understanding it, examining it, and preparing to defend it. Unfortunately, many who go through Christian deconstruction ultimately feel defeated by the fact that they do not know an answer. That feeling of not knowing leads them to abandon their faith. I do not think that deconstruction because of the ideological beliefs of this age is a healthy thing. But, I do think we need to understand how to rightly handle questioning our beliefs.
Christian Deconstruction means tearing apart the great building of faith. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (NIV) says, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.” When we tear apart our faith just for the sake of destroying it, we are tearing apart the temple of God.
At the same time, we can examine what we believe to better understand it. We never want to be like the Pharisees — so blinded by our traditions and presuppositions that we miss who the true Son of God is.
How do we navigate feeling unmoored when we look at the faith of our youth and come up with questions?
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Walking the Middle Road: Deepening Faith through Questions instead of Abandoning it through Christian Deconstruction
My theological background is a little unique amongst the great swaths of mainstream evangelicals in the blogosphere today. I was raised in a Biblical Unitarian church that is part of a small denomination called the Church of God General Conference. We hold unique beliefs that do not align with the greater traditions of the major denominations.
From a young age, I — like everyone else in my church — became well-versed in the theological debate. Each person in my church and wider denominations knew the importance of being able to articulate what we believe because we were asked to do it often. We had to learn the importance of discernment, taking what was good and leaving the rest, because we often read and listened to things that were not 100% what we believe.
Each person also had to decide how ‘in’ they were going to be to the faith. It was easier to go along with mainstream Christianity, but we had to choose if we were going to die on the hill of our faith. Some did, some didn’t. But all had to wrestle with their faith. Those who did, asking questions to get them closer to the truth, came out stronger on the other side. (Interestingly, those who deconstructed their faith completely never did because of theological questions—it was more about lifestyle issues that they didn’t really want to give up.)
Christian deconstruction should never be the goal. We want to know our beliefs, but we don’t just want to tear them up and discard them. What is the goal?
For almost all of us, the goal was never about being able to blindly argue for the belief we were raised with. We wanted to know who God is. We wanted to honor God. We were driven by our love for God.
And so our questions led us down the winding paths of uncovering theological truths while deepening our love and appreciation for who God is.
Uncertainty Is Not Your Identity. Christian Deconstruction is not your goal.
In our episode on what you should know when studying theology, one of our 10 presuppositions was this: “Systematic theology requires us to have a definite answer. At some point we have to put our stake in the ground and claim what we say is truth. We can’t just stay out in the murky waters of “I don’t know” and not expect our faith to capsize at some point… or never take hold of our lives and bear fruit.”
James talks about the double-minded man who is blown and tossed by the wind (James 1:8). We don’t want to be double-minded. We want to eventually know the truth. So even though we may have uncertainty about what we believe, we don’t want this uncertainty to become our identity.
Our goal is not to respond like someone I knew growing up, talking about God saying “whoever he or she may be.” When we undergo Christian Deconstruction, we may decide that the truth is unknowable. We may just give up. But this is just wrong.
We want to know him and make him known. This means that our study of theology is a pursuit. We will not have it all figured out, but we are making strides on our journey to get closer to knowing him more fully.
Related: You need your own Personal Statement of Faith
The 3 Categories of Study in Your Pursuit of Truth
How should you approach this great pursuit? And almost as importantly, how do we avoid Christian deconstruction?
When we look at the faith we inherit, we should begin to practice the sifting. We sort our beliefs into three categories (recognizing that these categories are permeable).
#1 – I Believe
These are beliefs to which you hold fast. They may be core beliefs or secondary (and tertiary) beliefs, but you are committed to them and you know they stand the test of scripture.
#2 – I’m Studying
These are beliefs that you are questioning. You know that there are alternative views on the topic, and you are exploring what each group believes and considering what most aligns with Scripture.
#3 – I’m Rejecting
These are beliefs that you know are wrong. They may be based on faulty familial understandings or maybe the traditions of the church. But you know that you don’t believe them because they don’t line up with Scripture, and you do not want to pass them on to your children.
Just because you may be questioning certain parts of your faith does not mean that you can’t have convictions about the parts that you know are true. The goal is always to go to the scriptures and see how your faith lines up with what it says. Then, you can walk forward from there.
Wishing You a Rich Journey as You Walk on the Road
We are all uncovering new joys in our faith as we walk on the road. We are learning more about God, who he is, his Son, and the hope of the Kingdom. These are beautiful things — not something we should shy away from.
As we better understand the faith we inherit, we will be able to pass on with more clarity what is good, true, and beautiful to our children.
If you want to take inventory of your current beliefs and begin the sifting process, you can download the Family Faith Inventory for free on the blog. You can also get the full workbook that walks you through documenting your beliefs, uncovering what you want to pass down, and developing a family rule of life on the AMBL shop.
The Faith We Inherit | Family Faith Inventory & Formation Workbook
What faith are you handing down?
The Faith We Inherit is a 66-page Family Faith Inventory & Formation Workbook designed to help parents examine the beliefs, traditions, practices, and values they’ve inherited—and thoughtfully consider what they want to pass on to the next generation.
Through guided reflection, Scripture study, theological questions, and practical family formation exercises, you’ll move from what you inherited to what you believe to how you want to live.
Includes the Keep Growing: 12-Month Family Theology Plan as a bonus download.
Next week, we’ll talk about what it means when we say Bible Alone — and how traditions play a part in our understanding of faith.
If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, share it with a family member or friend to chat about it. You can also let me know what you think in the comments: Are you walking through this process now?
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Until next time, keep creating a life you love and cultivating your heart for God. I’m Cayce Fletcher, and I’ll see you next week.
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