So I was feeling well enough the other night to actually get out and make it to our local Emergent Cohort. Let’s just say that with all of this sickness and complications with the pregnancy I haven’t been outside the house for adult interaction since October. So even though I paid for it the next day, it was really really nice to get out and interact (can you tell I’m getting a tad stir crazy?).
Anyway at Up-rooted West we are making our way through McLaren’s latest book Everything Must Change. At the very start of our conversation the other night someone mentioned appreciating the book because it helped point the way forward. Too many books or discussions in the emerging church focused on deconstruction apparently and not enough gave constructive ways to move forward. While I fully appreciate the need for positive constructive books, I am wary of the tendency to avoid deconstruction. To many in the church the term “deconstruction” is just code for unnecessary negative criticism that hurts and destroys. I have a few issues with that view. While I see merit in the need to avoid negative attitudes all the time, to deny people the right to criticize and expressing disappointment (just because those are negative things) restricts the telling of truth and silences prophetic voices. (I wrote about that here recently). But I also think that to view deconstruction as solely a negative act is a misunderstanding of the term.
Although my philosophical understanding is rusty and it’s been years since I’ve read Derrida, I seem to recall that deconstruction is less about the evil practice of tearing down and destroying that many Christians have made it out to be and more about understanding and justice. It involves discovering and understanding the underlying assumptions present in an idea, system, or belief. The goal of deconstruction ultimately is justice (the one thing that cannot be deconstructed) – for as one seeks better understanding one is able to better love the Other. In all something whose goal is love and justice seems to be a fairly positive endeavour in my view. I see much of the conversation that is occurring in the emerging church to be based on these habits of deconstruction – attempting to understand the church and the systems of the world in order to increase love and justice. Deconstruction is part of what it means to move forward as followers of Christ.
Which is why I am loving what I have read so far in John Caputo’s latest book What Would Jesus Deconstruct? – The Good News of Postmodernity for the Church. He writes –
But in the view I am advancing here, deconstruction is treated as the hermeneutics of the kingdom of God, as an interpretive style that helps get at the prophetic spirit of Jesus – who was a surprising and sometimes strident outsider, who took a stand with the “other” … In my view, a deconstruction is good news, because it delivers the shock of the other to the forces of the same, the shock of the good (the “ought”) to the forces of being (”what is”). (p. 26-27)
and as James K.A. Smith writes in the introduction –
Caputo plays here the role of witness and midwife, giving voice to the ways in which Jesus’s vision of the kingdom deconstructs all our domestications – not to leave the institution razed to the ground, but merely flattened. In fact, the whole project is animated by a passion for just institutions – a desire to see things otherwise, to see an institution open to the Other, to the future, and most importantly, to a Jesus who will surprise us.” (p.16)
Deconstruction is about creating a positive vision. It is about moving forward and for us as Christians that involves living with the expectant hope found in Jesus. Discovering ways to fulfill the “on earth as it is in heaven” description of the Kingdom. It is about understanding ourselves and what we believe so that we can respond to the call to love.