Embracing Deconstruction
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.
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julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
Good words, Julie. I too have been uncomfortable when Christians seem antsy to move away from deconstruction, toward what they see as more ‘helpful’: ‘reconstruction’, or ‘building’, or whatever. But that just seems like quickly shaping more idols out of the same old gold. When I’ve heard such thoughts, I try to dissent, but have not done so as eloquently as you.
(Oh, and that Caputo book rox. Love it!)
Deconstruction is an uncomfortable process. I haven’t been through it with a community, but deconstructing some of my personal approaches to life, church and spirituality has been quite painful. I can see why some would be tempted to shortcut the process and move back into rebuilding as quickly as possible. I imagine it would take some prophetic leadership to keep a community moving through the hard work ahead.
Hi Julie, I too have been thinking about the pros and cons of deconstruction since Monday night. Thanks for sharing your much more cogent thoughts on the issue!
I tend also to think that deconstruction is more positive and constructive, and Smith points out in his Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism that that was Derrida’s intention when he coined the term.
Thanks to you, I might have to check out Caputo’s book when I’m done with McLaren’s!
Deconstruction is definitely an important part of the process, however I’ve met some who can’t move beyond the deconstution. Then you tend to just have people who are angry at the church.
Lori – I think many of those who remain in anger aren’t engaging in deconstruction to seek better understanding, they are just complaining about what they don’t like and making it sound better by calling it deconstruction.
I wonder how many people who call what they are doing deconstruction are really doing it to gain better understanding so they can preserve what was good of the old, tear down what is wrong, and build something better in the ruins, vs. how many are doing it as you say, just as a way to complain (perhaps with good reason) about what they don’t like, with no real movement forward.
Even among college educated 20 and 30-somethings who have taken a few courses in postmodern literary criticism or philosophy, I rarely see the type of deconstruction that you are describing. Much of their “deconstruction” seems more like a cynical debunking of what they grew up with rather than a love-driven search for better understanding. It’s often even accompanied by a belief that “better understanding” is an illusory concept based on outdated notions of objectivity. The result can be a stance of perpetual ironic detachment toward anything that would claim my love or loyalty, unless I am already subjectively inclined in that direction.
I think postmodernism and deconstruction offer some helpful correctives to modernity. Church people who run in fear from the least hint of them need to get a grip, humble themselves and learn. But an uncritical embrace of postmodern deconstructivism is no better in my mind than an uncritical embrace of modernity and all of its assumptions.
Excellent thoughts on deconstruction. Too often it is confused with “destruction.” Thus, many shy away from it not wanting to be theological warmongers. Others jump into the fray for just that reason.
We certainly have a tendency to lock on to one aspect of things. Theologically, we lock into a canon within the canon or a theme (covenant, kingdom, liberation) and then lose sight of other themes or passages in the canon.
We are inevitably culture-bound. This means that we dress ourselves, our thinking, and our institutions in the clothes of that culture. But culture is not static, the world is ever-changing and so is culture. Without a healthy deconstruction process, we simply leave those clothes on and add accessories from the emerging culture, or worse, we add a layer of clothes on top of the clothes we already have on. Deconstruction is exigent to the contextualization process.
Good post, Michael. Your comment about our tendency to lock onto one aspect of things (covenant, kingdom, liberation) and lose sight of other themes is great.
As for our being culture bound, your comment reminded me of this quote from C.S. Lewis:
“Most of all, perhaps, what we need is an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”
Many Modern Christians made the error of not learning enough from the voices of the past and adopting too uncritically the themes of Modernity. Hopefully Postmodern Christians won’t make the same mistake by too-uncritically adopting Postmodernity.
Julie, I think you are right. I think in my own journey, after the deconsruction, I sifted through the ashes so to speak. What was good and right I kept, and what was not I didn’t. The process was as important as the the outcome!
Michael, good points!
i like the cycle of deconstruction and reconstruction repeated…
cool.