January 31, 2024 • 42 mins
In this episode, hosts Brian Auten and Chad Gross interview Alisa Childers about the topic of deconstruction, and unpack ideas discussed in her newest book: The Deconstruction of Christianity: What It Is, Why It’s Destructive, and How to Respond co-authored with Tim Barnett.
https://a315.co/3SmCWvp
The podcast focuses on the faith deconstruction movement that is becoming more popular, especially among young people. Alisa Childers explains that deconstruction involves re-examining and often dismantling one's childhood faith. It stems from postmodern philosophy which questions whether objective truth exists, especially when it comes to religion and morality. Deconstruction sees things like biblical authority and sexual ethics as oppressive tools used by the church. Social media plays a big role by providing an online community that affirms and celebrates people's decisions to deconstruct and leave their faith.
Childers notes that a crisis of faith or negative church experience can trigger deconstruction, especially if someone lacks a deep personal relationship with Christ. Intellectual doubts can often be resolved through study and apologetics resources, but emotional doubts driven by trauma or wounds may need counseling. For those with deconstructing loved ones, she advises understanding the philosophical roots of the movement, resisting heated arguments, and providing a loving presence while avoiding compromise on biblical truth. Parents of deconstructing teens can limit social media access to help them detox from harmful online influence.
The church can reduce triggers for deconstruction by addressing spiritual abuse issues and improving biblical discipleship. Megachurches focused on growth sometimes fail to adequately shepherd members. Childers encourages honest doubting and questioning within a biblical framework, not rejecting scriptural authority. Christians should handle crises of faith by examining the roots of their doubt, pursuing truth with courage and humility, and leaning on the Holy Spirit for guidance during struggles.
================================
We appreciate your feedback.
If you’re on TWITTER, you can follow Chad @TBapologetics.
You can follow Brian @TheBrianAuten
And of course, you can follow @Apologetics315
If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com
https://a315.co/3SmCWvp
The podcast focuses on the faith deconstruction movement that is becoming more popular, especially among young people. Alisa Childers explains that deconstruction involves re-examining and often dismantling one's childhood faith. It stems from postmodern philosophy which questions whether objective truth exists, especially when it comes to religion and morality. Deconstruction sees things like biblical authority and sexual ethics as oppressive tools used by the church. Social media plays a big role by providing an online community that affirms and celebrates people's decisions to deconstruct and leave their faith.
Childers notes that a crisis of faith or negative church experience can trigger deconstruction, especially if someone lacks a deep personal relationship with Christ. Intellectual doubts can often be resolved through study and apologetics resources, but emotional doubts driven by trauma or wounds may need counseling. For those with deconstructing loved ones, she advises understanding the philosophical roots of the movement, resisting heated arguments, and providing a loving presence while avoiding compromise on biblical truth. Parents of deconstructing teens can limit social media access to help them detox from harmful online influence.
The church can reduce triggers for deconstruction by addressing spiritual abuse issues and improving biblical discipleship. Megachurches focused on growth sometimes fail to adequately shepherd members. Childers encourages honest doubting and questioning within a biblical framework, not rejecting scriptural authority. Christians should handle crises of faith by examining the roots of their doubt, pursuing truth with courage and humility, and leaning on the Holy Spirit for guidance during struggles.
================================
We appreciate your feedback.
If you’re on TWITTER, you can follow Chad @TBapologetics.
You can follow Brian @TheBrianAuten
And of course, you can follow @Apologetics315
If you have a question or comment for the podcast, record it and send it our way using www.speakpipe.com/Apologetics315 or you can email us at podcast@apologetics315.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Apologeticsthree fifteen podcast with your hosts Brian Auden
and Chad Gross. Join us forconversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics,
evangelism, and the Christian worldview.You volunteered, didn't you, Hello
and welcome to the podcast. Thisis Brian Aughton and I'm Chad Gross,
(00:25):
and we're excited to welcome Alisa Childersto the show to discuss her new book,
The Deconstruction of Christianity with co authorapologist Tim Barnett. So, Alisa
is an author, speaker, andformer a member of the award winning CCM
group Zoe Girl, if you rememberthat, And in her new book,
she partners with apologist Tim Barnett toexamine the growing faith deconstruction movement sweeping through
(00:47):
churches. So they explore what deconstructionis, where it comes from, why
it resonates with some, and howit's sort of leading a lot of people
away from Biblical truth. So ifyou've got family or friends who are going
through a faith deconstruction, if you'rewrestling with some tough questions yourself, this
book is helpful a Lisa and Timbreakdown what this movement is all about so
you can really understand where people arecoming from. And they also give practical
(01:10):
tips how to have those awkward conversationsin a loving way. So we'll chat
about why this stuff matters, howto stand strong in your own beliefs,
and how to show grace to peopleexploring the big questions. So you can
find out more about Lisa Childers aswell as her new book in the show
notes, or just go directly toAlisa Childers dot com and anything else will
add to the show notes for yourreference. Chad, Deconstruction, What do
(01:33):
you think? Yeah, I reallyenjoyed the book. I think one of
the words that you use there todescribe it as helpful, and I think
that was what I walked away withafter reading the book, is that this
book would be extremely helpful, particularlyfor somebody who is in a relationship with
someone who is going through deconstruction.I also like the nuances that they brought
(01:55):
out in the book about how deconstructionis not always a bad thing, It's
not always a negative things sometimes meanit matters what you mean by deconstruction.
I really appreciated the comparison which Iwant to ask her about of how deconstruction
relates to postmodern views and certain philosophies. I thought that was great to bring
that out. But one of thethings I found most powerful were some of
(02:17):
the stories that they share in thebook about people who have actually gone through
deconstruction, and as you said,how to have those conversations and so all
in all, I thought this wasa great contribution to this ever growing topic.
It sort of has this vibe likeit's a cool thing to do,
like, oh, I'm deconstructing,Yeah, like caging. Yeah, it's
(02:37):
social, sort of a social contagent, like, yeah, having some doubts
and then maybe people get on somesort of forums or something and they get
swept down to the rabbit hole ofeverybody else who's deconstructing and oh my gosh,
I didn't know everything was upside down. And well, I suppose everybody
has a different experience, but thatsort of seems like a real thing that
people can get swept into think rationallyor slowly or sort of unpack things instead
(03:04):
of unpacking some issues and dealing withthem. Oh, I'll just take the
whole thing apart. But anyway,A Lisa's researched it along with Tim Barnett,
Lisa's going to join us for theinterview and talk all about it.
Let's go to the interview. Let'sget ready, switch me on. All
right, well, Alisa Chillers,thanks for joining us for the interview.
Oh great to be with you guys. Now, some people may not be
(03:27):
aware of your background with Christian music. Could you just give just a postage
stamp size if they have those anymore? Postage stamp size the background where people
might know where you're coming from andlooking at this subject. Yeah, well,
you know, back when people diduse postage stamps. I was in
the contemporary Christian music industry as apart of the girl pop group called Zoe
(03:49):
Girl. So this was kind oflike we were like the Christian Spice Girls
back in the late nineties early twothousands. And I never saw myself doing
what I'm doing today. I wouldnever have dreamed that I would be writing
books or speaking about topics like progressiveChristianity or deconstruction. But the reason that's
the case is because I went througha really agonizing and significant faith crisis after
(04:13):
I had already been in ministry andbeen a devoted Christian my whole life.
I think I was in my midthirties around this time, and it was
a faith crisis that was facilitated ina church that would go on to become
a progressive Christian community, and sodeconstruction was happening in that context, and
the pastor had already been through deconstruction, and so he was deconstructing the Christian
(04:35):
worldview basically, and so it propelledme into a faith crisis that it really
took me years to come out of. I just committed myself to studying and
searching for truth wherever I could,and I came back on the other side
of it persuaded that the Christian worldviewis true. And so that's kind of
the thumbnail sketch. And that's whatled me into using you know, or
(04:57):
really I should say, starting aplatform to help other peace people who might
be facing some of the same issues. Let's say we didn't have the option
to use the word deconstruction, whatwords would we use? And because I'm
thinking, is there an agreed pondsort of a definition of what we mean
by deconstructing, So maybe we canjust talk about what that is or what
people are trying to do when theysay they're deconstructing. Yeah, that is.
(05:21):
So in writing this book, thatwas actually the most difficult thing to
nail down is what does it evenmean? Because it's a word that people
are using in lots of different ways. So in fact, Tim, my
co author, and I were thinking, we're saying to one another, if
you ask ten people for a definitionof deconstruction, you're going to get ten
(05:42):
different definitions. And I've even askedsome people who wouldn't define it at all.
They just say, we just letpeople define it themselves and so and
that was somebody, you know,in the deconstruction space. So what Tim
and I did in our research waswe tried to present a definition that we
try to defend in the book.So that's that definition is that faith deconstruction
(06:02):
is a postmodern process of rethinking yourfaith but not requiring Scripture as a standard.
And of course we realize that noteverybody who's using the word deconstruction means
that, but we're trying to advocatefor that definition for clarity's sake. So
ultimately, what we're hoping is thatChristians will ask hard questions, that they
(06:24):
will engage their doubts, that theywon't push those down, that churches will
become spaces that are welcoming to questions. But what we're saying is, let's
not call that deconstruction, because that'sactually something we should do as Biblical Christians
as we mature. Whereas deconstruction iskind of this new word that's really built
on the back of postmodernism, thatreally is a rejection of an external authority
(06:48):
of truth, because the external authorityof truths, like whether it's the Bible
or objective truth, are seen astools of oppression and power, like power
grabs. So in the deconstruction space, where this word is dominantly used in
culture, you're not supposed to goto scripture as your standard. You're not
supposed to go to some sort ofan external authority. You need to go
(07:09):
with what your gut is telling youis helpful and liberating for you personally.
So in your definition there you mentionedpostmodernism. I found that really insightful in
the book and hadn't made that connectionof Can you talk about the popular notion
of deconstruction and kind of the socialcontagion what I would call it, that
we see on social media, Howis that connected to postmodernism? Can you
(07:32):
flesh that out a little bit more? Yeah, yeah, and certainly not
everybody agrees with us on this.I've talked with even very smart you know
apologists who say, no, Idon't think it's connected to postmodernism. We
think it is, and that's hercall that connection. Yeah, yeah,
I think there's a couple of reasons. In fact, interestingly, every actual
philosopher that I asked years before weeven wrote the book, I started asking
(07:54):
anytime I was at a conference orsomething with a philosopher, I'd say,
is faith deconstruction postmodern? To aperson, every single one of them are
like, of course it is.It's like they agreed that it was.
And so I knew that I wasn'tcrazy for seeing that connection. So there's
a couple of reasons that I thinkit's connected to postmodernism. First of all,
that's where the word comes from inthis context. So you have French
(08:15):
philosophers Michelle Fucaut jaqu Dereta that reallygained steam in the sixties, and you
know, a lot could be saidto drill down into the specifics of things,
but ultimately, like for example,Jacques Dereta didn't believe that words could
be pinned down to singular meanings ordefinitions and so for Dereta, the intent
of the author had no more bearingon the meaning of the words than the
interpretation of the hearer. Now,obviously, I think even just at base
(08:39):
level, that's what people are doingwith the Bible for sure. But it
was a guy named John Caputo thattook the work of Dereta and applied what
Dereta was just applying to text andwords, John Caputo applied to religion and
more specifically Christianity. So he wastaking that. Ultimately, what it boils
down to is a rejection of theidea that objective truth could be known when
(09:01):
it comes to religion and morality andso and of course we mentioned Nancy Piercy
and Francis Schaeffer who did some reallygood, you know, kind of cornerstone
work on this, talking about howour culture has basically relegated things like religion
and morality more just into the categoryof opinion. It's like, you know,
what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? What religion are you? It's
no more important because it's just kindof an individual, self led process of
(09:24):
what works for you. Well,that's that's postmodern that's coming from postmodernism,
because postmodernism rejects the idea that thereare these grand meta narratives that explain reality.
And so it's actually virtuous to deconstructthe construct of reality you were given
so that you can build back whatworks for you or what you think is
right for you. And that's verypostmodern. And so as you see,
(09:46):
you know, you mentioned the socialcontagion, I think you've nailed it on
the head. I've observed that aswe you know, we had to be
in that hashtag a lot for research. It is a social contagion. There's
a lot of even what I wouldcompare to propaganda, demonstrably false claims being
made, but because they're repeated sooften and have such force of numbers behind
(10:07):
them, as far as people likingthem and sharing them, people don't care
that it's not actually not true atall. And I'll just give you a
quick example. About a week ago, there was a deconstructionist and I believe
this was from a book, solike this is a book that actually got
published and was recommended and endorsed byother deconstructionists. And in the book,
he was basically making fun of howinaccurate the Bible is and how ridiculous it
(10:31):
is to believe some of these things. And he pointed out that when Moses
was up on the mountain and Aaronasked the Israelites to bring their gold jewelry,
the deconstructionist was like, oh,where'd they get the gold jewel They're
out in the wilderness and they havegold jewelry? Are you serious? Like
how dumb is that? Which,of course you're laughing because you know that
in a couple chapters, or howeverit is prior, we know exactly where
(10:54):
they got the gold. Jureys rightthere in the text that on their way
out they got it all from theEgyptians. It says it right there in
the tech. Yes, but nobodycares. It's like people just continue to
like and share these things. Soit's very much like propaganda. And it's
ultimately I think you can demonstrate thatit's connected to postmodernism just from where the
word comes, but also from howthe thing works, where it's just this
(11:15):
rejection of external authority of truth andit's your I mean, they wouldn't word
it this way, but it's basicallylike following your own heart. Yeah.
I immediately saw that connection and thoughtand it was very eye opening to me.
And it was one of those thingswhere have you ever been reading and
you've thought, how did I notsee that? You know? That was
kind of my experience. Yeah,okay, So we've talked about what deconstruction,
(11:37):
how we're defining deconstruction, and whatthat sort of looks like and what
people are attempting to do in itsort of a social contagion. We're talking
a little bit about postmodernism and howthat's influencing it. But there's another movement
called exvangelical movement. What is that? What's driving it? Sort of do
you give their listeners sort of contextand then we'll see how we can approach
(11:58):
these things right. For practical purposes, you could basically use the word expangelical
and deconstruction almost synonymously. I mean, there are some distinctions, but the
hashtags are often used together. Mostdeconstructions are expangelical deconstructions, where they're leaving
basically whatever their vision of evangelicalism isright. And so what a lot of
(12:22):
people may not understand about the exvangelicalhashtag is expangelical does not just mean oh
I was evangelical, but I searchedscripture, I looked through church history and
I'm actually Eastern Orthodox now, oryou know, I'm going to go for
some maybe converting to Roman Catholicism orsomething. That's not what exvangelical means.
(12:43):
People don't tend to use that hashtagwhen that's their story, So what it
really means is leaving their vision ofevangelicalism. The problem with that is that
there is no agreed upon definition ofthe word evangelical either. And so for
some people, you say evangelic andthey're going to think of Bebington's quadrilateral,
which was, you know, basicallythe characterization of the word evangelical meaning and
(13:07):
emphasis on personal event like evangelism,emphasis on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on
the cross, biblical authority, andpersonal conversion. Well, if that's what
you mean by evangelical, then you'rejust you really just mean Christian, right,
because that's what Christian means. Butin the event, in the exvangelical
hashtag, when you say evangelical,it's like God, guns and Trump.
(13:28):
That's what they see is this kindof unholy political alliance in their in their
vision. So what happens I think, and this is just my analysis,
and I could be wrong but whatI tend to see in the deconstruction stories
we studied is that they because oftheir you know, in the book,
we say like analyzing whether the accusationis accurate or false or justifiable is a
(13:50):
different conversation. The point is thatthe evangelical support for Trump plays a huge
role in so many people's deconstructions.And so what I think happens is what
they perceive to be this moral majoritythat has all the power, and it's
often connected to what you know,they might say white supremacy, colonialism,
that kind of thing, but thatgets tangled up with the other things.
(14:13):
So things like personal conversion, theatoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross,
biblical authority, these are all lumpedtogether with all of the other stuff,
and they're seen as tools of oppression. And so if you believe in biblical
authority, it's just because the Churchinvented that doctrine to control you with fear.
You will very often see people saythings like the doctrine of inerrancy was
developed to oppress women, to keepwomen in line and so, and that's
(14:37):
very postmodern, by the way,because they're not interacting with the claim is
the Bible inerrant is the Bible authoritative. They don't even think you can know
those things because of postmodernism. Sothey're just interacting on the level of why
would you be saying that, Well, you must be trying to control me,
you must be trying to keep mein the fold. You must be
trying to preserve your power or propup your institution of oppression. And so
that's why all of those doctrines thatare historically and classically orthodox Christian are lumped
(15:03):
in with God, guns, andTrump, and it's all just deconstructed and
walked away from. Do you thinkevangelical is a word that we should try
to drop or do you think it'shelpful. That's a good question. I
think for the sake of our brothersand sisters all over the world, we
(15:24):
should try to hold on to it, because what the word evangelical is starting
to become understood as in America isreally different from what it means worldwide and
worldwide, I think it's more likethe Bebington's squadrilateral, and that's what unites
evangelical Christians all over the globe isbiblical authority these things. So I think
we need to fight for the word, because if we don't, it'll just
(15:46):
be another word, and then wellthat one will start to get corrupted and
then we'll have to change that one. The problem with evangelical though, is
that, and even some of thestudies that have been done, is these
are people usually when they'll say,well, forty you know, in the
Leganeier study, it was like fortysomething percent of evangelicals, they're not clear
on Jesus Deity. Well. Ithink one of the reasons that's the case
(16:06):
is because all you have to dois say you're evangelical, and somebody might
think, oh, I'm Republican.That means I'm evangelical, you know.
So it's it's sort of like,doesn't even mean they're necessarily Christians. So
I think it'd be good to kindof try to define that word too.
I think defining terms is important becausepostmodernism wants to obliterate the meanings of words.
And that's the irony of the worddeconstruction is that even when well meaning
(16:26):
Christians say, oh, well,let's, you know, just do how
healthy deconstruction or let's do a positiveversion of deconstruction, you're doing postmodernism by
letting it mean everything if you justinterpret the word any way you want to,
that's exactly capitulating to shock Darida.So like, let's define it and
let's be clear. Yes, okay, So what are some of the reasons
(16:48):
people are hopping onto the deconstruction wagon. Maybe they're getting this illusioned by whatever
church experiences they've had, maybe it'sbeen negative, or maybe they are saying,
oh, well, Trump equals beingevangelical. Therefore I'm not that I'm
gonna oh, I'm just hopping onthe bandwagon. Well, i'd call myself
(17:10):
a Christian? What does that evenmean? So what are the reasons and
how are people going about it?And what's sort of the fallout of that
even so sort of a landscape ofwhat's going on there. Well, I
think there's a lot of things thatcan combine. So in the book we
talk about in all of our analysiswhat it seems like, because really what
we wanted to do is answer thequestion, why is it that you can
(17:33):
have two people that grow up inthe same house, go to the same
church, have the same pastors,go on all the same mission trips,
and yet then a crisis comes,maybe a moral failing of a pastor or
some scandal or something like that,or experience of church abuse or something,
and one will deconstruct and the otherwill become a stronger Christian. Like,
(17:56):
why is that the case? Now? You know, spiritually speaking, theologically
speaking, we didn't really speculate onthat, but just in the natural realm,
why is that happening? And sowhat we think is that it's a
combination of your faith foundation and thena crisis or a series of crises.
So, for example, if youhave somebody who has the faith foundation of
truly trusting in Christ, not justbelieving that all these things are true,
(18:18):
but truly trusting in Christ, andthey have that foundation where they have cried
out, have mercy on me,a sinner Lord, you know, and
then a crisis comes, there's abetter chance that they're going to be going
to the Lord with that problem andlean into Jesus with that problem. Whereas
I think there are a lot ofpeople, especially with the rise of the
seeker sensitive movement megachurch model, whohave grown up in church, believe all
(18:44):
the right things. They like churchculture, they like Christianity, they like
Jesus. They might even think they'reChristians because they believe some of the right
things, but they've never trusted inJesus for themselves. And interestingly, I
think there's anecdotal evidence to back thisup, like, for example, Sean
McDowell, who has a YouTube channelwhere he invites a lot of these deconstructionists
(19:04):
on, and every time he hassomebody who has deconstructed, he asks them
he tells his story of converting toChrist, and he says, what was
your conversion like? And Sean willtell you it's like a deer in the
headlights every time. You don't tendto have this like, oh, I
was convicted of my sin, Iknew that I needed Jesus to save me.
I cried out to Jesus, Icalled upon the name of the Lord.
(19:26):
It's always like, well, Iloved Jesus, I had Jesus was
my best friend, and you know, things like this, but you have
to listen very carefully. So thatfoundation combined with the different kinds of crises
and one of the Christ and someof the crises might be simply not liking
or agreeing with biblical sexual ethics anymoreand feeling like those are harmful and so
(19:48):
again, but that's a post modernthing because you're saying, well, I
feel this way, so therefore I'mgoing to impose my beliefs on top of
biblical authority and use myself as theauthority. So I think that it can
be a com nation of things.But I also think social media plays a
huge role because it used to.I mean, there's always been people leaving
the faith, but I think it'sway easier now because you have all of
(20:11):
these deconstructionists making twenty thirty second TikTokvideos that give you every reason in the
world to leave, and then youcan leave and find community. You're not
losing You're not really losing community becausethere's a whole community of people online that
are waiting to affirm you and celebrateyou for the bravery of that decision to
leave your church situation and sometimes evencut your family off. So I think
(20:36):
that that social media element I don'tthink. I don't think this phenomenon exists
as we see it today without socialmedia. I think that's key. When
people are deconstructing, what do youthink is the sort of emotional and spiritual
fallout that their experience after the fact, What have you sort of seen to
be the pattern? A lot ofdeconstructionists will express deep feelings of grief,
(21:00):
torment, anguish, sadness, andothers will express joy freedom. You know,
I've never felt so free, andsometimes it's a mixture of both.
I think the fallout spiritually is thereis so much confusion if you go into
the deconstruction hashtag. I mean,when we were researching, I'd have people
(21:23):
pray for me when I was goingto be spending the day researching, because
it's such a dark place, it'sa hopeless place. It's you know,
it's interesting because in the deconstruction space, they call our beliefs toxic. But
I've never been in a more toxicspace than the expangelical hashtag and the deconstruction
hashtag. The mockery, the thesnark, and I mean, I'm not
(21:47):
saying Christians are not guilty of thatstuff. You know, we should for
sure clean our own house if we'regoing to you know, point that out.
But it's unreal to me just thethe levels of mockery and darkness that
are in that because people are they'researching for something to put in the place
of what they've just torn down,and so very often that's going to be
some kind of maybe it's a socialjustice kind of thing. In other cases
(22:12):
it's lots of confusion with you know, New Age and crystals and power of
positive thinking and manifestation. And thenfor others it's just nihilism. It's just
nothing but the complete void of allgoodness, beauty and truth. And that's
the thing about deconstruction is they don'tand we document, you know, over
(22:34):
two hundred foot nototes in the book, but they don't care where you land.
They don't care if you land insecular humanism, progressive Christianity, new
Age, little Buddhism, mixed withwhatever. They don't care as long as
you leave the toxic thing that EvangelicalChristianity is in their in their view.
(22:55):
You mentioned like sexual ethics a bitago. Is there is you been researching?
Is there maybe a traditional Christian doctrineor traditional Christian belief that you see
as most pushed back against by peoplewho are deconstructing, the one that they
stumble over the most, if youwill, or does it? Is there
(23:17):
a small pool of doctrines that's agood question. Probably a small pool.
In fact, Blake Chastain actually wroteso, Blake Chastain is the guy who
invented the expangelical hashtag, and hehas a podcast called Exvangelical where people come
on and they tell their deconstruction stories. And so he wrote a blog post
because when somebody asked him, youknow, like, what are the things
(23:38):
that characterize evangelicalism that you are leavingbasically when you say evangelical and so off
the top of my head, ifI can remember, one was the heteronormativity
of the Christian sexual ethics, somarriage being between a man and a woman
and that being kind of the defaultposition that's seen as very toxic. They
want to leave that behind. Ofcourse, the politics, the Trump thing
(24:00):
that that was in there too.One that he had in there was that
the belief that America has the bestway of life or something, which is
kind of funny because my co authoris Canadian and evangelical. So but I
would also say the doctrine of Hellis in fact you will see. One
(24:22):
of the saddest posts I ever sawwas somebody came into one of the comments
on a Deconstruction post about Hell andthey basically said, guys, I think
I finally, finally don't believe inHell anymore. And there were a flood
of comments just congratulating this person,celebrating the freedom that they have now that
they're not being held captive by thisfear fueled doctrine. So hell is a
(24:47):
big one. A biblical authority isa big one, because that's really seen
as a tool of oppression that's beenused to control people and keep people in
the fold. But I mean,honestly, if you just if you just
trace it along the narrative arc ofthe gospel, I mean, original sin
is another one, any kind ofway you want to word it, that
(25:07):
people are inherently sinful. That's actuallyseen as something that's abusive to tell people
in the deconstruction hashtag. In fact, you can throw a dart at TikTok
and find a video of a deconstructionas claiming that that's what abusers do.
Abusers tell you that there's something wrongwith you, there's something broken, you
need me to be whole and well, And so that's seen as a very
(25:27):
abusive doctrine. Substitutionary atonement is seenas abusive to teach people that. So
it's really the Christian gospel that isseen as toxic. Okay, Now,
so one of the points you madein the book, which was another kind
of AHA for me was that youguys argue that deconstruction is actually as old
as humanity, and you actually givesome biblical examples. Can you unpack maybe
(25:52):
one or two of those? BecauseI thought that was really helpful. Yeah,
so you know, the devil waspostmodern before postmodernism was ever a thing.
Right, So we actually go allthe way back to the Garden of
Eden, because if you think aboutwhat the serpent was doing in the garden,
it's really fascinating when you dig intohis tactics and how he approached Eve.
(26:15):
So he starts by questioning what Godsaid, like did God really say?
Did he really say that? Right? And then he questions what God
actually meant right, and then hecontradicts what God actually said, So you
will not surely die in fact,when God knows that when you eat the
(26:37):
fruit, you'll be like him.And that's I think the most subtle deception
that he did, because there's sometruth in it, because if you look
further down than in that chapter ofGenesis, God says, now they're like
us, knowing good from evil.But they weren't supposed to know that,
and what wasn't good for them tohave that knowledge? That wasn't knowledge that
we were created to bear. Andso it's sort of this postmodern playbook by
changing definitions, trying to get totry, you know, follow her own
(27:00):
heart, remove that external authority ofwhat God had actually said to herself,
and of course she falls for it. And so I think that, you
know, it's not like we havea word postmodern now, but the hallmarks
of postmodernism have been around from thebeginning. You know, we just didn't
have the philosophers flushing it out forus like we do now. But I
(27:21):
think that, you know, evenwe use different biblical examples of I think
this is sort of an age oldbattle and it's really a battle over truth,
right Jesus even Pilot, Like yougo to that scene where Jesus is
with Pilot and Pilot says, youknow, and what is truth to Jesus
And you can kind of feel thesnark postmodern kind of like, yeah,
(27:42):
what is that? What is eventruth? And I think that there has
been such a war on truth,which is really what postmodernism is, because
Jesus says he is the truth.I mean, it's a war on I
mean, think about it this way. Even if we just take dereta at
face value. If you can't evenpen words down to meanings, if you
(28:03):
can deconstruct words, then you don'thave a gospel, because the gospel is
good news. It's a message that'sdelivered verbally with words. So of course
you're going to want to deconstruct thatif you're the enemy of God, and
you're going to want to make peoplethink, oh, you can't even be
certain what words even mean. Interestingly, and I'll throw it back to you.
(28:26):
We posted our definition of deconstruction onsocial media this past week, and
somebody must have alerted the horde ofdeconstruction is because we had lots of an
unusual amount of pushback on it.And what was interesting to me is that
most of the pushback was, likeyou know, when we said it's a
postmodern process of rethinking your faith withoutrequiring scripture as a standard. Almost all
(28:49):
of the negative and pushback comments hadto do with the interpretations of scripture,
like a which scripture? Which interpretation? You know? Do you not require?
And it just goes to show isjust the oldest thing in the book.
It literally is the oldest question inthe book. Did God really say?
Or can we even know how tointerpret what God said. Yeah,
you mentioned having crisis of faith yourself. You mentioned how people go through church
(29:15):
experiences and that forces them to haveto rethink things and figure out and sort
stuff out. For me, Iwent through a situation where there was issues
with the church I was in,and it caused me to doubt should I
believe the Bible? How can Itrust it? For me, apologetics was
right there waiting and sort of rescuedme because oh it's solidified to give me
(29:37):
reasons, to give me facts andsort of a reasoned approach to thinking through
faith and revitalized me in many ways. So I mean, I think it's
not about oh no, we can'tlet people have a go through troubled times
or question their faith, But howmight they do do that in a healthy
way? So I'm wondering if youknow what advice you would give someone experiencing
(30:00):
a crisis of faith, maybe intellectualdoubts, moral questions, had experiences.
What's your counsel from all your researchand looking at this, what's there a
good way to approach it? Iwould say the first piece of advice I
would give somebody if they're in acrisis of faith is do a little diagnosis
on yourself about where your doubt iscoming from, because a lot of people
(30:22):
think they're having intellectual doubts when whatthey're really having is emotional doubts. So
if the nature of your doubt issimply, oh my gosh, I heard
this video saying that the manuscripts ofthe New Testament have been corrupted and there's
like four hundred thousand mistakes in there? What do I do with that?
I want to get to the bottomof that. Is there a resource I
(30:45):
can read about that to know whatthat is. That's intellectual doubt because there's
no emotional reason to doubt other thanit's information, and oh boy, I
want to make sure I believe theright thing now. A different doubt,
an emotional doubt, would be I'vebeen reading through the Old Testament and I
can't believe that God would send Israelin to wipe out the Canaanites. That's
(31:10):
emotional doubt, because notice, it'sall about how you're feeling about how God
is portrayed. So I think it'sreally important to diagnose what kind of doubt
you have. I have found inmy experience that intellectual doubt is resolved fairly
quickly, because there's so much evidenceout there, and there's so many amazing
books written on all these topics thatyou can settle fairly quickly. If it's
(31:33):
purely emotional, but I mean intellectualexcuse me. But if it's emotional,
that's that's a different thing, becauseyou're not really questioning, well you might
then you might question the manuscripts becauseyou don't want it to be true,
And at that point you're not doubtinghonestly, You're you're seeking justification for the
unbelief that's already there. And Ithink that's something to really do some self
(31:56):
analysis about. Is your doubt honest? And if it's honest, keep going,
keep pursuing truth, keep digging,don't give up. But if it's
emotional, it could even be thatthere are traumas in the past that need
to be dealt with, maybe woundsthat need to be healed, maybe father
wounds that make it difficult for youto relate with God as your father.
(32:21):
I had a woman come up tome after a speaking event and I had
talked about God's wrath and she wasjust in tears, and she said,
I want to believe what's right,but I just can't believe that God's a
god of wrath. And I said, well, tell me more about that,
and she said, well, myfather had a wrath. He was
an alcoholic and he would fly offinto a rage at nothing, like we
(32:43):
didn't do anything, and he wouldjust fly into a drunken rage. And
I just can't believe God is likethat. And of course I'm laughing because
God is not like that. Butshe had this like emotional block that she
had to really get some healing forbefore she can even really probably age with
the doctrine of God's wrath. Ofcourse, I did you know what I
could to help or understand that it'snot we're not talking about the same thing
(33:06):
there. But I think that it'simportant to really try and make sure that
you're doubting honestly and seeking truth.Okay, what if God did institute the
Canaanite conquest? What if that istrue? What are you going to do
with that? And that's the questionto ask. So yeah, I think
maybe some diagnosis and seeking to doubthonestly and doubt toward truth, whether you
(33:30):
like the results or not. Oneof the things I've seen in the deconstruction
community. And again You've done muchmore research than me, so please feel
free to offer correction here is thatsometimes there are some people, some people,
some some some, and the deconstructioncommunity can can be very easily offended.
(33:50):
It seems like they can be touchyif you will. And I'm wondering,
how would you counsel somebody who isin a relationship or as a family
member, or somebody who announces thatthey're an expangelical or that they're deconstructing it.
They become very vocal, That's maybea better way of saying it.
(34:14):
You know, they become very vocaland very passionate about this deconstructing process,
and it's a little overwhelming and takesthe person by surprise. How would you
counsel them to ask effective questions andto maneuver in those conversations effectively while maintaining
the relationship. Yeah, this issuch an important question, and it's actually
(34:37):
the most common question I receive whenI'm speaking out speaking, is you know,
how do I navigate this relationship?And I think the first thing you
can do is arm yourself with knowledgeto understand the nature of what your loved
one is going through. That's keybecause a lot of Christians think, oh,
they're just questioning their faith or they'rejust having some doubts, And if
that's the case, then they're probablyopen. They're probably wanting to talk to
(35:00):
you. If they're honestly doubting,do you have any information, do you
have resources? How can I getto the bottom of this? But if
they're deconstructing, that's a different thing, and you need to understand the nature
of it because what has probably alreadyhappened is they've already decided that you are
a toxic person. They've already decidedthat you are not a safe place to
have these kinds of discussions. Andso there's a good chance if they've even
(35:24):
told you that they're deconstructing, becausethey can be really loud online and they
can make it to where you won'tsee that, you know. But if
they really are, if you thinkthey are truly in deconstruction as we've defined
it, we give some counterintuitive advice. I think it's counterintuitive for a lot
of Christians, especially in apologetics,because we want to use you, we
want to pull out our tactics,and we want to you know, have
(35:45):
those those conversations. But because ofthe nature of what this is. We
say it's okay to back off andjust try it and stay in their life,
because this is something that was probablya long time coming. It's not
going to be fixed over coffee,and it's actually you might have just a
fragile window of opportunity to just stayin their life because their inclination to want
(36:09):
to disconnect from you and their churchfamilies and even their own families and then
find this community online is so strong. In fact, I've met several people
I don't want to exaggerate, Iwould say several, and then heard about
tons more, a myriad more whohave received no contact letters from people who
have deconstructed. That's because this isn'tabout truth. This is about, in
(36:30):
their view, getting rid of harmfuland toxic beliefs that they feel abused by.
So it's okay to back off.I have somebody who's been in my
life for over ten years who's beenin deconstruction, and that's my that's what
I do. I try to findother ways to connect with her. I
try to find little things maybe thatwe could talk about our kids and try
to show her love and try tolive the beauty of the Gospel. Uncompromising.
(36:52):
You know, you don't ever haveto compromise your convictions. But it's
okay to back off and don't enderestimate the power of prayer. You can
take that time to pray, becauseI really think that when people get to
the bottom of this rainbow and theyfind out there's no pot of gold there,
they're going to come back to you. You're going to be the one
who has been that kind of constantthing. And then and then, this
(37:13):
is the other thing I want tosay. Every time I say that,
inevitably, I know there's somebody listeninggoing, oh, I already blew it.
I already I got you know,hot and bothered about it, and
I got heated, and now I'veblown it. Well, to that person,
I would say, first of all, nothing is that easy. You
know, just get one time ofgetting hot and bothered. It's like,
(37:35):
it's not on you. You're notthe Holy Spirit, okay, you know
you're not that powerful. But also, what a beautiful opportunity to model repentance
and what the real Christian life isabout. To go to that person and
say, look, I really wantyou to know that I am convicted for
how I behaved. I am sosorry, I want to do better to
try to seek to understand what you'regoing through, and if you'll give me
(37:58):
another chance, I would really loveto to have that. And whether they
take it or not, you've modeledhumility, You've you've been the model of
everything they think that you're not whenyou do that. And so now in
the book, we also have awhole chapter where we walk through like what
that advice might look like with differentrelationship dynamics, because certainly how a wife
with a deconstructing husband is going tonavigate is going to be way different than
(38:22):
an elderly couple with an adult grownchild is going to do it. And
that's going to be different than afamily who has a teenager in deconstruction.
Like, if you have a teenagerwho's in deconstruction, I guarantee you they
have access to social media, andI would say DTOs is the best you
know, you have the opportunity ifyou've got your kid is still under your
roof social media blackout, Internet,blackout, let them detox from that,
(38:49):
and that's like the best gift youcould give your teenager if they're because they're
not going to deconstruct unless they havethe language for it in this community,
so you know, you still havethe power if you're the parent. Yes,
that's good advice. In churches,in our faith communities, there sometimes
are things that are truly toxic thatpeople are being pushed away from. It
(39:09):
can be triggers for people who havestarted their deconstruction or moving away from those
things. What might those be?What are some of the steps that can
be taken to make sure that,you know, the environments that people are
have available to them are better andmore healthy. This is a great question,
and I think probably the main onewould be, well, I would
(39:32):
say maybe maybe two big ones whereI think we are guilty and we need
to do better and we need toclean our house, and that's there.
There has been a lot of spiritualabuse, and I think a lot of
that is due to the power ofsocial media and how that I think that
has attracted a lot of maybe morenarcissistic type people who then go into the
(39:52):
pastorate and we have kind of thisbully pulplit and I've seen that a lot.
And there's been a lot of coverup too, you know, which
is like they'll find out somebody's donesomething, maybe a youth pastor who molests
a kid, you know, ayoung girl in the youth group, and
instead of handling that properly, they'lljust kind of move them to another church
or something. And there are instanceswhere that has happened, and so I
(40:14):
think we need to confront that stuff, deal with it. We're not you
know, I wouldn't advocate cancel culture, but we need to address those things
and we need to acknowledge when therehas been real abuse. The other one
would be the lack of discipleship thatI think again it might be a result
(40:35):
of the megachurch model and the secretsensitive movement where people are not being cared
for like sheep should be cared forin the church. I think that's that's
probably a big one. That wecould do a lot better with discipleship in
our churches, focusing less on numbersand more on discipleship. In fact,
I know a church when they getto a certain number, that's their limit.
(40:58):
They're like, we're not going togrow bigger than that. So then
they plant and they've done it,and now they got healthy churches all over
the place where people are really beingdisciple because their goal is not to become
super crazy, big you know,yeah, so yeah, I would say
that would be maybe two I couldthink of off the top of my head.
Well, it's been a great conversation. We appreciate your time a Lisa.
Where can people find your podcast?Where do you want to point people
(41:21):
to for the book? That sortof thing? Yeah, well, thank
you for that. It's called theAlisa Childers Podcast and it's on all the
audio platforms, but it's also onYouTube, so YouTube at Alisa Childers and
I do long form episodes where wetalk about deconstruction and progressive Christianity. Well,
very good, thanks so much.It's a really valuable resource. Thank
(41:42):
you and Tim your co author.You know, we've listened to both of
you guys' podcasts and your work andwe appreciate them both and what you're doing.
So keep up the good work andthank you so much for your time.
Thanks guys. I loved it.I loved it. Thanks for listening
to the podcast. If you havea question you'd like to address, or
just a message for us feedback,good or bad, you can either email
(42:04):
us at podcast at apologetics three fifteendot com, or leave a voice message
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(42:25):
you've enjoyed today's podcast, please leavea review in iTunes or the podcast platform
your choice, and please share thisepisode with a friend if you've found it
useful. Remember you can find lotsof Apologetics resources at apologetics three fifteen dot
com, along with show notes fortoday's episode. Find Chad's apologetic stuff over
at truthbomb apologetics. That's truthbomb dotblogspot dot com. This has been Brian
(42:49):
Auten and Chad Gross for the Apologeticsthree fifteen podcast, and thanks for listening.
Hello, and welcome to the Apologeticsthree fifteen podcast with your hosts Brian Auden
and Chad Gross. Join us forconversations and interviews on the topics of apologetics,
evangelism, and the Christian worldview.You volunteered, didn't you, Hello
and welcome to the podcast. Thisis Brian Aughton and I'm Chad Gross,
(00:25):
and we're excited to welcome Alisa Childersto the show to discuss her new book,
The Deconstruction of Christianity with co authorapologist Tim Barnett. So, Alisa
is an author, speaker, andformer a member of the award winning CCM
group Zoe Girl, if you rememberthat, And in her new book,
she partners with apologist Tim Barnett toexamine the growing faith deconstruction movement sweeping through
(00:47):
churches. So they explore what deconstructionis, where it comes from, why
it resonates with some, and howit's sort of leading a lot of people
away from Biblical truth. So ifyou've got family or friends who are going
through a faith deconstruction, if you'rewrestling with some tough questions yourself, this
book is helpful a Lisa and Timbreakdown what this movement is all about so
you can really understand where people arecoming from. And they also give practical
(01:10):
tips how to have those awkward conversationsin a loving way. So we'll chat
about why this stuff matters, howto stand strong in your own beliefs,
and how to show grace to peopleexploring the big questions. So you can
find out more about Lisa Childers aswell as her new book in the show
notes, or just go directly toAlisa Childers dot com and anything else will
add to the show notes for yourreference. Chad, Deconstruction, What do
(01:33):
you think? Yeah, I reallyenjoyed the book. I think one of
the words that you use there todescribe it as helpful, and I think
that was what I walked away withafter reading the book, is that this
book would be extremely helpful, particularlyfor somebody who is in a relationship with
someone who is going through deconstruction.I also like the nuances that they brought
(01:55):
out in the book about how deconstructionis not always a bad thing, It's
not always a negative things sometimes meanit matters what you mean by deconstruction.
I really appreciated the comparison which Iwant to ask her about of how deconstruction
relates to postmodern views and certain philosophies. I thought that was great to bring
that out. But one of thethings I found most powerful were some of
(02:17):
the stories that they share in thebook about people who have actually gone through
deconstruction, and as you said,how to have those conversations and so all
in all, I thought this wasa great contribution to this ever growing topic.
It sort of has this vibe likeit's a cool thing to do,
like, oh, I'm deconstructing,Yeah, like caging. Yeah, it's
(02:37):
social, sort of a social contagent, like, yeah, having some doubts
and then maybe people get on somesort of forums or something and they get
swept down to the rabbit hole ofeverybody else who's deconstructing and oh my gosh,
I didn't know everything was upside down. And well, I suppose everybody
has a different experience, but thatsort of seems like a real thing that
people can get swept into think rationallyor slowly or sort of unpack things instead
(03:04):
of unpacking some issues and dealing withthem. Oh, I'll just take the
whole thing apart. But anyway,A Lisa's researched it along with Tim Barnett,
Lisa's going to join us for theinterview and talk all about it.
Let's go to the interview. Let'sget ready, switch me on. All
right, well, Alisa Chillers,thanks for joining us for the interview.
Oh great to be with you guys. Now, some people may not be
(03:27):
aware of your background with Christian music. Could you just give just a postage
stamp size if they have those anymore? Postage stamp size the background where people
might know where you're coming from andlooking at this subject. Yeah, well,
you know, back when people diduse postage stamps. I was in
the contemporary Christian music industry as apart of the girl pop group called Zoe
(03:49):
Girl. So this was kind oflike we were like the Christian Spice Girls
back in the late nineties early twothousands. And I never saw myself doing
what I'm doing today. I wouldnever have dreamed that I would be writing
books or speaking about topics like progressiveChristianity or deconstruction. But the reason that's
the case is because I went througha really agonizing and significant faith crisis after
(04:13):
I had already been in ministry andbeen a devoted Christian my whole life.
I think I was in my midthirties around this time, and it was
a faith crisis that was facilitated ina church that would go on to become
a progressive Christian community, and sodeconstruction was happening in that context, and
the pastor had already been through deconstruction, and so he was deconstructing the Christian
(04:35):
worldview basically, and so it propelledme into a faith crisis that it really
took me years to come out of. I just committed myself to studying and
searching for truth wherever I could,and I came back on the other side
of it persuaded that the Christian worldviewis true. And so that's kind of
the thumbnail sketch. And that's whatled me into using you know, or
(04:57):
really I should say, starting aplatform to help other peace people who might
be facing some of the same issues. Let's say we didn't have the option
to use the word deconstruction, whatwords would we use? And because I'm
thinking, is there an agreed pondsort of a definition of what we mean
by deconstructing, So maybe we canjust talk about what that is or what
people are trying to do when theysay they're deconstructing. Yeah, that is.
(05:21):
So in writing this book, thatwas actually the most difficult thing to
nail down is what does it evenmean? Because it's a word that people
are using in lots of different ways. So in fact, Tim, my
co author, and I were thinking, we're saying to one another, if
you ask ten people for a definitionof deconstruction, you're going to get ten
(05:42):
different definitions. And I've even askedsome people who wouldn't define it at all.
They just say, we just letpeople define it themselves and so and
that was somebody, you know,in the deconstruction space. So what Tim
and I did in our research waswe tried to present a definition that we
try to defend in the book.So that's that definition is that faith deconstruction
(06:02):
is a postmodern process of rethinking yourfaith but not requiring Scripture as a standard.
And of course we realize that noteverybody who's using the word deconstruction means
that, but we're trying to advocatefor that definition for clarity's sake. So
ultimately, what we're hoping is thatChristians will ask hard questions, that they
(06:24):
will engage their doubts, that theywon't push those down, that churches will
become spaces that are welcoming to questions. But what we're saying is, let's
not call that deconstruction, because that'sactually something we should do as Biblical Christians
as we mature. Whereas deconstruction iskind of this new word that's really built
on the back of postmodernism, thatreally is a rejection of an external authority
(06:48):
of truth, because the external authorityof truths, like whether it's the Bible
or objective truth, are seen astools of oppression and power, like power
grabs. So in the deconstruction space, where this word is dominantly used in
culture, you're not supposed to goto scripture as your standard. You're not
supposed to go to some sort ofan external authority. You need to go
(07:09):
with what your gut is telling youis helpful and liberating for you personally.
So in your definition there you mentionedpostmodernism. I found that really insightful in
the book and hadn't made that connectionof Can you talk about the popular notion
of deconstruction and kind of the socialcontagion what I would call it, that
we see on social media, Howis that connected to postmodernism? Can you
(07:32):
flesh that out a little bit more? Yeah, yeah, and certainly not
everybody agrees with us on this.I've talked with even very smart you know
apologists who say, no, Idon't think it's connected to postmodernism. We
think it is, and that's hercall that connection. Yeah, yeah,
I think there's a couple of reasons. In fact, interestingly, every actual
philosopher that I asked years before weeven wrote the book, I started asking
(07:54):
anytime I was at a conference orsomething with a philosopher, I'd say,
is faith deconstruction postmodern? To aperson, every single one of them are
like, of course it is.It's like they agreed that it was.
And so I knew that I wasn'tcrazy for seeing that connection. So there's
a couple of reasons that I thinkit's connected to postmodernism. First of all,
that's where the word comes from inthis context. So you have French
(08:15):
philosophers Michelle Fucaut jaqu Dereta that reallygained steam in the sixties, and you
know, a lot could be saidto drill down into the specifics of things,
but ultimately, like for example,Jacques Dereta didn't believe that words could
be pinned down to singular meanings ordefinitions and so for Dereta, the intent
of the author had no more bearingon the meaning of the words than the
interpretation of the hearer. Now,obviously, I think even just at base
(08:39):
level, that's what people are doingwith the Bible for sure. But it
was a guy named John Caputo thattook the work of Dereta and applied what
Dereta was just applying to text andwords, John Caputo applied to religion and
more specifically Christianity. So he wastaking that. Ultimately, what it boils
down to is a rejection of theidea that objective truth could be known when
(09:01):
it comes to religion and morality andso and of course we mentioned Nancy Piercy
and Francis Schaeffer who did some reallygood, you know, kind of cornerstone
work on this, talking about howour culture has basically relegated things like religion
and morality more just into the categoryof opinion. It's like, you know,
what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? What religion are you? It's
no more important because it's just kindof an individual, self led process of
(09:24):
what works for you. Well,that's that's postmodern that's coming from postmodernism,
because postmodernism rejects the idea that thereare these grand meta narratives that explain reality.
And so it's actually virtuous to deconstructthe construct of reality you were given
so that you can build back whatworks for you or what you think is
right for you. And that's verypostmodern. And so as you see,
(09:46):
you know, you mentioned the socialcontagion, I think you've nailed it on
the head. I've observed that aswe you know, we had to be
in that hashtag a lot for research. It is a social contagion. There's
a lot of even what I wouldcompare to propaganda, demonstrably false claims being
made, but because they're repeated sooften and have such force of numbers behind
(10:07):
them, as far as people likingthem and sharing them, people don't care
that it's not actually not true atall. And I'll just give you a
quick example. About a week ago, there was a deconstructionist and I believe
this was from a book, solike this is a book that actually got
published and was recommended and endorsed byother deconstructionists. And in the book,
he was basically making fun of howinaccurate the Bible is and how ridiculous it
(10:31):
is to believe some of these things. And he pointed out that when Moses
was up on the mountain and Aaronasked the Israelites to bring their gold jewelry,
the deconstructionist was like, oh,where'd they get the gold jewel They're
out in the wilderness and they havegold jewelry? Are you serious? Like
how dumb is that? Which,of course you're laughing because you know that
in a couple chapters, or howeverit is prior, we know exactly where
(10:54):
they got the gold. Jureys rightthere in the text that on their way
out they got it all from theEgyptians. It says it right there in
the tech. Yes, but nobodycares. It's like people just continue to
like and share these things. Soit's very much like propaganda. And it's
ultimately I think you can demonstrate thatit's connected to postmodernism just from where the
word comes, but also from howthe thing works, where it's just this
(11:15):
rejection of external authority of truth andit's your I mean, they wouldn't word
it this way, but it's basicallylike following your own heart. Yeah.
I immediately saw that connection and thoughtand it was very eye opening to me.
And it was one of those thingswhere have you ever been reading and
you've thought, how did I notsee that? You know? That was
kind of my experience. Yeah,okay, So we've talked about what deconstruction,
(11:37):
how we're defining deconstruction, and whatthat sort of looks like and what
people are attempting to do in itsort of a social contagion. We're talking
a little bit about postmodernism and howthat's influencing it. But there's another movement
called exvangelical movement. What is that? What's driving it? Sort of do
you give their listeners sort of contextand then we'll see how we can approach
(11:58):
these things right. For practical purposes, you could basically use the word expangelical
and deconstruction almost synonymously. I mean, there are some distinctions, but the
hashtags are often used together. Mostdeconstructions are expangelical deconstructions, where they're leaving
basically whatever their vision of evangelicalism isright. And so what a lot of
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people may not understand about the exvangelicalhashtag is expangelical does not just mean oh
I was evangelical, but I searchedscripture, I looked through church history and
I'm actually Eastern Orthodox now, oryou know, I'm going to go for
some maybe converting to Roman Catholicism orsomething. That's not what exvangelical means.
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People don't tend to use that hashtagwhen that's their story, So what it
really means is leaving their vision ofevangelicalism. The problem with that is that
there is no agreed upon definition ofthe word evangelical either. And so for
some people, you say evangelic andthey're going to think of Bebington's quadrilateral,
which was, you know, basicallythe characterization of the word evangelical meaning and
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emphasis on personal event like evangelism,emphasis on the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on
the cross, biblical authority, andpersonal conversion. Well, if that's what
you mean by evangelical, then you'rejust you really just mean Christian, right,
because that's what Christian means. Butin the event, in the exvangelical
hashtag, when you say evangelical,it's like God, guns and Trump.
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That's what they see is this kindof unholy political alliance in their in their
vision. So what happens I think, and this is just my analysis,
and I could be wrong but whatI tend to see in the deconstruction stories
we studied is that they because oftheir you know, in the book,
we say like analyzing whether the accusationis accurate or false or justifiable is a
(13:50):
different conversation. The point is thatthe evangelical support for Trump plays a huge
role in so many people's deconstructions.And so what I think happens is what
they perceive to be this moral majoritythat has all the power, and it's
often connected to what you know,they might say white supremacy, colonialism,
that kind of thing, but thatgets tangled up with the other things.
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So things like personal conversion, theatoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross,
biblical authority, these are all lumpedtogether with all of the other stuff,
and they're seen as tools of oppression. And so if you believe in biblical
authority, it's just because the Churchinvented that doctrine to control you with fear.
You will very often see people saythings like the doctrine of inerrancy was
developed to oppress women, to keepwomen in line and so, and that's
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very postmodern, by the way,because they're not interacting with the claim is
the Bible inerrant is the Bible authoritative. They don't even think you can know
those things because of postmodernism. Sothey're just interacting on the level of why
would you be saying that, Well, you must be trying to control me,
you must be trying to keep mein the fold. You must be
trying to preserve your power or propup your institution of oppression. And so
that's why all of those doctrines thatare historically and classically orthodox Christian are lumped
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in with God, guns, andTrump, and it's all just deconstructed and
walked away from. Do you thinkevangelical is a word that we should try
to drop or do you think it'shelpful. That's a good question. I
think for the sake of our brothersand sisters all over the world, we
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should try to hold on to it, because what the word evangelical is starting
to become understood as in America isreally different from what it means worldwide and
worldwide, I think it's more likethe Bebington's squadrilateral, and that's what unites
evangelical Christians all over the globe isbiblical authority these things. So I think
we need to fight for the word, because if we don't, it'll just
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be another word, and then wellthat one will start to get corrupted and
then we'll have to change that one. The problem with evangelical though, is
that, and even some of thestudies that have been done, is these
are people usually when they'll say,well, forty you know, in the
Leganeier study, it was like fortysomething percent of evangelicals, they're not clear
on Jesus Deity. Well. Ithink one of the reasons that's the case
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is because all you have to dois say you're evangelical, and somebody might
think, oh, I'm Republican.That means I'm evangelical, you know.
So it's it's sort of like,doesn't even mean they're necessarily Christians. So
I think it'd be good to kindof try to define that word too.
I think defining terms is important becausepostmodernism wants to obliterate the meanings of words.
And that's the irony of the worddeconstruction is that even when well meaning
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Christians say, oh, well,let's, you know, just do how
healthy deconstruction or let's do a positiveversion of deconstruction, you're doing postmodernism by
letting it mean everything if you justinterpret the word any way you want to,
that's exactly capitulating to shock Darida.So like, let's define it and
let's be clear. Yes, okay, So what are some of the reasons
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people are hopping onto the deconstruction wagon. Maybe they're getting this illusioned by whatever
church experiences they've had, maybe it'sbeen negative, or maybe they are saying,
oh, well, Trump equals beingevangelical. Therefore I'm not that I'm
gonna oh, I'm just hopping onthe bandwagon. Well, i'd call myself
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a Christian? What does that evenmean? So what are the reasons and
how are people going about it?And what's sort of the fallout of that
even so sort of a landscape ofwhat's going on there. Well, I
think there's a lot of things thatcan combine. So in the book we
talk about in all of our analysiswhat it seems like, because really what
we wanted to do is answer thequestion, why is it that you can
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have two people that grow up inthe same house, go to the same
church, have the same pastors,go on all the same mission trips,
and yet then a crisis comes,maybe a moral failing of a pastor or
some scandal or something like that,or experience of church abuse or something,
and one will deconstruct and the otherwill become a stronger Christian. Like,
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why is that the case? Now? You know, spiritually speaking, theologically
speaking, we didn't really speculate onthat, but just in the natural realm,
why is that happening? And sowhat we think is that it's a
combination of your faith foundation and thena crisis or a series of crises.
So, for example, if youhave somebody who has the faith foundation of
truly trusting in Christ, not justbelieving that all these things are true,
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but truly trusting in Christ, andthey have that foundation where they have cried
out, have mercy on me,a sinner Lord, you know, and
then a crisis comes, there's abetter chance that they're going to be going
to the Lord with that problem andlean into Jesus with that problem. Whereas
I think there are a lot ofpeople, especially with the rise of the
seeker sensitive movement megachurch model, whohave grown up in church, believe all
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the right things. They like churchculture, they like Christianity, they like
Jesus. They might even think they'reChristians because they believe some of the right
things, but they've never trusted inJesus for themselves. And interestingly, I
think there's anecdotal evidence to back thisup, like, for example, Sean
McDowell, who has a YouTube channelwhere he invites a lot of these deconstructionists
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on, and every time he hassomebody who has deconstructed, he asks them
he tells his story of converting toChrist, and he says, what was
your conversion like? And Sean willtell you it's like a deer in the
headlights every time. You don't tendto have this like, oh, I
was convicted of my sin, Iknew that I needed Jesus to save me.
I cried out to Jesus, Icalled upon the name of the Lord.
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It's always like, well, Iloved Jesus, I had Jesus was
my best friend, and you know, things like this, but you have
to listen very carefully. So thatfoundation combined with the different kinds of crises
and one of the Christ and someof the crises might be simply not liking
or agreeing with biblical sexual ethics anymoreand feeling like those are harmful and so
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again, but that's a post modernthing because you're saying, well, I
feel this way, so therefore I'mgoing to impose my beliefs on top of
biblical authority and use myself as theauthority. So I think that it can
be a com nation of things.But I also think social media plays a
huge role because it used to.I mean, there's always been people leaving
the faith, but I think it'sway easier now because you have all of
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these deconstructionists making twenty thirty second TikTokvideos that give you every reason in the
world to leave, and then youcan leave and find community. You're not
losing You're not really losing community becausethere's a whole community of people online that
are waiting to affirm you and celebrateyou for the bravery of that decision to
leave your church situation and sometimes evencut your family off. So I think
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that that social media element I don'tthink. I don't think this phenomenon exists
as we see it today without socialmedia. I think that's key. When
people are deconstructing, what do youthink is the sort of emotional and spiritual
fallout that their experience after the fact, What have you sort of seen to
be the pattern? A lot ofdeconstructionists will express deep feelings of grief,
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torment, anguish, sadness, andothers will express joy freedom. You know,
I've never felt so free, andsometimes it's a mixture of both.
I think the fallout spiritually is thereis so much confusion if you go into
the deconstruction hashtag. I mean,when we were researching, I'd have people
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pray for me when I was goingto be spending the day researching, because
it's such a dark place, it'sa hopeless place. It's you know,
it's interesting because in the deconstruction space, they call our beliefs toxic. But
I've never been in a more toxicspace than the expangelical hashtag and the deconstruction
hashtag. The mockery, the thesnark, and I mean, I'm not
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saying Christians are not guilty of thatstuff. You know, we should for
sure clean our own house if we'regoing to you know, point that out.
But it's unreal to me just thethe levels of mockery and darkness that
are in that because people are they'researching for something to put in the place
of what they've just torn down,and so very often that's going to be
some kind of maybe it's a socialjustice kind of thing. In other cases
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it's lots of confusion with you know, New Age and crystals and power of
positive thinking and manifestation. And thenfor others it's just nihilism. It's just
nothing but the complete void of allgoodness, beauty and truth. And that's
the thing about deconstruction is they don'tand we document, you know, over
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two hundred foot nototes in the book, but they don't care where you land.
They don't care if you land insecular humanism, progressive Christianity, new
Age, little Buddhism, mixed withwhatever. They don't care as long as
you leave the toxic thing that EvangelicalChristianity is in their in their view.
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You mentioned like sexual ethics a bitago. Is there is you been researching?
Is there maybe a traditional Christian doctrineor traditional Christian belief that you see
as most pushed back against by peoplewho are deconstructing, the one that they
stumble over the most, if youwill, or does it? Is there
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a small pool of doctrines that's agood question. Probably a small pool.
In fact, Blake Chastain actually wroteso, Blake Chastain is the guy who
invented the expangelical hashtag, and hehas a podcast called Exvangelical where people come
on and they tell their deconstruction stories. And so he wrote a blog post
because when somebody asked him, youknow, like, what are the things
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that characterize evangelicalism that you are leavingbasically when you say evangelical and so off
the top of my head, ifI can remember, one was the heteronormativity
of the Christian sexual ethics, somarriage being between a man and a woman
and that being kind of the defaultposition that's seen as very toxic. They
want to leave that behind. Ofcourse, the politics, the Trump thing
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that that was in there too.One that he had in there was that
the belief that America has the bestway of life or something, which is
kind of funny because my co authoris Canadian and evangelical. So but I
would also say the doctrine of Hellis in fact you will see. One
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of the saddest posts I ever sawwas somebody came into one of the comments
on a Deconstruction post about Hell andthey basically said, guys, I think
I finally, finally don't believe inHell anymore. And there were a flood
of comments just congratulating this person,celebrating the freedom that they have now that
they're not being held captive by thisfear fueled doctrine. So hell is a
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big one. A biblical authority isa big one, because that's really seen
as a tool of oppression that's beenused to control people and keep people in
the fold. But I mean,honestly, if you just if you just
trace it along the narrative arc ofthe gospel, I mean, original sin
is another one, any kind ofway you want to word it, that
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people are inherently sinful. That's actuallyseen as something that's abusive to tell people
in the deconstruction hashtag. In fact, you can throw a dart at TikTok
and find a video of a deconstructionas claiming that that's what abusers do.
Abusers tell you that there's something wrongwith you, there's something broken, you
need me to be whole and well, And so that's seen as a very
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abusive doctrine. Substitutionary atonement is seenas abusive to teach people that. So
it's really the Christian gospel that isseen as toxic. Okay, Now,
so one of the points you madein the book, which was another kind
of AHA for me was that youguys argue that deconstruction is actually as old
as humanity, and you actually givesome biblical examples. Can you unpack maybe
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one or two of those? BecauseI thought that was really helpful. Yeah,
so you know, the devil waspostmodern before postmodernism was ever a thing.
Right, So we actually go allthe way back to the Garden of
Eden, because if you think aboutwhat the serpent was doing in the garden,
it's really fascinating when you dig intohis tactics and how he approached Eve.
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So he starts by questioning what Godsaid, like did God really say?
Did he really say that? Right? And then he questions what God
actually meant right, and then hecontradicts what God actually said, So you
will not surely die in fact,when God knows that when you eat the
(26:37):
fruit, you'll be like him.And that's I think the most subtle deception
that he did, because there's sometruth in it, because if you look
further down than in that chapter ofGenesis, God says, now they're like
us, knowing good from evil.But they weren't supposed to know that,
and what wasn't good for them tohave that knowledge? That wasn't knowledge that
we were created to bear. Andso it's sort of this postmodern playbook by
changing definitions, trying to get totry, you know, follow her own
(27:00):
heart, remove that external authority ofwhat God had actually said to herself,
and of course she falls for it. And so I think that, you
know, it's not like we havea word postmodern now, but the hallmarks
of postmodernism have been around from thebeginning. You know, we just didn't
have the philosophers flushing it out forus like we do now. But I
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think that, you know, evenwe use different biblical examples of I think
this is sort of an age oldbattle and it's really a battle over truth,
right Jesus even Pilot, Like yougo to that scene where Jesus is
with Pilot and Pilot says, youknow, and what is truth to Jesus
And you can kind of feel thesnark postmodern kind of like, yeah,
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what is that? What is eventruth? And I think that there has
been such a war on truth,which is really what postmodernism is, because
Jesus says he is the truth.I mean, it's a war on I
mean, think about it this way. Even if we just take dereta at
face value. If you can't evenpen words down to meanings, if you
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can deconstruct words, then you don'thave a gospel, because the gospel is
good news. It's a message that'sdelivered verbally with words. So of course
you're going to want to deconstruct thatif you're the enemy of God, and
you're going to want to make peoplethink, oh, you can't even be
certain what words even mean. Interestingly, and I'll throw it back to you.
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We posted our definition of deconstruction onsocial media this past week, and
somebody must have alerted the horde ofdeconstruction is because we had lots of an
unusual amount of pushback on it.And what was interesting to me is that
most of the pushback was, likeyou know, when we said it's a
postmodern process of rethinking your faith withoutrequiring scripture as a standard. Almost all
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of the negative and pushback comments hadto do with the interpretations of scripture,
like a which scripture? Which interpretation? You know? Do you not require?
And it just goes to show isjust the oldest thing in the book.
It literally is the oldest question inthe book. Did God really say?
Or can we even know how tointerpret what God said. Yeah,
you mentioned having crisis of faith yourself. You mentioned how people go through church
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experiences and that forces them to haveto rethink things and figure out and sort
stuff out. For me, Iwent through a situation where there was issues
with the church I was in,and it caused me to doubt should I
believe the Bible? How can Itrust it? For me, apologetics was
right there waiting and sort of rescuedme because oh it's solidified to give me
(29:37):
reasons, to give me facts andsort of a reasoned approach to thinking through
faith and revitalized me in many ways. So I mean, I think it's
not about oh no, we can'tlet people have a go through troubled times
or question their faith, But howmight they do do that in a healthy
way? So I'm wondering if youknow what advice you would give someone experiencing
(30:00):
a crisis of faith, maybe intellectualdoubts, moral questions, had experiences.
What's your counsel from all your researchand looking at this, what's there a
good way to approach it? Iwould say the first piece of advice I
would give somebody if they're in acrisis of faith is do a little diagnosis
on yourself about where your doubt iscoming from, because a lot of people
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think they're having intellectual doubts when whatthey're really having is emotional doubts. So
if the nature of your doubt issimply, oh my gosh, I heard
this video saying that the manuscripts ofthe New Testament have been corrupted and there's
like four hundred thousand mistakes in there? What do I do with that?
I want to get to the bottomof that. Is there a resource I
(30:45):
can read about that to know whatthat is. That's intellectual doubt because there's
no emotional reason to doubt other thanit's information, and oh boy, I
want to make sure I believe theright thing now. A different doubt,
an emotional doubt, would be I'vebeen reading through the Old Testament and I
can't believe that God would send Israelin to wipe out the Canaanites. That's
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emotional doubt, because notice, it'sall about how you're feeling about how God
is portrayed. So I think it'sreally important to diagnose what kind of doubt
you have. I have found inmy experience that intellectual doubt is resolved fairly
quickly, because there's so much evidenceout there, and there's so many amazing
books written on all these topics thatyou can settle fairly quickly. If it's
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purely emotional, but I mean intellectualexcuse me. But if it's emotional,
that's that's a different thing, becauseyou're not really questioning, well you might
then you might question the manuscripts becauseyou don't want it to be true,
And at that point you're not doubtinghonestly, You're you're seeking justification for the
unbelief that's already there. And Ithink that's something to really do some self
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analysis about. Is your doubt honest? And if it's honest, keep going,
keep pursuing truth, keep digging,don't give up. But if it's
emotional, it could even be thatthere are traumas in the past that need
to be dealt with, maybe woundsthat need to be healed, maybe father
wounds that make it difficult for youto relate with God as your father.
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I had a woman come up tome after a speaking event and I had
talked about God's wrath and she wasjust in tears, and she said,
I want to believe what's right,but I just can't believe that God's a
god of wrath. And I said, well, tell me more about that,
and she said, well, myfather had a wrath. He was
an alcoholic and he would fly offinto a rage at nothing, like we
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didn't do anything, and he wouldjust fly into a drunken rage. And
I just can't believe God is likethat. And of course I'm laughing because
God is not like that. Butshe had this like emotional block that she
had to really get some healing forbefore she can even really probably age with
the doctrine of God's wrath. Ofcourse, I did you know what I
could to help or understand that it'snot we're not talking about the same thing
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there. But I think that it'simportant to really try and make sure that
you're doubting honestly and seeking truth.Okay, what if God did institute the
Canaanite conquest? What if that istrue? What are you going to do
with that? And that's the questionto ask. So yeah, I think
maybe some diagnosis and seeking to doubthonestly and doubt toward truth, whether you
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like the results or not. Oneof the things I've seen in the deconstruction
community. And again You've done muchmore research than me, so please feel
free to offer correction here is thatsometimes there are some people, some people,
some some some, and the deconstructioncommunity can can be very easily offended.
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It seems like they can be touchyif you will. And I'm wondering,
how would you counsel somebody who isin a relationship or as a family
member, or somebody who announces thatthey're an expangelical or that they're deconstructing it.
They become very vocal, That's maybea better way of saying it.
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You know, they become very vocaland very passionate about this deconstructing process,
and it's a little overwhelming and takesthe person by surprise. How would you
counsel them to ask effective questions andto maneuver in those conversations effectively while maintaining
the relationship. Yeah, this issuch an important question, and it's actually
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the most common question I receive whenI'm speaking out speaking, is you know,
how do I navigate this relationship?And I think the first thing you
can do is arm yourself with knowledgeto understand the nature of what your loved
one is going through. That's keybecause a lot of Christians think, oh,
they're just questioning their faith or they'rejust having some doubts, And if
that's the case, then they're probablyopen. They're probably wanting to talk to
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you. If they're honestly doubting,do you have any information, do you
have resources? How can I getto the bottom of this? But if
they're deconstructing, that's a different thing, and you need to understand the nature
of it because what has probably alreadyhappened is they've already decided that you are
a toxic person. They've already decidedthat you are not a safe place to
have these kinds of discussions. Andso there's a good chance if they've even
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told you that they're deconstructing, becausethey can be really loud online and they
can make it to where you won'tsee that, you know. But if
they really are, if you thinkthey are truly in deconstruction as we've defined
it, we give some counterintuitive advice. I think it's counterintuitive for a lot
of Christians, especially in apologetics,because we want to use you, we
want to pull out our tactics,and we want to you know, have
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those those conversations. But because ofthe nature of what this is. We
say it's okay to back off andjust try it and stay in their life,
because this is something that was probablya long time coming. It's not
going to be fixed over coffee,and it's actually you might have just a
fragile window of opportunity to just stayin their life because their inclination to want
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to disconnect from you and their churchfamilies and even their own families and then
find this community online is so strong. In fact, I've met several people
I don't want to exaggerate, Iwould say several, and then heard about
tons more, a myriad more whohave received no contact letters from people who
have deconstructed. That's because this isn'tabout truth. This is about, in
(36:30):
their view, getting rid of harmfuland toxic beliefs that they feel abused by.
So it's okay to back off.I have somebody who's been in my
life for over ten years who's beenin deconstruction, and that's my that's what
I do. I try to findother ways to connect with her. I
try to find little things maybe thatwe could talk about our kids and try
to show her love and try tolive the beauty of the Gospel. Uncompromising.
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You know, you don't ever haveto compromise your convictions. But it's
okay to back off and don't enderestimate the power of prayer. You can
take that time to pray, becauseI really think that when people get to
the bottom of this rainbow and theyfind out there's no pot of gold there,
they're going to come back to you. You're going to be the one
who has been that kind of constantthing. And then and then, this
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is the other thing I want tosay. Every time I say that,
inevitably, I know there's somebody listeninggoing, oh, I already blew it.
I already I got you know,hot and bothered about it, and
I got heated, and now I'veblown it. Well, to that person,
I would say, first of all, nothing is that easy. You
know, just get one time ofgetting hot and bothered. It's like,
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it's not on you. You're notthe Holy Spirit, okay, you know
you're not that powerful. But also, what a beautiful opportunity to model repentance
and what the real Christian life isabout. To go to that person and
say, look, I really wantyou to know that I am convicted for
how I behaved. I am sosorry, I want to do better to
try to seek to understand what you'regoing through, and if you'll give me
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another chance, I would really loveto to have that. And whether they
take it or not, you've modeledhumility, You've you've been the model of
everything they think that you're not whenyou do that. And so now in
the book, we also have awhole chapter where we walk through like what
that advice might look like with differentrelationship dynamics, because certainly how a wife
with a deconstructing husband is going tonavigate is going to be way different than
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an elderly couple with an adult grownchild is going to do it. And
that's going to be different than afamily who has a teenager in deconstruction.
Like, if you have a teenagerwho's in deconstruction, I guarantee you they
have access to social media, andI would say DTOs is the best you
know, you have the opportunity ifyou've got your kid is still under your
roof social media blackout, Internet,blackout, let them detox from that,
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and that's like the best gift youcould give your teenager if they're because they're
not going to deconstruct unless they havethe language for it in this community,
so you know, you still havethe power if you're the parent. Yes,
that's good advice. In churches,in our faith communities, there sometimes
are things that are truly toxic thatpeople are being pushed away from. It
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can be triggers for people who havestarted their deconstruction or moving away from those
things. What might those be?What are some of the steps that can
be taken to make sure that,you know, the environments that people are
have available to them are better andmore healthy. This is a great question,
and I think probably the main onewould be, well, I would
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say maybe maybe two big ones whereI think we are guilty and we need
to do better and we need toclean our house, and that's there.
There has been a lot of spiritualabuse, and I think a lot of
that is due to the power ofsocial media and how that I think that
has attracted a lot of maybe morenarcissistic type people who then go into the
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pastorate and we have kind of thisbully pulplit and I've seen that a lot.
And there's been a lot of coverup too, you know, which
is like they'll find out somebody's donesomething, maybe a youth pastor who molests
a kid, you know, ayoung girl in the youth group, and
instead of handling that properly, they'lljust kind of move them to another church
or something. And there are instanceswhere that has happened, and so I
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think we need to confront that stuff, deal with it. We're not you
know, I wouldn't advocate cancel culture, but we need to address those things
and we need to acknowledge when therehas been real abuse. The other one
would be the lack of discipleship thatI think again it might be a result
(40:35):
of the megachurch model and the secretsensitive movement where people are not being cared
for like sheep should be cared forin the church. I think that's that's
probably a big one. That wecould do a lot better with discipleship in
our churches, focusing less on numbersand more on discipleship. In fact,
I know a church when they getto a certain number, that's their limit.
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They're like, we're not going togrow bigger than that. So then
they plant and they've done it,and now they got healthy churches all over
the place where people are really beingdisciple because their goal is not to become
super crazy, big you know,yeah, so yeah, I would say
that would be maybe two I couldthink of off the top of my head.
Well, it's been a great conversation. We appreciate your time a Lisa.
Where can people find your podcast?Where do you want to point people
(41:21):
to for the book? That sortof thing? Yeah, well, thank
you for that. It's called theAlisa Childers Podcast and it's on all the
audio platforms, but it's also onYouTube, so YouTube at Alisa Childers and
I do long form episodes where wetalk about deconstruction and progressive Christianity. Well,
very good, thanks so much.It's a really valuable resource. Thank
(41:42):
you and Tim your co author.You know, we've listened to both of
you guys' podcasts and your work andwe appreciate them both and what you're doing.
So keep up the good work andthank you so much for your time.
Thanks guys. I loved it.I loved it. Thanks for listening
to the podcast. If you havea question you'd like to address, or
just a message for us feedback,good or bad, you can either email
(42:04):
us at podcast at apologetics three fifteendot com, or leave a voice message
for us using speak pipe. Justgo to speakpipe dot com. Slash Apologetics
three fifteen to leave us a message, and remember, if you include a
ghostbuster's quote in your question, weguarantee that we'll read it on the podcast.
We also ensure up to fifty percentbetter quality answers. Also, if
(42:25):
you've enjoyed today's podcast, please leavea review in iTunes or the podcast platform
your choice, and please share thisepisode with a friend if you've found it
useful. Remember you can find lotsof Apologetics resources at apologetics three fifteen dot
com, along with show notes fortoday's episode. Find Chad's apologetic stuff over
at truthbomb apologetics. That's truthbomb dotblogspot dot com. This has been Brian
(42:49):
Auten and Chad Gross for the Apologeticsthree fifteen podcast, and thanks for listening.
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