Is Deconstruction Bad?

The Liturgists Podcast

The Liturgists

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2020

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Deconstruction is a common experience for people in The Liturgists Community. We all have stories of how we grew up, memories of what we were taught, and key ideas that still influence us. We may use many words to describe our deconstruction: freeing, scary, lonely, or exciting. The social cost of deconstruction can also be very high. We may feel like our social circles alienated us, or that our family abandoned us. In this episode, Dr. Hillary McBride and Michael Gungor talk about deconstruction and how it affects us. They explore the emotions that we feel, the narratives we tell ourselves, and how we can embrace healthy outlooks and overcome the difficult aspects of deconstruction. You are not alone! You can join us each Sunday to talk with other liturgists around the world and meet in small groups. It is one of the most meaningful things we do. To find out more, visit theliturgists.com and look for the "Join The Liturgists" button.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Our world is built with stories.
0:05.0	Sometimes these stories cause suffering by pulling us apart from ourselves and each other.
0:12.0	The liturgist podcast helps people love more and suffer less by pulling apart the stories that pull us apart.
0:21.0	Today's story, deconstruction is bad.
0:25.0	Welcome to the liturgist podcast, everybody.
0:29.0	I love that I'm changing and evolving in a way that I think is healthy.
0:34.0	I believe that holding my beliefs with an open hand instead of a swinging fist isn't much healthier way to be.
0:41.0	I feel like I have more empathy now.
0:44.0	I feel like it's contributed to me healing in a lot of ways, shame resilience, all that stuff.
0:51.0	But I hate the grief. I'm grieving the connection that having a fixed and firm belief system had.
1:01.0	I'm really grieving that I'm not quite Christian enough for Christians.
1:08.0	But I'm a little too Christian for non-Christians and so it's lonely.
1:12.0	The good is the new person I am and the new way I see the world and how much more open and inclusive.
1:20.0	My world has become. I think the bad is that there are still parts of me, the current me that I can't share with people who are still part of the world I used to be a part of.
1:33.0	Probably deconstructing my faith has saved my life.
1:37.0	And I can see this really with a clear conscience.
1:41.0	And the God that I know now at this age of almost 50 is a God of compassion, a God who is not wagging his finger and judging me and keeping criticism on me.
1:56.0	But it's a God who knows me and loves me and is giving me the opportunity to wrestle with my faith.
2:03.0	For me, deconstruction has been a great experience and so far as my ability to really care about other people.
2:10.0	Especially people that aren't Christians. It's helped me to view them as an actual human being and not some type of person that I have to convert or change in order to truly care about them.
2:23.0	It's also been really tough because there have been a lot of times where I have the old sense of doing the wrong thing or guilt and shame, creben.
2:34.0	I mean, it's been several years and I still feel like I'm going to hell some days. But overall, it's been a wonderful experience.
	...

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