S2Ep35 - The Deconstruction Dialogue: Faith, Doubt & Growth
Summary: In this episode of College Conversations, host Jeff Sherrod welcomes Professor Benjamin Reese and Gregg Garner, president of The Institute for God, for a thought-provoking dialogue on faith deconstruction. Together, they explore the challenges, benefits, and spiritual implications of deconstructing religious beliefs. The conversation also features the story of Lindsay Holifield, whose faith journey—highlighted in Christianity Today—led her through deconversion, exploration of Judaism, and ultimately, a return to Christianity. With insights from books like Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis and Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, this episode sheds light on how doubt can lead to growth.
[00:00:06.55] - Jeff Sherrod
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to College Conversations. I'm your host, Jeff Sherrod, and I am joined today by Professor Benjamin Reese and the president of the Institute for GOD, Mr. Gregg Garner. Today we're talking about deconstruction. Now, it's a big word, can mean a lot of things. What we're talking about is faith, deconstruction. This has been kind of a hot topic of late, where many people are reevaluating their faith that they grew up with and making some difficult decisions. Am I going to stay with the faith that I learned early on, or am I going to deconstruct so much that it just turns into deconversion? That's really what we're talking about today. What are the positives of deconstruction? How do we recognize the healthy and critical part of looking back our faith? But what are also the implicit dangers when we do this as well? And what should we be mindful of, especially in an academic setting? As always, really grateful that you guys are here with us in College Conversations. Hope you guys have a great time listening. Okay, so I was reading an article in Christianity Today. It's called My Deconstruction Turned to Deconversion But God Wasn't Anxious. It's by Lindsay Holifield. I think it's an interesting story, one I think that probably stands outside of just herself. She grows up, grows up in a fundamental type Christian expression. You know, she talks about. She went to a lot of like hellfire brimstone speeches. I think that one of the quotes that she uses, I, I think she says, I heard a lot of angry men in ill fitted suits, you know, speak. And so she talks about, yeah, that was kind of her expression, you know, a lot of pleading to not go to hell. When she gets into her adolescent years, she starts to experience what she calls like mental health problems, including eating disorders. She looks back to her Christianity to try to find like, what can I do? And what kind of answers are there? And she doesn't find anything that would necessarily help her. She's recommended by some friends to read some books that would open up her understanding of faith. So she would have been a college student in the early 2000s. So she was reading Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis. And I think she also quotes Blue Light Jazz by Donald Miller. You know, it's like these books that really expanded her view of what this was. And she said that while that was good for helping her to get a better picture of what Christianity could be, it didn't satisfy what she calls like A longing in her heart. Now, at this point, the story, I think it is a little vague what happens next, but she essentially just says after that, she moves towards just kind of like, I gave up on certain portions of Christianity, and then I just kind of gave up on all of it. And so she does say this was a deconversion for her. She moves away from the faith altogether. She's faithless for a while. She eventually gets interested in Judaism. She converts to be a practicing Jew. She does that for a couple decades. And then recently when she's writing the article, she had a friend. She had a conversation with a friend at Starbucks, and they talk about Jesus, and she just couldn't shake it. And so she comes back to the faith. And so today she says that she goes to a more liturgical church. She doesn't say Anglican, but that's kind of the impression I got, come back to a kind of Anglican expression. So I know that we're. So this is a story about one person, but I do think that we know people that maybe could tell a very similar narrative. Even some of those people probably couldn't have an ending or they came back, you know, some of them have just moved on and they don't have a Christianity at this point. So, Gregg, talking to you specifically here, what do you think? What do you. What do you think is happening here? And what I'm saying, this is like. Do you think. I mean, I just say another way. Do you think that this is a natural part of all generations growing up in faith, or are we seeing something different with what she calls a deconstruction that might be different than what people typically experience when they're trying to just question the faith of their parents?
[00:04:12.80] - Gregg Garner
This is a complex question. And the amount of. No matter what I have to say, I think it's important for everybody to remember Paul's words to the Corinthians. We see through a glass dimly.
[00:04:30.83] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:04:31.66] - Gregg Garner
We know in part we speak the truth in part. And with respect to her personal story, I only feel comfortable talking about it if we use it as example of this type of experience a person has, because I don't. I don't know her, but I'm so thankful she's found her faith in Jesus again. Yeah, I'm grateful for that, but I don't. I don't know her and I don't know her story, so I don't feel comfortable making any comment on her personal.
[00:05:02.70] - Jeff Sherrod
Sure.
[00:05:03.38] - Gregg Garner
But you're right. We know a lot of people who have had this type of experience. This Deconstructing experience. I would start with, gosh, the first part of your question or the last part? Let's start with the last part. So you're asking if this is something that's new. Yeah, I think I have to, like, put that under Kohelet's statement that there's nothing new under the sun. So, like. So my answer that would be no, probably not. However, you know, the reason why we have a sense that something is new is either because we don't know its previous iteration, or the new package it's come in has prevented us from examining the ingredients.
[00:05:56.48] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:05:58.32] - Gregg Garner
So, yeah, I think if we're just going to look at the last 100 years, we know that the shifts in American culture in the first half of the 20th century were all related to the world wars.
[00:06:13.04] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:06:13.70] - Gregg Garner
And couched in between the world wars was the Great Depression for the United States. So after the Second World War, you have the big tent revival movements of Christianity characterized by fire and brimstone. Now, that wouldn't be the first time we saw that in the United States. What people would refer to as the Great Awakening was definitely characterized by that Edwards type preaching, you're a sinner in the hands of an angry God. And by the time you start looking at the progression of American culture after the war, you've got, like, a rebuilding phase in the 50s, which is all based upon now ideals. Right. Like, the war is over. It's time to put kids back in school. It's time to rebuild families. There's. There's literally a baby boom that's happened. So people are having to examine neighborhood and suburbs and how this all works. So you've kind of got this really beaver cleaver type environment that in the 60s begins to morph because we're brought into another war. Korean Vietnam emerge, and that's pulling the young men away. And that the visually intense news media at the time, not regulated by the government to prevent images of seeing the kind of like, devastating death.
[00:07:49.06] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:07:52.56] - Gregg Garner
Is now having a impassioned impact on people. And so you've got a lot of. I don't know if we would call it rebellion, but you definitely got like, this generation that was emerging that's like, we are not going to participate in the way that things are. So then the 70s becomes this time where the Vietnam's coming to an end, people are coming back as vets, they're young people. Some people dodged the war, other people vested themselves into college. And it's like this time of figuring out, like, what. What it Is that who it is that we are and what it is that we value? And in the 70s you saw another resurgence similar to the 50s in Christianity specifically on the west coast, through what they ended up calling the Jesus people movement.
[00:08:52.57] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:08:53.26] - Gregg Garner
And this is, yeah, this was a time where, where literally hundreds of people were engaging in like mass baptisms on the Pacific coast. And Jesus was even becoming the subject matter of mainstream pop music, you know, so there was, there was some kind of shift and at the time, you know, with also by like some of the big bands in pop music, like the Beatles during that era, there was like this exploration of spirituality by them. Right now they went to like Eastern mysticism and all of that, but under underlying, or the undercurrent of all this spiritual exploration was also like heavy drug use. Right, right. And so a lot of conversions to Christianity by a lot of young people caught up in that culture were young people looking for spirituality, getting involved in drug use, experiencing the detriment of that drug use and how it impacts their relationships and their families and their own personal well being. And Jesus saving became like something very personal. The salvation that Christ had to offer became something for you in your situation as you are within your context. Just like a tailor would fit that suit on you. So Christianity through Christ could become something that would fit and fix your situation. And it kind of started working, at least by appearances, because when you look at the 80s who, who can't think about the 80s as like, you know, you got Reaganomics and a suit and tie era and everybody is, it feels like a rebuilding in the United States where we're gonna beat Russia in the Cold War and we're, we're coming together as a nation. We're gonna, you know, that's the first iteration of we're gonna make America great again, right?
[00:10:57.50] - Benjamin Reese
Oh yeah.
[00:10:57.89] - Gregg Garner
A lot of people know that Trump.
[00:10:59.09] - Jeff Sherrod
Is just, it's a Reagan slogan, right?
[00:11:01.11] - Gregg Garner
Yeah, Reagan slogan. So he, you know, and, and a lot of that then also emerges the whole moral majority of Christianity and the fact that the United States democracy is not actually something decided by populists considering, like even recently, I don't know what the final stats are on voting this last time around, but I think it was predicted that only 40 to 50% of Americans in total would actually vote.
[00:11:35.79] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah, I think that's right.
[00:11:36.83] - Gregg Garner
And so if you have that percentage and then you look at what kind of people are going to be voting, usually people would think about parties, Republican or Democrat, but then what everybody learned was the group that was faith based, specifically Christian would be the dominant minority to swing a vote one way or the other. Now, you might be going, Gregg, why are you bringing this up when I'm asking a question about someone similar to Lindsay here? But I think it all plays in because the meta narratives of our generation contribute to creating for us the storylines that we live within. There's the problems that we have to solve, and then there's the solutions that get offered to us. And as personal and as original as it feels to us, these things are often manufactured by people trying to share what they believe is a solution. Now, this cultural type Christianity that in the 80s really made it feel like if you were a Christian, then that meant you were a Republican. And if you're a Republican, that means that you are. If you're a really good Christian, you'll be part of the moral majority. So you're going to listen to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and you're going to get on board with the idea that the church and the kingdom of God is going to manifest through a dominant Christianity that now necessitates conversion.
[00:13:14.52] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:13:14.99] - Gregg Garner
And so conversion tactics become very important to really getting a person on board with your faith, specifically so that you can make a political impact in the world that you live in. I know for a lot of people, church and politics are like, they don't. They don't go together. And I'm not trying to speak of a philosophy as to whether or not it should. I'm just highlighting actual.
[00:13:41.37] - Jeff Sherrod
What does. History. Yeah.
[00:13:42.83] - Gregg Garner
What actual history has been. I remember watching the news clip when Donald Trump came back to Jesus or came to Jesus for the first time. I wasn't remembering, but I just remember Michael Tate from DC Talk was right there laying hands on him, praying for him. And I just thought, this is so interesting right now. Michael Tate from DC Talk, who's now the lead singer for Newsboys, is praying for Donald Trump. You know, I was like, this is. This is so interesting to observe, just looking at history. But his, his conversion to Christianity now allowed people to go, all right, now we've got this godly person in this place where he can have the power to make all these decisions. Now all of us are having all kinds of problems, the very personal problems, like for Lindsay, there are some mental health scenarios that emerged that she had to contend with. And I think the problem that we have as humanity is we're looking to the kingdoms of this world, even the United States, to be able to answer those problems through their typical normative government initiatives. Right. Health care, which Includes mental health care, ensuring education and curriculum makes people aware of who they are and what are the problems in the world and how we can get out of them. The economy, which gives us the jobs that allows us to pay for the things that alleviate what feels like stress. Like, all of this now seems to only be answered through politics. And so Christianity was like, yeah, we want to have a strong hold into the American landscape, and that's going to come through politics. And so church has been like, even I would bet it didn't happen in our church. But I heard from a lot of people that the last few weeks before election, their church sermons culminated in things like, how can you call yourself a Christian if you don't get out there and vote?
[00:15:48.74] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:15:49.01] - Gregg Garner
And more specifically, if you don't vote for Donald Trump. Yeah, how. How are you a Christian? And then voting for Donald Trump became something as black and white as, do you want to kill babies or do you want to keep babies alive? It was just like, it was a lot.
[00:16:04.42] - Jeff Sherrod
And that seems more extreme. Like, I mean, when I grew up in a church that was politicized, but it was not going to tell you who to vote for. But then it was essentially, vote Republican, you know. But now what I'm hearing from people is like, they're not. It's not saying, I'm not going to tell you to vote for.
[00:16:18.85] - Gregg Garner
Remember Donald TRUMP In 2016, when all the Republican candidates were up there, they asked a question. They said, are any of you Republican candidates? If. If you do not become the Republican representative for president, will any of you just now say, I'm not going to support the next one and I may even run my own independent campaign? And before the guy even finished the question, Donald Trump raised his hand. People booed him. Nobody else raised their hand.
[00:16:48.05] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:16:48.36] - Gregg Garner
You have like a dozen candidates up there. It was just like, so interesting that he was just really gung ho about making that happen. So back to Lindsay and all this stuff. The meta narrative that exists for us in our world is often told by people of power who have the ability to construct their ideologies through legislation into practice. And it impacts us. And we don't always know where the impact is coming from. We just know that we're having to deal with what it is that we're experiencing. So even though the Bible emphasizes discipleship over conversion, though conversion is something that happens, very little attention is given to conversion in the Bible. Much more is given to discipleship, which is education, specifically education on God's word that leads you to understand who he is and in turn who you are as one created in his image and a child of God. But when the church all of a sudden no longer sees it to be a value to disciple, and instead they see the church as this breeding ground for a moral majority or a group of people who are going to fixate on very specific causes to push forward an agenda. You want to get conversions and then you want to get people to vote appropriately.
[00:18:24.13] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah. It's all about growth.
[00:18:25.31] - Gregg Garner
Yeah. In the 80s they would have these, these tent revivals and you can read about a lot of people having testimonies where they'll go and they'll get saved. And there's this one testimony of this one young lady. She, she didn't even go up for herself to get saved. Her friend asked her to go, so she went up with her friend. Her friend gets saved, her friend's crying, she's crying. It was cathartic, emotional. And immediately they give her a track. And the track, having accepted Jesus, was to vote for Reagan.
[00:18:59.51] - Benjamin Reese
Oh my gosh.
[00:19:00.63] - Gregg Garner
Wow. And I think for our generation, not having experienced those things firsthand and then coupled with that, the type of media that we have today that allows anybody to become a broadcaster, we might call them influencers or things like that, everything was curated in our parents generation, so we only heard what they led us here. Right. And even, even like the concept of fake news is so interesting because I think when a lot of us hear fake news, we think about the fabricated media that comes from major networks rather than what a lot of the practitioners of the term fake news actually intend to mean, which is media influencers who have their theories and their ways of seeing the world. To them, that's the fake news. What you see, that's not coming through the curated channels of these higher news sources. So now we have all kinds of people contributing to how we understand ourselves in the world. And it's, it's like a cacophony disaster, you know, it's like so loud and noisy and it's hard to focus. I think today so many people's mental health issues just come from the over stimulated sense that a person has because our identity has become so closely connected to how we will be used. So if my identity is to, you know, convert me, to grow me so that now I become a vote that pushes an agenda that can feel really bad.
[00:20:48.35] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:20:49.19] - Gregg Garner
And if you're listening to this and you're like, I know what these guys are against America, please don't be immature, please don't be weird, Okay? I am thankful to God that we live, that I get to live where I live, that was born, where I was born in the United States as a citizen, and that I get to experience many of the freedoms that we have in our country, in contrast to many people who are suffering and experiencing a lot of bad. I am very thankful to that. However, I am still able to talk about history and the processes without becoming some radicalized weirdo that wants to, I don't know, storm the Capitol or hold up flags with whatever I want. We don't have to do that. We're academics having a discussion. And like I said, this is a complex thing. So now you've got guys in the, in the 90s like Donald Miller and Rob Bell who are, are coming up in the worlds that they, they're coming up with the narratives that they have, right? And they're, they're, they're seeing that a lot of these guys who are really angry and ill fitted suits are yelling and screaming and they're like, something, something's off about this. Something needs to change and we need to figure out how to communicate that change. And so at the time, the medium to write a book definitely trumped the podcast. This didn't even exist or anything like that. So they got these books and they got them published. And because Christianity is a closed group and has their own bookstores and their own publishing companies, these books got to go to bestsellers. And when they get to best sellers, people appreciate recommendations. They walk in a store, there it is top 10, they grab it. And now these thoughts that resonate with the, the atmosphere, the, the era, the sensation that we all have as a result of the problems we're contending with because of the narratives that have been cast for us, these become like eye opening works.
[00:23:01.74] - Benjamin Reese
Right?
[00:23:02.09] - Gregg Garner
Right. And now a person is like making consideration for things and thinking about stuff. But in my experience with folks who get into these situations, they always, almost always note these books as seminal to their, their experience. Like it was like a watershed moment that got them thinking differently. Now I'm going to bring up my twofold criticism on our Christianity at large. One, the Christianity that we teach in churches is great for conversionism and to getting people to buy into the pressure of being part of a group that is going to be good and they're going to be moral and they're going to make all the good and moral decisions and they are the safeguard for the country in terms of it going to hell in a hand-basket. And so now as a Christian, you get to be A part of the, the good old community that's making that happen. But that Christianity isn't good enough for adults, in my opinion. It's good for kids and for adults who want to remain in that mindset, but it's not good for adults. The Christianity that I grew up with, again, was fine for me as a kid. It was not adequate to answer the questions I developed as an adult. And so now you get people like Lindsay, who becomes an adult and the Christianity she's equipped with is, is not sufficient. She doesn't know how to answer these questions. Now enter in Donald Miller and Rob Bell and the variety like them. And these guys aren't really using the Bible to shed light on anything. The illumination that you get from their work comes from a really cultural analysis of where we're at, where we hope to be, and then just again, decorated with Christianity.
[00:24:53.16] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:24:53.56] - Gregg Garner
Like we're not actually talking about teaching the Bible. When you read Velvet Elvis, yeah.
[00:24:57.77] - Jeff Sherrod
You would think that these are like academic books of the way that, you know, the way people reference them as watershed books, like really changed my thinking. But I mean, I read Velvet Elvis when I was in college and it's like this white, you know, orange thing and it sometimes had like three words per page and you would turn it, you know, it's like, had a certain.
[00:25:15.73] - Gregg Garner
It was more like aesthetic, right? Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:17.83] - Jeff Sherrod
It wasn't. It wasn't just like this strong theological argument or biblical argument. But yeah, it did have this ethos, you know, that was like, hey, we need to think broader, less judgmental. This is bigger than what you guys thought. There's. God is not happy to judge people the way that you think he is. He's more merciful than you imagine.
[00:25:39.84] - Gregg Garner
And the culture was primed for that kind of a preacher.
[00:25:43.64] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:25:44.15] - Gregg Garner
Because the culture was tired of the angry men in ill fitted suits.
[00:25:48.72] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:25:49.03] - Gregg Garner
Like they were looking for a change when. When. Because that generation experienced the Gulf War in Kuwait and the abortion debates which. Yeah.
[00:26:00.69] - Benjamin Reese
Were tiring on your moral.
[00:26:02.60] - Gregg Garner
Yeah.
[00:26:03.08] - Benjamin Reese
Sort of sensibility.
[00:26:04.36] - Gregg Garner
It was just hard. Yeah, it was just, it was hard. So now these guys are giving answers, but they're giving cultural answers, not biblical answers. Now this is not to say that the other camp is giving biblical answers either. I'm saying that these guys over here and the kind of teaching that takes place in church, it got people to convert, usually through scare tactics. And then once they got them to convert, they adopted a culture. And the culture was definitely connected to the politics of Christianity. Working in the United States of America and that Christianity is not good enough for adults who have real problems they have to contend with, so they have nothing to pull from. And unfortunately, a lot of people believe Christianity is not for them because they, they often think they understand it all, they got it all when that was not a biblical depiction of Christianity. Well, on the other side, you've got these other guys now answering or actually dealing with the questions.
[00:27:03.92] - Benjamin Reese
Right.
[00:27:04.26] - Gregg Garner
That people actually have. But they're not dealing with it by teaching scripture. They're dealing with it by introducing open endedness, by, by introducing a door out of the closed room of Christianity they grew up with to a beautiful open field, failing to mention there are landmines in this field.
[00:27:26.93] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah, it's a good metaphor.
[00:27:28.27] - Gregg Garner
In any second, tornado can emerge, like so then people ventured and they went outside the safety of their culture, which, as you intimated earlier, is natural. It's not unnatural for a person to grow up. And when you grow up, part of growing up is having this moment where you, whether consciously or unconsciously, find yourself emotionally, maybe even geographically separated from the culture you grew up in, the thought patterns that were common to you, and you have to engage differences and that helps a person figure out who they are. Because now they're introduced to something else and they have to go, I like that better than what I had. Or they have to go, no, I don't like that compared to what I had. And now they start owning who they are. So that's quite natural. It's not unnatural for a person to kind of grow up. But as what happened for me in Sunday school growing up, I could ask my teacher very what I thought were questions that deserved attention. And I would just be told it's because it's what the Bible says. So we believe it, God said it, I believe it. That settles it kind of mentality. And the rational thinking aspect of who we are as human beings, even created in the image of God, was not given much attention. Like in Sunday school, I asked the basic question. I got concerned because God loved us so much and loved his son so much that he decided to kill his son. And so I had the legitimate concern, if I get too close to God and too loved by God, will I also get killed?
[00:29:06.35] - Benjamin Reese
Right?
[00:29:06.98] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:29:07.44] - Gregg Garner
And there was no answer available to me.
[00:29:09.59] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:29:10.04] - Gregg Garner
It was just, you know, you don't need to know those things. God knows those things. And God, God is loving, but he's also the judge and he's merciful, but he also has to implement justice. And it was just like these, these little platitudes that they had learned over the course of their Christianity. Just like water falling out of their mouth, barely understanding. And I could see my peers just adopting those statements.
[00:29:37.76] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:29:38.23] - Gregg Garner
And that would become part of their vernacular and communication where for me, I wanted substance, I wanted to know something. And I was thankful to go to a Bible college because in going to Bible college, I found other people like me with those kinds of questions. And I found a place where people wanted those questions answered by the scripture itself.
[00:29:57.34] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:29:57.84] - Gregg Garner
And not just by the media and the culture. You know, books is part of media.
[00:30:02.88] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:30:03.50] - Gregg Garner
So they, they didn't want answers from that. They wanted answers from God's word. And that was like a really great experience. So Lindsay then growing up and people like her now getting the door open into the wider world. They venture out, but they're still not equipped to make distinction between what is common and what is holy. They don't have that vocabulary or that way of thinking about it as given by scripture. So now they're left to figure out what makes sense. So the journey that she took, we got to follow her for a couple decades in her storyline. It took that long for her to finally get back to where she has this relationship with Jesus. I guarantee you it's way different than the relationship she had with Jesus 20 plus years ago. But now, hopefully it's based not on what the culture of Christianity she grew up with said and not based upon the culture of Christianity through the media and what it says. But now it's based upon God's word and what he says, because that's the only kind of truth that is going to bring the kind of freedom that people are, are looking for. So is this new? No, it's not new. Does it have particular contributing historical circumstances? Yes. And should we discern them? Yeah. Jesus criticized the disciples by saying, as farmers, you guys knew how to identify weather patterns so that you could know what to do. But when you guys look at the sign of the times, you're unable to read it. So Jesus wants us to be discerning of the time that we live in. And we need God's word to give us the filter by which we discern what could pass and what shouldn't pass. But most people aren't getting the biblical education necessary for them to have that capacity through Sunday school and a 20 minute sermon on Sunday and a Wednesday night Bible study. It's not enough. And the value that we've placed on biblical education as a Christian community is getting worse as the years go on. Right now for Private Christian institutions. I just saw the statistic. It's one a month now. One a month of Christian institutions. Sorry. Are closing down.
[00:32:25.69] - Jeff Sherrod
Oh, wow.
[00:32:26.69] - Gregg Garner
Yeah, so it's, it's. This is, this is crazy. Or private institutions. And a lot of them are Christian. Yeah, but that, that's, that's a sign of the time in that Christians no longer value biblical education because the, the older generation feels Christianity to culturally be enough. As a young person, I remember going into these churches with these guys who were like Christians since they were kids, still Christians when they're older. But did they worship God? No. They would stand and grab the pew in front of them and they wouldn't sing. They just stand there solemn. And you could say, like, that's their personality. But obedience trumps personality. And I don't mean Donald Trump. Obedience is more than personality. Right. So when God wants us to worship him and praise him and sing to him, you open your mouth. These guys aren't doing that. These guys are coming to church. It's a cultural expression of the Christianity. So now you think about that older generation and they think. They're not thinking, in my opinion, but they're feeling. The way that they're going through things is, hey, it worked for me. Look at where I got in life. And I didn't need all of that. My kids don't need all that. But what my kids do need is a good job. Because I wish I would have got a good job sooner and instead I was in the war or I was doing this. And when I came back, I was finally able to settle down. And I don't want my kids to do that. Would have been better for them to be an officer if there is a war. So they need to go to college. So they have this other meta narrative that's like controlling them, which then belittles the necessity for biblical education. So now you've got an older generation that is not, there's no, there's no systematized unity in the church at large to say, hey, we're Christians. All of you Christians are going to Bible school. That's what we're doing. All the Christians are coming together. We don't need the federal government to fund this. Christianity's got enough money. We're going to make the scholarships available. All of you guys can be debt free and get a biblical education. Then if you want to go on, which maybe you should, who knows? But if you want to go on to other schools now, you can tap into FAFSA and get into that. But we're going to solve the problem, we're going to do this. Nothing like that has happened.
[00:34:36.28] - Jeff Sherrod
No one talks about it.
[00:34:37.19] - Gregg Garner
The value isn't there. People don't think you need it because they're looking at again, remember what's the goal of this political type Christianity? It's just to create good people. But it's ostensible. Right. It only appears to be good. There's. There. That's why I think when she's, she sounds like a wordsmith with ill fitted suit, you know. But it is a funny thing that you can. When I think back into the 80s and the 90s about how many obese preachers like morbidly obese.
[00:35:06.50] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:35:07.13] - Gregg Garner
Like where stuff's coming out the side of their mouth. They can't control it. Super sweat, sweating unbelievably not because of the lights on the stage, their breathing patterns. They're having to sit down. They're like this, this is called gluttony.
[00:35:20.09] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:35:20.42] - Gregg Garner
And it's a deadly sin and we're just mute about it.
[00:35:24.36] - Jeff Sherrod
Yes. No one is talking about this.
[00:35:26.73] - Gregg Garner
But, but then if, if it's something that gives you opportunity to create a villain out of somebody that's not a part of your agenda. I mean it got so petty in the, the 90s. It would be like long hair like these, these Christian musicians and bands who have long hair.
[00:35:45.53] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:35:45.84] - Gregg Garner
We're not going to listen to these guys. They're, they're promoting the devil's music or whatever. Like so morbidly obese guy can criticize culturally influential long hair Christian guy. And then they bounce. They're like forget it, I'll go, I'll go do something else. I mean that was Gary Sharon of extreme from the 90s band extreme. You know, they came out with more than words. He's a Christian dude and was trying to push things forward with Christianity and the church didn't like him. So he went over. I mean that's a story for a.
[00:36:16.73] - Jeff Sherrod
Lot of these guys.
[00:36:17.59] - Gregg Garner
Right. But it's interesting when you think back and see that what they want to do is create an ostensibly good or moral person. But really what they mean by that is someone I think ultimately who just votes for these specific candidates who will advance these idealistic causes of which sometimes it's even hard to know what changes have happened or what good has been implemented. But if that's the goal to that where this other one over here, which the goal is just to create nicer people, more open minded folks, that's, that's great. Until all these Folks, wake up into the reality that if you don't have criteria by which to discern the world around you, the, the beautiful meadow with the, the serene deerscape is about to turn into World War Z. Yeah, it's like a hell. Yeah, it's, it's going to be real bad for you because you don't know how to navigate that. So the solution is and will always be the Word of God. Yeah, it's that same word. All things are made through Him. And not a thing that we know that was made, was, was not made except by him. Like that word became flesh. Learning the Word is going to help you understand who Jesus is. And people's problem with Jesus and why they want to deconstruct Jesus is because the Word didn't teach them who Jesus was. Yeah, their culture taught him. Books about Jesus taught them who Jesus was. So biblical education is the safeguard for us as a community. But people in power who don't have biblical education don't want biblical education for other people because then that puts them in a position to do what any good education should teach a student to do. And that's ask better questions. And now they're asking questions that they don't have the answers for. It doesn't mean that there aren't answers, but they just don't have the answers for. And then it turns again into who's feeding you this garbage? Who's telling you this stuff? Stuff. Oh that. And now it's about deviant labeling. They're a liberal, progressive, whatever it is.
[00:38:20.88] - Jeff Sherrod
It could be anything.
[00:38:21.92] - Gregg Garner
They, they are a Tea Party, Republican, fundamental, whatever it is, you, you, you just start deviantly labeling to distract the person from their question. But as human beings, we were created in the image of God, longing to know who God is and who we are. And you won't know who you are until you learn who God is, having been created in his image. So biblical education does that. But when we don't value it as Christians, which I don't think we do, if we did, like take for example, Israel values their self defense. Right. So what does the government require of every 18 year old?
[00:39:05.50] - Jeff Sherrod
Military service.
[00:39:06.42] - Gregg Garner
Military service for a couple of years, it's mandatory. Mormons value their faith and they know that you send a kid out to anywhere besides Brigham Young and a couple other schools, there might be some problems. So what do they mandate as soon as they turn 18?
[00:39:22.84] - Benjamin Reese
Go on service.
[00:39:23.69] - Gregg Garner
Go on service. Be missionaries. Christianity is so funny. It's like do whatever you want, kids. God is with you. Jesus is Lord, you want to read that book? No problem. You want to go do that thing? Awesome. Hey, just make sure that you vote right. It's. It's.
[00:39:40.25] - Jeff Sherrod
And then when they express deconstruction or heavy critique, it's like, what's wrong with them? Yeah, you know, it's just. Yeah. You just blame the person who never got invested into.
[00:39:51.07] - Gregg Garner
Yeah.
[00:39:51.59] - Jeff Sherrod
The whole. You know, it's like, I think that's the. Even as I. Before you go on, I should say, I thought that was such a brilliant analysis of history. And I do want to say, like, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, did we have this prep beforehand? You just did that off the fly. So that was. That was great to be able to go through that. But, yeah, there's. Even when we think about deconstruction and the term, you know, tearing something down, it almost seems like there's something substantial and we're taking it apart. But this is all strawman, right? Like, this is, like, the easiest thing to deconstruct, and as soon as people need something else, it falls down pretty quick. Yeah. I did want to just talk briefly about the term deconstruction. When I was typing this in, I was typing into Google, like, Christian deconstruction. And the first, like, autofill was movement. Like, you know, this. So people are identifying this with a movement. I know. We were also talking about there is some, like, natural tendency to critique what's come before. So maybe. Ben, I'll ask you this first and then ask Gregg second. But when you're hearing the difference between critique and deconstruction, how do you. How would you differentiate those. Those terms?
[00:40:59.65] - Benjamin Reese
How would I differentiate. Well, I do think that, yeah, like we've said, as a person goes into their adolescence age, and they're. They're exposed to different viewpoints, they do have to start to figure out what exactly we believe. We really don't know what we know until we can contrast it with something that's different than what we know. And so that's. I think. I think that now deconstruction is kind of a tricky term because there's, like, a technical, philosophical meaning to it, because it's an actual philosophical.
[00:41:32.30] - Jeff Sherrod
What is it?
[00:41:33.00] - Benjamin Reese
Movement. It was the idea that it really had to do with the interpretation of texts. So is the idea that a text doesn't have a. A sort of central, fixed meaning, that we're all like, one interpretation might get kind of close, another interpretation might get farther away. But we're all trying to sort of reach, this one central fixed meaning that does exist, sort of like a Platonic form. And then they. And then somebody like Jacques Derrida, who is sort of the leader of this movement, came along and said, well, that's not an accurate picture of meaning. It's really just a shifting sands. And this person's interpretation might work in a certain context, or he might have a reason for reading it that way, and another person might have a different reason for reading it another way. And we need to see this text as being really just the. The playground for an opportunity for multiple interpretations to exist. And none are really ever more valid. More valid than another. And so it was applying that from the linguistic field to the idea of, like, more generally ideas. It's the idea that when a young person goes out into the world and they see that, okay, these people have a certain way of organizing themselves and doing things. These. I have a certain way of organizing and doing things. My culture has a way of doing things. Their culture has a way of doing things. There's really no central, like, maybe moral truth that one is closer to than the other. Maybe it's just sort of a relativistic thing. And so maybe in this choice between doing A or B, it's really up to me. It's more or less an aesthetic decision of, like, how do I want to. How do I want my life to be viewed? You know, like, what kind of person do I want to be seen as? And so you start adopting, you know, these different sort of, sort of movements. So that's the idea. So I think if we're talking about the difference between critique and deconstruction, critique is generally like, you are. You are criticizing something in order to get it closer to what. What it should be. Like this Christianity isn't working, and you're critiquing it in order to make it a more biblical Christianity. You believe that there is a goal, there is a.
[00:43:50.96] - Gregg Garner
Which is a contrast to the pop culture definition of critique, because critique comes with negative nuance in pop culture, more.
[00:43:58.61] - Benjamin Reese
Like complaining for our.
[00:44:00.23] - Gregg Garner
But in the academic realm, a critique is an effort to say, hey, here's. Here's. Here's where it could be better, right?
[00:44:10.28] - Benjamin Reese
Yeah, here's how it could be better. So I think that's critique. Deconstruction comes along then as a contrast to that. It's more just a picking a part of everything in order to show that ultimately it's more or less subjective and you should do what you feel like is the best thing to do.
[00:44:33.42] - Jeff Sherrod
Do you Think that. And maybe one of you guys. Do you think deconstruction, then, is a helpful way of talking about the cultural phenomenon that people are experiencing?
[00:44:41.51] - Gregg Garner
I don't think the cultural phenomenon accurately reflects the philosophical starting. Or like, what Ben just described is not what people are doing.
[00:44:54.98] - Benjamin Reese
Or what I've seen is that people. I mean, people always choose a more interesting word. You know, philosophy is just a fount of interesting words that people like to.
[00:45:08.67] - Gregg Garner
Pull from and use commandeer for their.
[00:45:11.50] - Benjamin Reese
Own commandeer, like existentialism. People will be like, this is. I'm having an existentialist crisis. Pri has no relationship to Camus or Sartre or anything like that. It's just a. That's a fun word to use to describe a process that may or may not be actually more common than interesting and intellectual.
[00:45:31.78] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:45:32.38] - Gregg Garner
You know, so I think when people use the term deconstruct, they're. They're more metaphorically literal, meaning they had this faith that was constructed. Now they want to tear it down.
[00:45:45.90] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:45:46.51] - Gregg Garner
And so it's like all the things that they considered to be foundational to their belief system, they want to now take apart and determine whether or not it legitimately is or isn't.
[00:46:00.92] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:46:01.67] - Gregg Garner
And I think that's. That's what they mean.
[00:46:04.11] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah. I think you're. I think you're right with that. Yeah. Let me. Let me just ask you this. You guys are. We're. We're all college professors, and, you know, we're trying to get people to think critically about their faith and. And ask hard questions and better questions. And with the growing biblical literacy, are you ever concerned when you're, like, having people do that? Like, man, I want to push them, but I don't want to push them too far, otherwise this could fall apart. Do you think that that's. I know that's sometimes the concern that parents can have or grandparents, like, they're going to go and ask these questions, and then it's going to fall apart. Do you think that there's any validity to that when you guys are teaching? Like, I'm going to help this to uphold some structures that you have, because some of it's good. But what's your thought process as you're thinking about the metaphorical sense of deconstruction when you're teaching students?
[00:46:54.53] - Gregg Garner
I think that I have felt that. I have felt like what? It seems like there could be a danger in introducing two people or young people, possibility that exists outside of the norms that they adopted over the course of their childhood. So if you take that within the context of their Christian faith. And they believe, for example, that women shouldn't be allowed to teach the Bible. That's like a sensitive thing to them. And the goal isn't in. As a teacher, my goal is not to deconstruct that. My goal is to teach the word of God and let the word of God do the work in the person so that the Holy Spirit does the building or the tearing down.
[00:47:48.53] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:47:48.96] - Gregg Garner
I often, when I think of deconstruction, I think of the first chapter of Jeremiah when, as a prophet, God called him to tear down, to pull up, and that's deconstruction efforts. But he also called him to build up and to plant.
[00:48:06.63] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:48:07.34] - Gregg Garner
So there's. There are certain things that I know through education can be deconstructed, but we're really supposed to be helping people to construct the type of. If we keep with a metaphor, building that will withstand storms. So Jesus communication, that everyone who hears his words and does them, they build something that withstands storms.
[00:48:35.07] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:48:35.53] - Gregg Garner
And earlier when I said that people who grew up with the kind of Christianity that a lot of us Americans in the. In the last 40 years grew up with, 50 years, maybe even more. Gosh, 70 years. It. It's. It's not a strong enough house for adulthood. And so it falls apart when storms hit. A loved one dies, a divorce happens. A moral failure.
[00:48:59.63] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:49:00.09] - Gregg Garner
Which is to be anticipated. It's normal. But it's like a. It's like a say it ain't so, Joe kind of experience for people who. Who are not taught.
[00:49:11.44] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah.
[00:49:11.98] - Gregg Garner
About just the human condition from a biblical perspective.
[00:49:17.28] - Benjamin Reese
So with the tearing down and build, planting. I think when I first started teaching students, or maybe when I was a student myself, people came in with some, like, doctrinal ideas in their head, like a system of beliefs that.
[00:49:33.23] - Gregg Garner
That they likely inherited.
[00:49:34.36] - Benjamin Reese
That they likely inherited. Today, I feel like students are coming in with hardly anything to, like, directly deconstruct. There's a lot of cultural ideas, but not like, it's different.
[00:49:46.42] - Jeff Sherrod
It's different.
[00:49:47.15] - Gregg Garner
Different.
[00:49:47.73] - Benjamin Reese
But so is the effort more now on the planting side of just, like, getting them to believe anything?
[00:49:53.32] - Gregg Garner
No, I still think that. I still think that there are things there to. To make them aware of so they could be destructed. So take, for example, autoimmune diseases.
[00:50:05.28] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:50:05.59] - Gregg Garner
An autoimmune disease is an issue because your body is incapable of identifying what it is that's actually going on with it. So it's attacking itself to try and find the actual problem. So the Resolution that a doctor would have is to try and get the body to acknowledge this is actually the problem, attack this, and then once that gets healed, the body's not trying to fix itself anymore. So the autoimmune person just gets blasted by their immune system because they can't find the actual thing. So again, a lot of these doctors and therapists who practice this type of healthcare will do things to get the body to recognize, hey, you have this going on. You now need to pay attention to this so you can treat it. So the body wasn't consciously aware that it had Lyme disease or a parasite or whatever, but through this medical approach and integrative health approach, now the practitioner can get the body to recognize it's there and to do something about it. I think that's more what we're dealing with now. I think that there are things that are part of the cultural milieu that have already sowed, and the lack of consciousness as to it being something to contend with or to talk about is no longer part of the culture. So, for example, like, if you think back to when you were in junior high and both you guys are probably like, me, interested in God's word. Interested. Talking to people.
[00:51:32.09] - Benjamin Reese
Yeah.
[00:51:32.53] - Gregg Garner
Like, we're, we're gonna get predestination debates. We're gonna talk about end times debates.
[00:51:37.26] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah, right.
[00:51:37.82] - Gregg Garner
That was all part of our atmosphere.
[00:51:39.26] - Jeff Sherrod
Right.
[00:51:39.65] - Gregg Garner
That was, that was the spirit of the air. That was the time that we were in. So today the kids got questions about sexual identity. That's just part of their landscape. It's like, it's, it's where for our generation, especially our parents generation, these were outlier considerations. Now again, it's, it's in the body and people aren't aware it's in them. It's just part of how they think.
[00:52:03.96] - Jeff Sherrod
That's a good metaphor.
[00:52:04.73] - Gregg Garner
Yeah, they're, they're, they're thinking about like, like even the, the way that language has changed, man. If you said crap, piss, even dump when I was a junior higher, you're, you're in trouble, dude. You're in trouble. But, but now you, you can hear Christians, whether it's in Christian media or, or even youth groups with kids or Christian sports, you, you hear that the words that they use in those contexts are way elevated beyond the ones I just mentioned. So we, like, I think it's there, right? Just that body.
[00:52:46.88] - Benjamin Reese
Yeah.
[00:52:47.69] - Gregg Garner
We have to discernedly help them identify what's there. Like, for example, the idea that kindness is to be a soft spoken, tolerant person who Just lets everybody think the way they want to think and do the way they want to do. And that's the ultimate embodiment of like a. A really great, kind person. Yeah, like, that's not a biblical foundation for understanding kindness. It's definitely a cultural one. But. But we all use the word kindness now. Students will hear that, and that's what they're thinking. But we may be thinking about kindness in the way that Romans would depict it, that kindness. Yeah. It leads to repentance. But kindness is a merciful act. And the merciful act even allows for us to identify our shortcomings by. By experiencing the consequences of our shortcomings or our sin as the Bible uses the word. Right. That's way different definition in our culture's kindness. So I'm saying it's there, but within these students. But as teachers, we have to. We have to be very discerning and. Which is hard. Yeah, you have to have a lot of conversations and ask a lot of questions and be paying attention. But they, they. They've got their things too. It just changes with every. Every generation really does, you know.
[00:54:11.63] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah. I've loved this conversation. I, I think that one of the things, I think that it's hopeful about it, and Gregg, you're talking about this is that we're not saying deconstruction of young people's faith is inevitable. I think that's like a really strong takeaway because that would be defeating. But instead we're saying we have responsibility as the older people in the community to ensure that biblical education. We're not building straw men and saying face the world, but we're building strong men, you know, to face the world. And that happens through teaching people God's word. And that's a serious effort. You cannot bypass this one serious effort. Serious time and consideration has to go into that. And then we hopefully will find, you know, a group of people that. A young group of people that respond to that, and they'll. There'll be new challenges and new things that they'll face as they get older, but they'll have that foundation.
[00:55:02.36] - Gregg Garner
And deconstruction takes place. Just like Paul Apostle would say, when I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child. When they became a man, I put away those things. Like there's a healthy deconstruction of the things that worked for us for the time when we were a kid. We shouldn't carry them into our adulthood.
[00:55:21.86] - Jeff Sherrod
That's right.
[00:55:22.34] - Gregg Garner
And we have to become conscious of that. And that's what education does. It makes you conscious of what's going on.
[00:55:27.46] - Jeff Sherrod
Yeah, that's a great thing. I appreciate it. Thanks all for joining us today. See you guys next time on College Conversations. Thanks for joining us on College Conversations. Hope you guys enjoyed the show as always. It means the world to us. When you, like subscribe, you tell your friends and your loved ones about this show. If you haven't yet, head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and subscribe to it. You'll be notified anytime a new episode comes out. Also, head over to YouTube and subscribe to our channel. Let other people know about the work that we're doing. As always, let us know about any comments that you have, things that you want to talk about, things that you appreciate. We really do appreciate hearing from the audience. Till next time, we'll see you guys on College Conversations.