Entry #20

This series was originally published on my socials in 2021. My beliefs and opinions have changed in some ways since then, but these words are still meaningful and relevant to who I am and what I believe today.

The week I wrote my original “Deconstruction Diaries” post, a few different well-intentioned people sent me articles about the trendiness of deconstruction—basically: “Beware—your friends might start doing this because it’s cool.”

I’m not offended by the friends who sent the articles—I know their hearts, their motives. It led to good conversations and mostly understanding.

However, I am very offended by the hubris of the authors of those articles.

Because WHY WOULD ANYONE CHOOSE TO DO THIS?

Church is as much a part of my DNA as the color of my hair.

The first several years of my life my dad was on staff at our church, then an elder once he went back to coaching.

Church was my haven, my second home. I went to church camp every summer, competed in Leadership Training for Christ, went to Thursday Morning Service Days in the summers and Huddles on Wednesday nights. I went to a Christian college, worked at church camps each summer, and interned for church children’s ministries for two years. I was and am formed by the church in a way that I can’t possibly separate from my identity, my personality, from me.

So why, WHY, would I rip myself from something so deeply entrenched in my being.

While I feel like this has been necessary and inevitable for so many years, I also feel like I’m standing in the middle of an empty room, one hand holding a scalpel, tears streaming down my face looking at all the parts of myself I’ve had to cut out.

I do not begrudge my youth. I am not sad that my life was formed by my church family—because goodness, they were so good. To me and to others.

But even though church was a good experience for me—I now know church has been a place of harm and destruction for so many others. And for so long, I’d used the same excuse others keep giving me: the church is made up of broken people. And it’s true. But also—THE DEEPLY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS OF THE CHURCH ARE PERPETUATING THE BROKENNESS. And someone has to stick their foot into that cycling wheel of toxicity to stop the momentum, even if it means they lose a toe, or even their whole damn foot. I’m cautiously inching my foot towards those spinning cogs.

I can’t stick my head in the sand anymore and say, “Personally, church was and is great for me. So I don’t really care about all these other millions of people who keep shouting their pain at us.”

It would be easier to ignore them.

To ignore the suicide rates of LGBTQ youth raised in religiously conservative homes.

To ignore the reaction of Evangelicals to the call to wear a mask to protect their neighbor.

To ignore how many people leave a church after their preacher speaks on racism.

To ignore how many preachers avoid those sermons altogether for fear of people leaving the church.

To ignore the cries of women who have suffered through years of emotionally abusive marriages because of the church’s literal teachings of the Bible.

To ignore preacher after preacher, leader after leader, in the headlines for grotesque sin—to know the church has a narcissism problem and doesn’t know how to fix it.

To ignore the fact that our church history is shaped by racism, elitism, and colonialism—that at the core of American Christianity, there’s this idea that we know better and are better. Like, “You’re welcome for our help even though you didn’t ask for it.”(see: high school mission trips to Mexico)

Because if I ignored it all, then I wouldn’t have to read so many books or have so many hard conversations or completely dismantle the very religious system that raised me or feel alone on Sunday mornings. Then, maybe I’d feel motivated to get involved in my church—to find my people—like I’ve always done. To fit back into the world I know best.

Except that now, the people who have always been my people, don’t feel like my people anymore.

So yea, it’s sucked. It’s been hard and isolating and endless work.

But here I am. Being trendy. La dee freaking da.