Cultish: Deconstruction: Understanding the "Ex-Evangelical" Movement W/Alisa Childers

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Hey, what's up, everyone? This is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here at Cultus. I want to first and foremost thank all of you who stepped up to the plate and support us and donated at the end of last year to help out our podcast.

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Thank you all so much for supporting us, for listening to us, for sharing our content. Again, thecultusshow .com,

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go to the Donate tab. All that being said, enjoy this podcast. All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, Entering the

00:58

Kingdom of the Cults. My name is Jeremiah Roberts. I'm one of the co -hosts here. I am joined by Andrew, the super sooth of the show in his super secret headquarters up in, is it

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Herriman, Utah again, Andrew? I always forget. It's Riverton, Utah now. Riverton.

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Back in the super secret headquarters coming back from ReformCon, so it's nice. Okay. My inner nerd was the very first thing

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I heard when I heard Riverton, I thought of like Rivendale from The Rings. Rivendale. You know? Elf country?

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I don't know. Weird. Anyways, awesome, man. Glad you are taking the time out of your busy day to join me today.

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We are joined by Elisa Childers. It's good to have you back on the podcast. Oh, always great to be with you guys.

01:39

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, you came on, I think it was around a year ago, and we had a discussion,

01:45

Is Christianity a Cult? That was a great enlightening discussion. We're here to have you back on to talk about a book which you just recently wrote.

01:55

It's available on Audible. It's self -narrated by you, and it's also available on Amazon for what

02:02

I know all available different book publishers out there. Tell us just a little what the book is called, and maybe give us a summary of the book, and what motivated you to write this book?

02:12

Well, the book is called Live Your Truth and Other Lies. That's the important second half of the main title there.

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And then the subtitle is Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Self -Obsessed, and Exhausted.

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And what made me want to write this book is, you know, my first book was about progressive Christianity, more like a theological memoir of walking through an experience in a church that ended up going into progressive

02:36

Christianity, which threw me into a faith crisis, and I had to dig really deep to figure out what I believed about God, and the

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Bible, and Jesus, and Christianity. And yet, what I started to see happen is the theological conclusions of progressive

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Christianity were really leading people to shift from viewing the

02:57

Bible as their authority. I mean, under the banner of calling themselves Christians, shifting the authority for truth and the revelation of who

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God is from the Bible, really, to themselves. So there would be progressive authors saying things like, you know, you have a

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God -given conscience to help you come to Scripture and figure out which parts really are

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God acting, you know, in a certain way, and which parts are just people thinking God acted in that way, or something along those lines.

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But then if I look, you know, when you look out into broader culture, so many of the pop -level influencers in more of what you might call the self -help type of genre are people who at least formerly, and some still, call themselves

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Christians. And they're promoting kind of that same message of this self -oriented search for truth that is just all completely based on what you internally think is oppressive or liberating, good or bad, you know, so all these moral categories, but it's all based on the self.

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And so what's interesting about the book is originally it was going to be sort of in three parts, lies about the self, lies about God, and lies about the world.

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But the lies about the selfless just kept getting longer and longer and longer, and I thought, okay, this book just needs to be really about lies we believe about ourselves, which really is at bottom a shift from biblical authority to self -authority, and that's what

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I see in culture. So it sort of swings out, looks at some of those pop -level influencers, and engages with a lot of the messaging we see on those platforms.

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Happy hunting, everyone. HireBond .com forward slash cultish. Back to the episode. Yeah, I have a question for you.

05:18

Talking about the life coaches and things of that nature in your book, I think you make a really good point.

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Wondering if for our listeners, you can kind of flesh it out a little bit. The difference between the wisdom of the Bible, right, and the wisdom that some of these life coaches bring.

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Which one is better, and why is it better? Right. So what's really interesting, and being on a show called

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Cultish, where you guys talk a lot about cults, I mean, I'm not making the claim that these people are cult leaders, of course.

05:44

I'm not going that far. But it is interesting, though, that there are some similarities in the way they work, because what you have is you have this standard of authority in the

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Bible, but that only works if words have meaning and objective truth exists.

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So talk about that in the book. Because if there really isn't an objective truth to be known about the nature of God, about religion, if there's not an objective truth that can be known or exists when it comes to right and wrong morality, well, then you would be just left with what your feelings tell you.

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And so I think these lies we talk about are really built upon that idea, but also they're built upon the idea that humans are inherently good.

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If you combine those two things, that, you know, if objective truth exists about those things, it can't really be known. But if humans are inherently good, then you would look inside of yourself to find those things.

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And so if you look at the pop -level influencers, and in the book we're dealing with people like, you know, the

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Rachel Hollis's of the world, the Jen Hatmakers, the Glennon Doyles, these kinds of big social media platforms and New York Times bestselling books that are really teaching you that the best way to live is to orient everything around yourself and really make happiness the point of life.

07:04

And in each chapter, we talk about why these fail. And this is the thing I think is really important for people to realize.

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We're not just a bunch of Christians in the corner saying, oh, you need to believe the Bible, and you shouldn't do that, and that's a no, and you shouldn't do that.

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It's really that these lies, they, although they sound good, they actually hurt you.

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They actually lead to a life that puts you in bondage to certain things.

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And then we go even deeper. And not only that, but it causes great spiritual devastation and rot, and they have eternal consequences when we're believing these lies.

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And so when you have these really charismatic personalities that are teaching you how to make the perfect loaf of banana bread one day, and the next day they're teaching you how to speak truth to power, and then the next day they're lecturing you on racism, and then the next day they're back to their sourdough bread baking.

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It's like, you know, it can be very tempting for people to almost follow these thought leaders as if they're really experts on all these things.

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But in our social media world, really, we're looking at people that are figuring it out for themselves as they go along and hoping you follow them.

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But, you know, we don't know how that's all going to pan out in 10 years. And so they're trying all this new stuff.

08:14

Most of them have had massive life changes in the past few years. But it's not like they have a massive life change like a divorce or a deconstruction where they've decided they don't believe the way they used to believe.

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It's not like they do that and then say, okay, I'm going to kind of be quiet for a few years, try to figure out what I think.

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And, you know, no, it's like, oh, I'm so happy. I've changed my entire life. Everything's great.

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You should definitely do what I do. But you're like, let's just give that a couple years. And, you know, five, 10 years, see how that pans out.

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Did you see the movie, The Social Dilemma, the Netflix documentary? No, I want to say

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I need to see that. Have you heard of it? I believe I think I can't remember. I think

08:54

I have heard of it. I just didn't recall the name. But yeah. So just just very quickly for any if this is where I'm going with this is that the whole movie is just really about the evolvement of social media.

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Like it's it's really a relatively new platform. I mean, you and I are probably the same age. So I am thinking back like my space was sort of the first social media experience

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I'm being part of. We all learned HTML coding would have our favorite music profile. We have like a little mini blog.

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And eventually that went over to Facebook, which seemed more personable. But what the movie really are in the documentary really articulates is that the way that social media has set itself up in such a way to where they just want to put content in front of you that feeds your own confirmation biases.

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And so because of that, it leads to one like a ton of polarization, but also like it allows any almost anybody to become a micro celebrity like instantaneously.

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And I'm sure, you know, even pre social media when you were a singer, you can imagine, you know, you know, just the appeal and notoriety of having fame going to a city you've never been to.

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And all of a sudden, there's a bunch of people who know who you are and know your singing voice.

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Do you sort of kind of see like that whole culture when it comes to the evolvement of social media and kind of that, how it sort of really channels and funnels almost everyone to kind of experience what you experienced back then?

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You kind of see that sort of being part and parcel of this whole conversation about living your truth.

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It's so interesting. You would bring this out because I remember, I'm going to go back a ways. Okay. So I remember being in high school.

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And of course, as you said, there was no social media, there was no internet. I actually remember the first time

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I went on the internet. Yeah, I remember sitting down in front of the computer and going on the internet for the first time.

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I love that I can remember that. Because my kids won't even have a memory of that. Yeah. But I so I was in high school,

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I went to the Christian bookstore, which is where you went if you wanted to buy Christian music and books and things like that.

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And I remember walking by the magazine aisle and seeing the cover of CCM magazine and seeing an artist on the cover of CCM.

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And they were just kind of like real, you know, broody. And, and I remember just in my heart feeling like, this is really bad.

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Like, this is bad. First of all, that Christians are doing this kind of thing. I'm not saying it's wrong to have a photograph taken of yourself, but just this sort of self worship be kind of, look at me,

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I'm so cool thing. And so fast forward when that was always a very big struggle for me and Zoe girl,

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I remember just being very conflicted at photo shoots very conflicted about the way the imaging was presented, just because I just I didn't want to glorify myself.

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But there was a difference, as you say, difference between like somebody's senior picture in high school, and what might be on the cover of an album.

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Well, fast forward to today, and everybody's senior pictures look like an album cover now. And now everybody is back to that, that CCM cover of the broody, moody, here's my world, you know, like a celebrity thing.

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So now that you're right, it's everybody. So in the book, I talk about how we have essentially recreated the

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Tower of Babel with social media. It's like the world now once again, speaks with one language.

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And it's like, it's like we've done that again. And if we look at the Tower of Babel, it's like people would say, well, look, they're so unified, look at all the unity, you know, because today, everybody's like unity is so important.

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It's like, well, unity is always not the highest virtue, especially when people are united for nefarious purposes, which is what can happen with social media so often.

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And especially as you mentioned, creating these little microcosms, where people can be like a celebrity in a certain realm.

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And then nobody knows who they are in another realm. And yeah, I think it's kind of, it's a weird time to be trying to process information and look for truth.

12:49

Right. Yeah, that is good. Go ahead, Andrew. Yeah, talking about the Tower of Babel, essentially, and this microcosm, or this massive world of these influencers now who are propagating their own version of truth, you talk in your book about word salad, right?

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It seems like what's going on is a massive amount of confusion. When you bring in your truth, that means words lose their objective meaning.

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It can just mean what is ever useful or pragmatic for the time that someone's living in.

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Is that something that's a danger that you see with living by your own truth with regards to words?

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Oh, yeah. The deconstruction of words is one of the, I don't want to use the word threat to the gospel, because nothing can actually threaten the gospel, right?

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But think about it this way. If people come to believe that language has no meaning, that objective truth cannot be communicated through words, which is the view of Jacques Derrida, who was a postmodern philosopher from the 60s, who's referred to as the father of deconstruction.

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He didn't think words could be pinned down to singular meanings. Therefore, the intent of the author had no more bearing on the meaning than the interpretation of the hearer.

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Well, if you can deconstruct language down to where the intent of the author doesn't have any bearing on the meaning, then you can't preach the gospel.

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You can't depend on the word of God to guide you into truth. And so I think postmodernism, with its rejection of absolute truth, especially when it would come to something like language, is a huge plot of the enemy to try to deceive people and keep them away from being able to ascertain the gospel, or to even meaningfully be able to believe it.

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Because it's like in this culture of deconstruction, you have to constantly be—it's not like deconstruction has an end goal, where it's like, oh, once you'll finally be deconstructed, and then you just live your life.

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No, you have to deconstruct that. If you end up to the point when you think you're deconstructed, you've got to then deconstruct that.

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And you continue to deconstruct and deconstruct forever. That's just sort of the goal of deconstruction, is not to like land somewhere.

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And that's all based on this whole postmodernism that has sort of crept into our culture.

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And I really think that it's the dominant philosophy that our culture is bought into. That's why people say, live your truth or speak your truth, because you're not really allowed to tell somebody that what they might think is true.

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I mean, especially when it comes to things like religion and morality, you're not really allowed to tell them that they might be actually wrong about who

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God is or what's right and wrong. And then if that's the case, then really it's just down to power.

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It's down to who has the most amount of power or the most ability to get the most people to believe what they say is true, whatever they can make stick, so to speak, as people have put it.

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And so that can't be right, because just a cursory look at world history has seen the devastating consequences of what most people believed at a given time in history in a certain place.

15:52

Yeah. What are your thoughts on George Orwell's 1984? So I remember reading 1984 in,

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I think I was in ninth grade, and I was really fascinated by it.

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But I also remember thinking that could never happen, right? I was thinking, especially the doublespeak or the meanings of the phrase, but we're seeing doublespeak all over our culture right now.

16:20

I mean, just take the issue of abortion, right? First, it was pro -choice, right?

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It turned a negative into a positive, not pro -abortion, but pro -choice, right?

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Well, now pro -choice is referred to as reproductive justice.

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It's like they've taken it even a step further to say it's not just a matter of being for somebody making a choice to or not to do this.

16:47

It's actually a right. It's an inherent right that women have to have an abortion.

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And when that right is taken away, that's an injustice. I mean, talk about newspeak, right?

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That is like the definition of newspeak. I mean, abortion centers are called women's healthcare centers.

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I mean, yeah, it's propaganda. And I think we see so much propaganda in the news.

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I mean, it's sad. I was looking at some headlines the other day, news headlines on what we might've considered to be, in previous years, dependable news sources, right?

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And I remember just seeing the headline and going, whatever that is, I don't believe it's true because I know there's only one way that they would be allowed to report that.

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So we're, we're kind of, you know, I mean, obviously not in every way back to 1984, but there is some serious relevance to where our culture is at today.

17:45

Oh, oh, a hundred percent. In fact, when I'm thinking just about media, I'm thinking of, so we are interviewing by the time we release this podcast, we will have talked with Mike Rinder from Scientology of the

17:56

Aftermath. And in prep for the episode, I was watching an interview that Ted Koppel from Nightline did with David Miscavige.

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It's the only time he's done a public television interview, but it was so, it was such a stark contrast to see somebody like Ted Koppel in comparison to whether it's

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Fox news or CNN, where everyone's just trying to get a soundbite to be part of the soundbite for clickbait, where you see

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Ted Koppel really just gently poking and prodding, but also calming down deescalating just because he was being a true journalist.

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Like he wanted to get to the truth of the matter. And there are plenty of times where you could see

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Miscavige getting very much like worked up and kind of get something that'd be clickbait, but you saw him diffuse it to get to the truth.

18:43

It's such a stark contrast. But I guess another question I would have would, when you talk about, you know, the deconstruction movement, specifically in the 1960s and also with social media, it does seem that this whole conversation regarding the deconstruction specifically ex -evangelical, which you kind of deal with a lot on your podcast, this seems to be something that's really been a recent development in some level.

19:09

Is there a pinpoint for when this all started? Because I know that's related to a lot of what you wrote in your book. Well, yeah.

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And actually I'm finishing up a manuscript on deconstruction.

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That's actually the topic of my next book. I'm co -writing that with Tim Barnett from Red Pen Logic. And one of the things that has been so, honestly, this book, to write it has been so hard because it's really hard to get your hands around the whole deconstruction, ex -evangelical movement.

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I would say it's recent. Yeah, it is definitely recent in that people are using the word deconstruction and people are using it in a lot of different ways, right?

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So some people just mean, I want to make sure my beliefs line up with the Bible. But that's not what's happening.

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That's kind of where Christians are trying to baptize the language and make it into something good. But if you go in the deconstruction hashtag, that is not what they mean.

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And they're very open about that. In fact, they'll make fun of that. They openly mock that sentiment that you could deconstruct with a

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Bible. Because one of the first things you do in deconstruction is get rid of any kind of outside authority, especially the

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Bible that would tell you, you have to think about something in a certain way. It's entirely self -oriented.

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It's entirely self -authoritative. And what's really interesting about the ex -evangelical thing in particular is, in fact,

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I'm looking up here because I wrote about the ex -evangelical hashtag, because a lot of people think that ex -evangelical just means not evangelical anymore.

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That is not what it means. That's not at all what it means. I mean, it includes that, right? But ex -evangelical is a very specific thing.

20:51

And what they mean, what they're leaving is a very specific thing that a lot of evangelicals wouldn't necessarily think is accurate.

20:59

In fact, Blake Chastain, who is the guy that started the ex -evangelical hashtag, in a blog post, he kind of fleshed out what it meant to be ex -evangelical or to use the hashtag.

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And so he referred to this as a definition, but he refers to evangelical as a literal reading of the

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Bible, which I take issue with that because I don't know any evangelical scholars who would advocate a wooden, literal interpretation of absolutely every

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Bible verse. Obviously, nobody's going to say Jesus is a door or that his followers are sheep or that, you know, nobody's saying the

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Bible doesn't have figures of speech or things like this. But a lot of times when people say, oh, you're so literal, what they're wanting to do is take history and turn it into a poem or something, you know, and you're saying, well, wait a second, part of reading something literally, you know, and according to its genre is to say, well, that's actually communicating history.

21:53

That's not an analogy or a parable. That's actually history. So I take issue with that. But then, you know, and then the second one is this belief that women are to be submissive to men.

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So patriarchy, complementarianism, these are all like nasty words, you know, nasty words in that movement.

22:13

Complementarianism is sort of equated with abuse. But what's so odd to me about that too is that I grew up in an evangelical denomination that was, now

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I'm complementarian now, I've changed my view on this, but I was raised in a denomination who gave me the gospel, who would ordain women as senior pastors.

22:30

Now, I think that's wrong. I think that's an error personally. But it's not like all evangelicals are all in agreement on, you know, complementarianism or something.

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And then the third one would be that, you know, the whole homosexuality issue.

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And, you know, yeah, I mean, evangelicals are going to uphold biblical sexuality. I agree with him there. But then there's like this political element that he brings into it.

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And that, and here's the other thing he said, to be evangelical means that you have an assumption that the American way of life is the best way of life on earth.

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And so it's like, I'm like, you know, I might actually think that, but all of the evangelicals all over the globe don't necessarily think that.

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So it's a very myopic view of maybe American evangelicalism or what he thinks that is.

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But it's just really interesting because there's just so much to unpack. And it's a very black and white view of what that might be.

23:23

So really what people are leaving when you that ex -evangelical hashtag, and I might be getting off topic here, but it's just on my mind fresh because I've been in that world.

23:31

What people are leaving is complementarianism, which they call patriarchy. What they're leaving is doctrines like original sin and the doctrine of hell and penal substitutionary atonement, because those things are psychologically damaging.

23:45

Those are toxic. Those are very cultish, they would say. In fact, many of them refer to evangelicalism as a cult, which

23:53

I was talking to you guys before. I want to have you on my podcast to unpack that question. And so they're leaving the faith when they, you know, most of the people who use the ex -evangelical hashtag do not just mean

24:05

I'm leaving, I'm not evangelical anymore, I'm just, you know, non -denominational. They're leaving the faith most of the time when they use that hashtag.

24:15

It's synonymous with deconstruction. Hey everyone, if you are watching us right now on Apology of Studios YouTube channel, you need to know that cultish would not be possible if it wasn't for this studio.

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24:48

So we thank you all for watching us, and now back to the episode. So how do we have, as Christians, like a meaningful apologetic in this situation?

24:57

Because it's funny when it says, you know, live your truth, but it seems like the people who hold to that standard don't actually believe that standard.

25:08

Because if they're going to be consistent, then they can't argue with my truth. Because if my truth is what

25:14

Bible says, and they're going to be consistent, they can't say that my truth is wrong.

25:20

You know, like how do we interact with people and how do we keep a rational mindset when we're trying to give people the gospel and break that word salad barrier in this world?

25:33

Yeah, well, I mean, I think one of the most important things is to ask people to define their terms.

25:39

Because if they say, oh, I'm deconstructing out of evangelicalism, before anybody panics,

25:45

I mean, that could mean 10 different things to 10 different people. And so when having a one -on -one conversation with somebody,

25:51

I would just say, you know, just calmly ask, well, okay, so what does that mean? What is evangelicalism?

25:58

What are the beliefs you're leaving? You know, let's drop the labels, just to use regular words, like forget evangelical, what is it you're leaving?

26:05

Like what beliefs have you rejected? What have you changed your mind on? And then you can pinpoint, okay, are they changing their mind on eschatology?

26:12

Or are they rethinking predestination and free will? Or are they saying that Jesus isn't

26:18

God? You know, those are two very different categories of belief, right? And so I think that can be one way to do that.

26:26

But also, I think, just realizing as Christians, though, how this whole thing works.

26:31

Because deconstruction, and I know I'm going to claim here, but I can back it up.

26:38

But just go in the deconstruction hashtag and you'll see it. But deconstruction is not a search for truth. Many will say that they are on a truth quest.

26:45

I just, you know, I want to live for truth, but they mean their truth. Because in reality, that postmodern idea that, you know, there is no objective standard for these things.

26:57

And then it just comes down to power and influence. Well, look at who has the most power and influence right now in culture.

27:04

So the most powerful people are saying, hey, those Christians, those people are in a cult. They're just, you know, psychologically controlled by these fearful doctrines that make you, you know, sad and make you feel bad about yourself.

27:20

You know, I was just watching a TikTok the other day where a girl was comparing the doctrine of original sin with spousal abuse.

27:26

She was saying, you know, an abuser will tell you you're nothing so that you will be dependent on them, you know, and then you say that to a

27:34

Christian. And then in her TikTok, the Christian's like, oh, yeah, that's, you know, that's terrible. And then the girl goes again.

27:40

But yeah, but you, your religion teaches that you're a sinner, that you, you know, to make you dependent on God.

27:46

And, oh, well, that's different because of this. And so her point was to say, no, it's not any different. But it is different if it's true, right?

27:55

Because the abuser is telling you lies about yourself. But if Christianity is telling you you're a sinner and that's actually objectively true in reality, then that's actually a diagnosis of a disease rather than an abusive thing just meant to keep you down, by the way, also bringing the cure with it.

28:10

You know, it would be like if somebody was, you know, I gave this example to a youth group when

28:17

I was talking about this. Imagine a person is laying on a table and somebody comes up to them and cuts them open and rips out one of their organs.

28:26

Well, if that, if the person on the table is just sleeping and the person with the knife is a murderer, well, yeah, that's abuse.

28:36

That's terrible. But if the person laying on the table is a very sick person who needs an organ transplant and they're under anesthesia and the person with the knife is a skilled doctor who's doing the transplant, well, that's lifesaving.

28:48

That's not abusive, even though the scenario, you could set it up like the TikToker did. And so I just think these things require a lot of definitions.

28:56

We got to be thinking about our words, but if we deny that objective truth exists about these things, well, then dominant culture is saying that it's psychologically damaging to tell somebody they're a sinner.

29:06

That's where we're at right now. And that's what most people are operating with. So that's why they don't want you to live your truth because your truth is actually just you're, you know, you're self -oppressed or you have this psychological trauma that you keep pushing down under these layers according to culture.

29:23

And so you need to deconstruct that. You need to, you know, be free. And so it's like it's a trap.

29:30

You can't win. Yeah. So there's a list I have of common characteristics or traits within a cult.

29:38

And this is just something just very broad, very similar to Steve Hassan, although it's somebody who's different.

29:44

But this is one sociological aspect or even psychological is it's one of the traces, a systematic replacement of the pre -conversion identities of the members with a new group related identity.

29:57

This sometimes include the destruction of personal possessions, family ties, slash family of origin.

30:02

When it comes to the whole ex -evangelical movement, everyone does, does kind of operate independently of themselves.

30:11

But at the same time, when you follow it, there is a level of groupthink. And it's not just that I left this faith, me specifically being now an ex -evangelical, this is part of my new identity.

30:26

Does that resonate with you kind of given what you address or how does that go ahead?

30:31

I would love to hear your thoughts on that. When you read that, when you just read that right now, I was like, man, that describes exactly what

30:40

I'm seeing in the deconstruction community. And it comes along with it. Yeah, because you do see a lot of, look at some of the deconstruction stories.

30:49

You'll see a lot of these people at the end say, look, I don't want to hear from my Christian friends right now.

30:56

Just kind of leave me alone. I know what you believe. I used to believe like you and I don't want to hear from you or something like that.

31:03

But then at the same time, the narrative in the deconstruction space is, oh, all my evangelical friends won't return my calls. They won't do this.

31:10

I've talked to too many people. I know better that that's not exactly what's always happening.

31:16

And yes, you're right. It's like they get baptized into this new community that it's almost like the

31:22

Great Decommission as opposed to the Great Commission. And you have your priests and your prophets and your social media influencers and your celebrities.

31:31

And you have this entire group that's ready to embrace you and really push you.

31:38

What you do not see in the deconstruction space very often, I have seen it once in a while, is any slight shred of compassion for the people that you've walked away from your family, your parents, who now you've completely rejected their worldview.

31:53

It's all just bitterness and hatred spewed at these people. And yeah, it gives you a new identity, a new narrative.

32:04

And that's really interesting what you read because it just describes it so perfectly.

32:10

And another thing too, just in relation to that, and I'll let you jump in just to comment on top of what you're saying there,

32:16

Lisa, is that even one of the characteristics too, within a cult, is shunning, right?

32:22

And so there are times where legitimately, 100%, that happens when you look at Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, how they disfellowship people and instruct not even to look into their own eyes.

32:34

But there does seem to be, even within the deconstruction world, almost,

32:40

I would say, even a projection where now, yeah, there might have been legitimate shunning that did happen and take place regardless.

32:49

But now you're doing the exact same thing. You're mirroring what happened. You're now shunning everyone who's still over there, like regardless of what the outcome was.

32:58

So it's almost like this very, you're kind of pretending like one side isn't doing it. You know what I mean? What's interesting about that too is that the narrative in the deconstruction space is that they're the ones being shunned, that their churches are shunning them.

33:15

I don't believe everything I see on social media. I don't know about you guys, but I actually know of a real life situation where this happened, where somebody deconstructed.

33:25

I'm going to keep this real vague to protect the people involved, but I know them. And the one who deconstructed is on all over social media saying that they got kicked out of their church.

33:37

And that's not what happened. I know what happened. The church actually bent over backwards to reach out to this person to love them.

33:44

But ultimately the church wouldn't compromise their position on sexuality. And because of that, this person now lashed out at the church saying, you know, this is an abusive situation.

33:55

It's toxic. It's all these things when I know the real story. And so I just may, I mean, this is not, you know,

34:00

I don't have data for this, of course, this is anecdotal, but I do wonder how often that is the case.

34:06

But many people in the deconstruction movement say that they're being shunned. But let's even say that they are.

34:13

If you look at what they're posting on social media, accusing all of their family and friends of being these toxic, horrible people, that's pretty, that's a pretty difficult gap to bridge when you're trying to reach out to somebody and love somebody.

34:29

So, you know, I mean, and I don't know, again, I don't, that's the thing about deconstruction that's so difficult to track is how, you know, each deconstruction story is different.

34:38

Each person has different wounds, different experiences. Some have had horrific church experiences.

34:43

Others have just don't like what the church teaches, you know? So it's really a broad spectrum and it's tough to kind of get your hands around, but the narrative is all the same.

34:52

That's what I think that's the key point. Yeah. Where do you see the culture, let's say in like 30, 40 years from now, the next generation growing up throughout this, this live your truth or deconstructionist movement?

35:06

Because according to Psalm 115, right? People build idols, even living by your truth, essentially per each person, they're building up this own version of God or who isn't

35:16

God or the self is God that cannot save them from their sins, right? It's a God that doesn't actually even exist.

35:23

It doesn't control, uh, the future of the world. Like it says that, you know, in Psalm 115, let me just pull it up here.

35:31

It says, why should the nation say where, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens and he does what he pleases because he's actually real.

35:37

He he's the one who has declared the end from the beginning. So if these people live in a form of idolatry, it's not going to end well for them, right?

35:45

And we want to love our neighbors is Christian. So where do we see looking into the next generation?

35:53

How is this deconstruction movement or even living by your own truth movement going to end for these individuals?

36:00

That's an interesting question. Um, I can't see how it's sustainable. You can't live like that forever and have any sort of real stability or real peace in your life because you're going to be completely led by your moods and your emotions and what feels right at the time.

36:19

And as most of us know, you know, our hearts lie to us. Most of the time

36:24

I have to wake up and make a decision. You know, my default is just, you know, I don't feel like doing the day today.

36:31

I don't feel like adulting today. I don't want to, I don't like it. I don't want to have to do the responsible things

36:37

I have to do today. Um, and so, so much of my life is saying, no, I'm going to make good choices today.

36:43

I mean, this is like what we learned in kindergarten, right? You have to make good choices. Remember that? Remember when people used to say that?

36:49

Um, and so it's not, I can't see how it's sustainable. And I do wonder if this up and coming generation, like my daughter's generation, 14, my son's 11, um, they're seeing the chaos everywhere.

37:04

Whereas I think they might have been vulnerable to certain ideas, how far it's gone.

37:12

They can see that really clearly. In fact, it causes them distress. Um, just the whole, uh, you know, you can identify yourself, however you want, and nobody can question you.

37:24

I mean, they, my kids recognize how destabilizing that is. They don't want that. They don't actually want the world to be that way.

37:32

And that's not because I'm indoctrinating them. We just have very open conversations. I expose them to what people are saying and they recognize that that's not a, that's not a good way to live.

37:42

That is not sustainable. Um, you can't just perform regular functions, you know, for very long, if that's your view.

37:51

And so, and we are seeing those things break down. So I don't know. I wonder if we're going to see a rebellion, uh, among the younger

37:58

Gen Z generation when they, as they grow up saying, okay, you, you all have just broke the world.

38:05

Now we're going to take it back. You know, I mean, I, I, I think there's actually a connection.

38:11

I'd love to know what you guys think about this. I actually think there's a connection between that and this homesteading movement.

38:16

You know, there's like all these people moving out to, to buy farms and they're homeschooling their kids and their kids are polite.

38:23

They do chores and they work hard, you know? And I wonder if it's like, people are just going like, we'll be here when you guys need to like repopulate the planet, you know, because it's all just, it's like, so it's gone so bonkers, our culture.

38:39

And, um, it's, it's like the, you know, people say the devil always overplays his hand.

38:45

It's almost like, okay, this is a little too far, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's nothing wrong inherently wrong with, with homesteading.

38:53

I mean, it's good to be responsible to learn how to use, you know, natural resources and, and maybe have more creative control.

39:01

Yeah. But it's like, it's like, they're just trying to raise good people because the world's so crazy.

39:06

Yeah. But the thing is too, is that there's always extremes of that though. There's extremes of everything for sure. So you would look at, um, like say there was a big part characteristic of cults as,

39:18

Hey, let's create this commune, let's create this community where we all kind of like share each other's possessions and kind of like, you know, back, forth and left and right.

39:26

But all of a sudden then it goes around like a centralized, like charismatic leader. And there's always times and times of uncertainty where colds like exploded.

39:34

Um, like even if, even if you look at, you know, David Koresh and how he started with the branch Davidians, you would have, you know, he was using the events of that time to give his unveilings of the book revelation.

39:46

And you know, his opening up at the seven seals, uh, you had it with Jim Jones where he, he, we've talked before in your podcast before, where he took in the different variables of the racial tensions of the 1960s of Martin Luther King, but use that to kind of create his own, uh, pseudo, uh,

40:05

Marxist cult, but was writing off the coattails of social justice and racial equality, which is also a characteristic, you know, that gets very much perpetuated in the progressive

40:17

Christianity. You know, we should always, we should always as Christians speak out against that stuff, but it, it always seems,

40:25

I don't know, maybe I'll just bounce back to you when, when we're kind of going into the whole thing of like equality, um, and kind of dealing with, uh, you know, critical race theory and all that sort of stuff that does seem to go kind of like part and parcel with that whole conversation of like live your truth.

40:42

Because even the word, even the word racist has become so much of a pejorative where it doesn't, it barely means anything anymore.

40:48

Uh, I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? Well, that's really fascinating what you just said about the sort of human impulse when culture gets chaotic enough to sort of quarantine themselves off.

40:59

And of course, like you said, there's good versions of homesteading and, you know, um, but yeah, that's really interesting because I was on a podcast a week or two ago and I remember saying,

41:10

I feel like our culture right now is very vulnerable to cults because of the chaos, like the over the potential overreaction, um, could play there.

41:19

Because if you look around that time of Jim Jones, like there were, there were several cults that sort of popped up all around the same time period responding to,

41:27

I think, you know, maybe cultural chaos, but, um, no, that's really fascinating. Um, but I, I forgot what you just asked me though, because I had something

41:34

I wanted to say about that too. Do you remember what you asked me just now? Um, we were talking about homesteading, but then

41:39

I also kind of tied it cause it was talking about Jim Jones. He exploited, you know, a real,

41:45

Oh, the CRT. Yeah. The CRT because that, cause you know, even now we should always be involved and speaking at any time.

41:54

Anybody who's an image bearer of God, image bearer of God gets mistreated. It does seem that, that just kind of a distorted version of that usually tends to get carried over to the progressive, uh,

42:07

Christian or even like the deconstruction movement. I feel like those two things are inherently connected. So where, yeah, critical theory is a foundation stone of deconstruction.

42:18

So I'll try to, I'll try to be able to, I'm not an expert in CRT or critical theories. I've done, you know, some basic study on that.

42:26

So I'm not an authority by any far stretch. But what you do see in the deconstruction movement is you in that movement.

42:34

And you know, I don't know if you want to call it a movement. It's not like it's, I don't mean in an organized way. It's not like it's an organized move.

42:39

It's more like an explosion. You know, if that's what we're talking about in the book is just like an explosion, but it, uh, there is a sense in which you have not actually deconstructed until you've decolonized.

42:51

And what that means is, um, that you have, this is the thing people don't understand when somebody says, well,

42:59

I want to decolonize my Christianity or decolonize my faith. That could actually sound good. It's like, well, yeah, we don't want to have beliefs that are wrong or beliefs that were used, you know, just to oppress people and try to gain power.

43:13

But what, what is meant by decolonize is it's, it's a narrative that the doctrines

43:19

I mentioned before, things like original sin, biblical sexuality, right? Um, the idea that marriage should, you know, is it was created or designed to be between one man and one woman for one lifetime.

43:30

You have to decolonize that. That's, that's the, the white man's theology. It's like the white theology that tried to colonize the world through missionary work.

43:39

So missionary work in that movement is seen as colonization. It's, it's synonymous.

43:44

So, uh, if there was some maybe horrible person that went to a remote village somewhere and used the

43:52

Bible to control people and, you know, steal their land or whatever, that is the same thing in the mind of the deconstruction movement as a, you know,

44:01

Jim Elliott going to preach the gospel to the Urani tribe in Ecuador. It's the same thing in the deconstruct.

44:08

You've got to decolonize all of that in the deconstruction movement. In fact, um, there, there's a popular deconstruction page where the girl said, you have not deconstructed until you've decolonized.

44:20

And she means that very thing, getting rid of original sin, getting rid of biblical sexuality, getting rid of substitution, getting rid of the doctrine of hell, any sort of sense of biblical authority.

44:30

Um, you haven't done the work until you've rejected those things. And so that's where critical theory, because then of course, then the new framework comes in, in its place, which is oppressed versus oppressor.

44:42

Yeah. And you know, in whatever intersection of oppression you may have, um, you, you would have higher moral authority to speak what is true morally, the more intersections of oppression that you have.

44:54

And that's where you find truth on issues of race and things like that. So, um, yeah, it's, it's totally enmeshed and it's interesting to, to even see, we know we tracking stories of people who weren't even really aware of that side of things, but when they deconstruct and go into the deconstruction movement, all of a sudden that will automatically become their language.

45:15

Whereas they might've just had a bad church experience and then they've rejected a couple of, maybe they changed their mind on homosexuality and they get into this world and all of a sudden it's like, everything is white supremacy, everything, you know, it's so it's, it's like this really deeply enmeshed worldview with deconstruction.

45:32

How do we help the people that are falling prey to this cult -like movement?

45:38

I would say, uh, in the sense of helping them to think critically about critical theory and the presuppositions that they're now holding to, because you can't just go from Christianity into this unbiased, your truth, because you're shining light on the fact that there are essential presuppositions that people hold to, regardless of where they come from and critical theory, uh, widely, uh, accepted as more of an atheistic type of worldview from the goo to the zoo to you.

46:08

Uh, the main presuppositions even behind it would assume that there is actually no such thing as morality in the first place.

46:15

There's no right or wrong. It's just blind, pitiless indifference. So how do you help somebody who wants moral goods, right?

46:23

Like they've, they, they exist after the fall. They've taken from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

46:29

They've gotten, uh, the knowledge of good and evil now, but now they don't have the wisdom to discern between the two without Christianity, you're left in the murky waters again.

46:37

How do you help them to think critically about their own presuppositions? Cause if, if we're honest, if you hold to evolutionary theory, uh, then that is what perpetuates racism because black people in white people are not from the same line of humans.

46:52

I mean, in Christianity, that's what ends racism because we all come from Adam. We're the, we're the same.

46:58

We're one big family, but in evolution we're not. So that, that, that's what kind of blows my mind.

47:03

There's no critical thinking. How do you help these people to examine their presuppositions?

47:09

Boy, it's so true. And it's hard to really have conversations like that for, uh, for many reasons.

47:14

Like, for example, I mean, the whole concept of race came out of Darwinianism. They, it was, it was

47:20

Darwinian evolutionary scientists who classified people according, and they, you know, they thought the, the skull size, you know, was related to the intelligence.

47:28

So they would classify people based on their skull size. And of course, you know, they had the white people at the top and everybody else down from there.

47:35

That's a Darwinian idea. That's not a biblical idea. The Bible, the Bible talks about one blood. All humans come from one blood.

47:43

There's one race. According to the Bible, there's different ethnicities, there's different cultural backgrounds. There's one race.

47:49

And so the whole way of, you know, dividing people into races is not

47:54

Christian. That's not a Christian idea. Um, and so I think that to have these conversations, it's really tough.

48:00

I've really tried, you know, because what I think that if we could help people to realize is that I think a lot of people who are operating in this other space think that they don't, they think they have this neutral worldview.

48:13

They think they're just coming to everything from this really morally and spiritually neutral place.

48:19

It's like I've deconstructed all that stuff. Now I'm a blank slate and I can just kind of build everything from the ground up.

48:26

And maybe if we can help them to realize that that's not exactly what's happening because you're really trading one worldview for another.

48:34

I mean, even think about the famous deconstruction story of Rhett and Link. You have Rhett going through and deconstructing

48:40

Christianity, dismantling it, getting rid of all the beliefs. And then at the end, he's like, you know,

48:46

I don't want, I don't have a worldview basically. I can't remember exactly how he worded it, but he described himself like just jumping into the ocean.

48:53

But no, you're not. You're not jumping into the ocean. You're jumping into a worldview that, you know, at the time,

48:59

I don't, I haven't followed it since then. So I don't know where he's at now, but I mean, it was agnosticism. That is a worldview. That is something that you have to assume certain things about reality in order to be agnostic.

49:09

And so I think just maybe helping people to realize that you are thinking about the world through a certain lens.

49:17

And if you don't think carefully about what that lens is, like how do you define truth? How do you think you come to truth?

49:24

Do the laws of logic exist? These kinds of, if you're not asking these questions, then you're just going to adopt whatever the most popular view is that's permeating the culture.

49:34

And that might not be good. And it might not reflect what's actually true about reality. So I guess maybe just trying to help people see that, that they're, they're not neutral.

49:45

They're not morally neutral or spiritually neutral. They're adopting presuppositions that are in the culture, whether they realize it or not.

49:55

Essentially, they're not deconstructing. What they're doing is reconstructing a God in their own image, a

50:00

God that cannot save them. There's no such thing as deconstructing from reality. You're going to, you're going to die one day.

50:06

You can't deconstruct yourself out of death. And it says the wages of sin. Yeah. The Bible says the wages of sin is death and sin is the transgression against the law of God.

50:15

We all die. Therefore God exists because we face the repercussions, right? But Jesus who is

50:21

God in the flesh took that upon himself to face the judgment and consequences of sin so that all who believe in him could not perish, but have eternal life.

50:29

Like that's the beautiful thing about the gospel to even make sense and live within God's world, in God's realm on borrowed time, you know?

50:36

That's good. Yeah. All right. I got a question. This is a turn back the clock, maybe for you going back to your music career.

50:45

Caveman's Call. I, in my younger years, I really enjoyed them. In fact, during their long Line of Leavers tour, they came here to one of the churches here in Phoenix and I wanted to get my shirt signed by the members of the band.

50:58

And there's a player where I actually got to, I couldn't find somebody who hadn't signed the shirt. So I actually got to go back with them to their tour bus and actually like hang out with them for a little bit.

51:06

So it was like a really cool thing. But somebody that even I appreciated even after Caveman's Call kind of went to the waste, that was

51:13

Derek Webb. I loved a lot of his solo music back in the day when he kind of branched out.

51:19

He is someone who notably deconstructed. So John Cooper, he's a good friend of yours and you've done podcasts with him.

51:26

He's been on our podcast before. It was probably about a year and a half ago that I don't know.

51:32

I don't remember to the extent of what John Cooper said. It was something that was on stage during one of his concerts where he kind of called out something regarding the deconstruction movement.

51:43

But it was like very, it was pretty hardcore. And what was very interesting is that I remember, again,

51:51

I love Derek Webb. And I mean, even he did a recent cover of We're Not As Strong As We Think We Are, the

51:56

Rich Mullins cover. And I care for the guy. But it was just very, it was just interesting. He did some sort of response to John Cooper.

52:05

But even the comment section was, it was almost like the aesthetic of that response to John Cooper is that John had committed some sort of blasphemy law, like there's some sort of holy writ that he had violated or had spoken out against.

52:22

So it was almost like a lot of very religious zealot outrage at what he was saying. I'm sure you're aware of the context.

52:29

I think you talked with John about that a while before. This deconstruction book that we're writing opens with this story.

52:36

Really? Tell me about that. I'm genuinely curious because like I said, I still love Derek Webb and I appreciate

52:42

John Cooper and you know the story. Tell us about that. So what John said was it was in the context of a much of his in -between song, little spiel where he was talking about standing up for things.

52:57

So he was declaring war on several different things. Of course, he meant spiritual war.

53:03

As the Bible talks about spiritual warfare, he wasn't talking about trying to write, you know, get the winter jam kids to take up arms against deconstructionists, which is almost how the response, you know, read that he's like, you know, trying to get them to commit violence against, that's ridiculous.

53:18

Of course, that's not what he was saying. But what he said was, it's time to declare war on the idolatrous

53:26

Christian deconstruction movement. And he elaborated that he was talking about people who are telling you, you can still be a

53:33

Christian, but deny the Bible, that you can be a Christian, but you know, deconstruct yourself from God's word.

53:40

I can't remember the exact words there. Yeah. And so it was like, he was kind of pumped up because it was in -between songs and they're like a hard rock band.

53:47

So there's going to be a lot of energy from the stage. And so it was either Derek or it was, it was maybe another deconstruction kind of page that took a clip, a very short clip of that.

53:57

And it just went viral because it sounded like John was super angry. When you, when you listen to the whole thing in context, it was really quite a

54:03

John the Baptist moment, I thought. I thought it was really quite, quite good. But what

54:08

I think it revealed now after that, we had just all these articles, I mean, even Desiring God, Gospel Coalition, Church Leaders, Relevant, I even think the

54:18

Christian Post might've had one, Julie Royce, all these major Christian platforms started writing about deconstruction.

54:24

And basically, like Relevant magazine said, oh, John doesn't understand deconstruction. But then you have like someone else, you have 20 ,000 kids at Winter Jam cheering, thinking this is like the greatest thing they've ever heard.

54:34

So what I think that revealed is that there were two different groups within Christian Christianity that were defining deconstruction very differently.

54:43

One group, like how John understood it, and really how I understand it, is that deconstruction is deconversion, right?

54:50

That's what Joshua Harris meant when he, he even said that in his deconstruction story. He said the current term is deconstruction, the biblical term is falling away.

54:59

That's what he said. That's how people understood it. But then there was like this push to try to make it into something positive.

55:05

So you had, and I'm not, you know, bashing Gospel Coalition or Desiring God, but, you know, they're trying to make it like it's a good thing.

55:12

And so an interesting thing that even happened with Gospel Coalition, they released this article that was a review of a book called

55:19

What Would Jesus Deconstruct? And this is a book where somebody took the, it's

55:25

John Caputo, took the ideas of Jacques Derrida that we talked about, that postmodern philosopher, and applied them to Christianity, and basically turned

55:31

Christianity into this very relativistic, you know, very subjective type of thing.

55:36

And they, you know, they kind of were down on it, but they basically liked the idea of Jesus as a deconstructor.

55:43

And so I got to give Gospel Coalition credit for this, because I used to write articles for them. I've done that in the past. So I called my editor and I said, this is terrible.

55:50

You guys should be saying this. And they actually allowed me to write a response to it that they published.

55:55

So I got to give them credit for that. But no, Jesus was not a deconstructionist. Deconstruction is a postmodern word that assumes relativism.

56:03

Now, not everybody means that when they say it, but they need, but so, so what I think John was operating from the understanding that this is a bad thing.

56:11

This is something that erodes people's faith, whereas other Christian, you know, platforms were like, well, it doesn't always mean that it could mean something good or something healthy.

56:20

And I, and I'm sympathetic to that. I understand where that's coming from, because a lot of pastors from a very good heart, like they don't want to see people deconvert.

56:28

So they're like, well, if you can just deconstruct in a healthy way, use the Bible, deconstruct to truth. Like I totally get why there's an instinct to say that.

56:36

Right. But that doesn't exist in the online deconstruction space where everybody goes when they deconstruct.

56:43

It's a very toxic, very unhealthy environment. That is the only dogma is that you leave these other beliefs.

56:50

Like that's really like the only required thing about deconstruction. And so that's why

56:55

I, I tend, I'm much more sympathetic to what John was doing. I thought, like I said, that was kind of a John the Baptist moment.

57:01

And it really shot like a lightning rod through evangelicalism online because it revealed that people just meant different things, which is to me really ironic because that's the very heart of postmodernism is to use words in all kinds of different ways and not try to get to a solid definition.

57:18

So, yeah, we, we, I know it's like, we're not actually, we're supposed to be talking about the other book. We're talking about the one that's coming out later.

57:25

But I mean, that's really how we open the whole book is just showing, you know, these two different definitions. And, and then we kind of go from there and really hopefully trying to persuade

57:35

Christians not to use the word deconstruction. If you simply mean engaging your doubts or asking hard questions or pressing on your faith, or even dismantling your beliefs and putting them back together and making sure what you believe is true, that's all great.

57:48

But let's just call that like we have words for that, right? It's called, you know, engaging your doubts or asking hard questions, but we don't need a postmodern word to describe something that, you know, the

58:00

Bible says, test all things, hold fast to what is good. We don't need a postmodern word to describe that, if that makes sense.

58:06

Yeah. Hey, what's up, everyone? We love that you are enjoying our content on a weekly basis, but this program cannot continue and wouldn't be possible without your support.

58:16

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58:36

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58:51

Back to the show. A question, it's funny you mentioned Joshua Harris. My background,

58:57

I was homeschooled a big majority of my upbringing. A big part of my upbringing also involves the whole purity culture of back then.

59:04

And it's so interesting. I actually remember seeing Josh Harris pre -I Kissed Dating Goodbye, because everyone knows him for that.

59:10

But even prior to that, he was always doing public speaking, specifically talking about you need to do homeschooling.

59:17

Homeschooling is awesome. I jokingly call him the Justin Timberlake of homeschooling, bringing homeschooling back.

59:23

But it's so interesting that when you look at somebody like Josh Harris, who's now deconstructed.

59:30

And I think also when John Cooper, he accepted the Dove Awards, that speech that he gave and how he's talking about how so many people he's known have deconstructed and seen the emotion behind that.

59:45

This isn't just trying to be prejudiced or angry. The whole Derek's Web story breaks my heart.

59:51

And looking where Josh Harris, that makes me genuinely sad. But when you just look at the people putting so much precedence and authority on somebody who deconstructed, they have a special secret esoteric insight that no one else has.

01:00:06

So just very quickly, I want to hand it back to you, Alicia. So the Rise and Fall of the podcast of sorts, one area

01:00:17

I didn't get through all of it, but I got through the majority of it. The one area that I found really problematic is how they at the very end, regardless of how you feel about the podcast or the history of Mars Hill, Mark Driscoll, that stuff is that they put so this emphasis, they want to interview

01:00:32

Josh Harris, like he is the insight. He's the standard on how to run an evangelical church.

01:00:39

Somebody who's rejected the Bible, which gives all the guidelines of how to avoid the checks and balances, like that's been rejected.

01:00:47

But now you're an expert on how to do things right. Do you see that like in the whole deconstruction movement?

01:00:52

There's almost these like sages, these like dreads or sages. There's like the Derek Web, the Josh Harris's, like these are the gurus.

01:00:59

These are the Gandalfs of the deconstruction. Oh yeah. The Gungers, Derek Web.

01:01:06

Yeah. And I would say Richard Rohr plays a huge part. Like the deconstruction movement loves

01:01:11

Richard Rohr. He describes deconstruction as order, disorder, reorder.

01:01:17

But what's interesting is he describes the order phase kind of like you couldn't possibly have been given the right way to think.

01:01:23

So you're going to go into disorder once you realize that this little small thing you were given just doesn't serve you anymore.

01:01:31

It doesn't work for you anymore. Then you go into disorder and all of this. And so, yeah, there are the sages, the

01:01:39

Blake Chastains, the Derek Webs that seem to know exactly how to run a healthy church.

01:01:46

But here's what's interesting, though, too. The deeper you get into the deconstruction movement, though, is that they don't believe you can have a healthy church because you still have

01:01:54

Christianity. It's not just the practices that are abusive in the deconstruction movement. It's the beliefs.

01:02:00

So in the deconstruction movement, they would say you can actually have a healthy church as far as how the people work together and how the authority is structured or however the thing works.

01:02:12

You could have a healthy church, but it's still toxic and it's still abusive because you're teaching these

01:02:18

Christian beliefs. And so that's sort of the mindset in that world. But see, that's all critical theory, though.

01:02:25

You have standpoint epistemology in critical theory, which says that the more oppressed you are, the more moral authority you have to speak on that particular issue.

01:02:33

So these deconverted evangelicals who have been so harmed and traumatized and all these different things, they have the highest moral authority to tell you how a church should be.

01:02:41

So that fits right into a critical theory mindset. Go ahead, Andrew. Yeah.

01:02:47

So how can a Christian, like bringing it back to your books, I think both of these things have one another to do with another, right?

01:02:53

Like deconstructing and living by your truth. I mean, essentially one's fueled by the other. How can

01:03:00

Christians then live in a world that's in at odds with Christianity or like in a culture that's combative against Christianity?

01:03:08

Because in your book, in the chapter Death March, you give three practical tips. And one of them really resonated with me when you when you talk about know the real thing, because actually you talk about the

01:03:18

Beatles album, Abbey Road, in the cover where it has the Beatles and Paul doesn't have shoes on and he's smoking a cigarette.

01:03:26

And supposedly Paul is dead. It's a play on a conspiracy that was going on from like as early as 1966 that Paul McCartney died.

01:03:33

When I was around 10 years old, my mom actually told me the same thing. My middle name is Lennon. I'm actually that's named after John Lennon.

01:03:39

My dad wanted to name me John Paul Ringo George Songkrant. So the Beatles are like a big part of my life. So when I read that, I was like, whoa.

01:03:45

So how can we live as Christians going off of that by knowing the real thing to be at not at war, in a sense, more of the spiritual war, which

01:03:54

John Cooper was really talking about. How can we keep a level ground in a level mind? Well, yeah.

01:04:01

So I wrote know the real thing because I think right now so many Christians feel bombarded by all of this.

01:04:08

And maybe they've even bought into some of the cultural ideas of just, you know, you're perfect as you are.

01:04:14

You're enough for yourself. Don't let anybody tell you differently. I mean, I think even that can be tempting. It can be tempting for Christians to think that the point of life is to be happy.

01:04:21

I think that's a huge value in culture is that if you're happy, if you're successful, then that's a good life.

01:04:27

That's what that's what it means. That's the meaning of life is to be happy. And it can be easy to slip into some of these things.

01:04:32

And I think a lot of Christians feel like, man, how could I possibly recognize all this stuff and learn all

01:04:37

I need to learn about it? And my what I hope to give them some peace with is that you actually don't need to study all the false versions of Christianity.

01:04:46

You don't have to become an expert on all the cults. You don't have to be an expert on deconstruction. Just know what you believe and why you believe it.

01:04:53

Right. Know why you believe Christianity is true and then know your Bible. And that way, when all of this other stuff starts swirling and then at least, you know, where where you stand.

01:05:05

Right. You may not feel confident to articulate it, and that's OK. That's a skill that not everybody, you know, some people are better than others at it.

01:05:12

But just know where you stand and know where you're, you know, where the lines are for you.

01:05:18

When I was writing another gospel, I knew that, you know, in writing a book about progressive

01:05:23

Christianity, it was going to be very tempting for me to want to hedge on substitutionary atonement because that that's under such attack in the progressive world.

01:05:34

And I knew that that in my you know, humanity, that that it would be tempting to want to budge on that a little bit and just make room for people who might not, you know.

01:05:45

And and yet it was like every day I just reminded myself of all of what the Bible says. I mean, all if we don't understand what

01:05:52

Jesus did on the cross, then we lose the gospel. And so knowing what what my line was and where I'm not going to move and why

01:06:01

I'm not going to move, I think is really important for Christians and know the real thing. And that way you'll spot the cults and all the other stuff when you see them.

01:06:09

Lisa, how do you deal with the fact of actually like dealing with people with legitimate church hurt?

01:06:14

I mean, that does get thrown around now almost as a pejorative. There are times where that gets exaggerated, even honestly, sometimes made up.

01:06:21

But I know that's really like I've experienced that personally. I've seen, you know, sometimes somebody behind closed doors who's different than how they are on stage at a church.

01:06:31

And even like when I first started coming to Apologia, even like pre studio days, our church was brought roughly like ninety five percent people coming out of drug and alcohol recovery.

01:06:41

So it's almost like I had to rethink church in the sense of it not being something commercialized. But this is just an area of like broken people.

01:06:48

So there's almost a sense I had to sort of deconstruct like the commercialized sense of the church. But yeah, like how did you like how can we acknowledge those instances where it does happen, but tell people, no, give them an alternative to the deconstructing?

01:07:05

Like how do we address that? Well, here's the sad reality. And like you,

01:07:11

I've experienced it as well. And that's why I really resonated with the Mars Hill podcast on many levels, because I went to a church.

01:07:19

I had, you know, come. I had left a church that paralleled the Mars Hill thing very, very closely in a lot of ways.

01:07:28

And so I was very that's why I was very interested in listening to it. The sad thing about that, though, is, you know, of course, they made all the progressive

01:07:34

Christians the heroes of that story. Right. And so, you know, I did a little a little video on that as well.

01:07:40

That was really disappointing because that's going to lead people into, you know, bad news there.

01:07:47

But it is real. And that's the thing that I think we acknowledge that that's real. We need to because there are with with and I'm not saying it's all big churches are like this, but kind of that megachurch seeker sensitive model,

01:08:00

I think, makes people ripe for abuse. I think the whole NAR type, you know, that whole thing makes people vulnerable to abuse.

01:08:10

So there really are a lot of people coming out of real spiritual abusive situations. But here's the problem because of social media, that's all you hear about.

01:08:19

So you hear about the big ones, right? You hear about Harvest Chapel and Mars Hill and you hear about them.

01:08:26

And there are they do represent very real things. You know, I experienced it myself. But I I'm telling you, for every

01:08:33

Mars Hill or whatever, you've got hundreds of faithful, humble churches that are serving their communities and loving

01:08:40

God and sticking with the Bible. I travel to these churches all the time.

01:08:47

I'm traveling quite a bit right now. And these are not pastors that are trying to become stars. They're just humbly serving their community.

01:08:53

In fact, I visited a church that was in the process because they don't want to be in an environment that does spiritual abuse.

01:08:59

They had kind of that CEO model. They switched it. They were in the process of switching it to an elder led model.

01:09:05

So there is so much hope. And I think just realizing that a lot of the people who are just humbly and faithfully serving the

01:09:11

Lord aren't shouting about it on social media. So you're just hearing the bad stories, the negative stories.

01:09:17

And so it leads people to think that all churches are like that. And they're not. They're absolutely not.

01:09:23

There are good and healthy churches out there. Awesome. Andrew, what are what are thoughts do you have? Yeah, I mean, thinking about church hurt, things of that nature.

01:09:34

God cares about justice. You know, he wants justice to occur even within the church.

01:09:40

I mean, we have biblical guidance in principles in the scriptures on how to deal with those things within the church.

01:09:47

I mean, we should be following those principles, right? We should be adhering to the Bible in order to solve church hurt, not try to deconstruct away from the

01:09:58

Bible in order to solve something that can't be solved by worldly means. Right. It's like Paul says, why are you going to the law?

01:10:05

Not the law. Why are you going to a secular judge in order to solve something that was happening within the church? Of course, there are times where there needs to be punishment given by the state for abuses that happen in the church.

01:10:15

But for the most part, what I'm trying to articulate here is that deconstruction doesn't solve the issue.

01:10:23

It just doesn't. It just doesn't. And it leads to more hurt in the long run, because if you're going to lose your savior, right, if you're going to get pointed away from Jesus, the only one who can bring you peace in any situation, the one who has experienced so much pain and temptation, all those things that we experienced,

01:10:43

Jesus experienced it all, you know, and if you're going to go away from him, you're now not going to have a mediator for you in times of trouble.

01:10:52

You're going to look for things to solve your problems that aren't going to actually solve your problems.

01:10:58

I mean, we are people created in the image of God where we can't help it, right? Like we, there's a sacrificial system at play regardless of where you are at in your life.

01:11:08

Either you're going to rely on the sacrifice of Christ given for you, or you're going to sacrifice your own identity and say that you may be genderless and you cut off certain parts of your body to try to feel peace within the turmoil you have in your life.

01:11:21

But you know, it's not going to bring the solution. So with regards to church hurt and what's happening inside churches, the

01:11:29

Bible is the answer. The word of God is the answer. And Reformation to the word of God is the answer in order to solve church hurt, not a meaningless, purposeless, abstract form of relativism that actually brings no solution to the problem, but actually more confusion in the world that we live in today.

01:11:48

It's kind of what I was thinking while we're going about that. I don't know. What are you guys' thoughts? Good stuff.

01:11:53

Good stuff. No, that's a good point, Andrew. And in fact, one of the things I think it's a truth in regards to what you're saying,

01:11:59

Andrew, is that good stories imitate good stories. So I know we were talking quite a bit about deconstruction, but Elisa, in your book, you talk about a movie that I actually saw in theaters as well.

01:12:12

Armageddon, the Oscar, the multi Oscar nominated film Armageddon, the sweeping epic.

01:12:18

No, I was kidding. But it was funny because when that movie came out, I was actually at the Arizona Mills, the mall that where a lot of the movies were.

01:12:25

They actually had a replica of the armadillo outside. Yeah. So I think you mentioned, I think you mentioned that in your book.

01:12:31

And immediately when you mentioned it, I was like, oh yeah, that armadillo is outside. Like tell everyone to kind of like very in a cliff notes version, you tell them more about in the story, like how, how would have, like, why do people resonate with Bruce Willis's character?

01:12:47

And like, what was, if we took today's modern, like you're living your truth, the self -help, the deconstructing, if that was who

01:12:56

Bruce Willis was, why would people, you think people would have hated that movie? Yeah. Well, so the, so the movie basically depicts

01:13:03

Bruce, you know, there's a meteor hurtling toward the earth, right? And it's going to destroy the earth unless NASA does something to intervene.

01:13:11

And so the only person they can call upon is an oil driller named Harry Stamper. Cause he's the only person who could drill into the asteroid and blow it up and do what they need to do.

01:13:19

So he and his team, you know, they have to get trained and it's, it's so nineties, like they have to get trained in how to go to space in like 12 days, you know, just 12 days.

01:13:26

And then they're ready. They go to space and, you know, a bunch of people die and it's really hard and difficult, but they finally get down to it.

01:13:33

And ultimately whoever goes down to blow up the thing is not coming out. That's essentially the gist of it.

01:13:39

So they draw straws. And so it was actually the fiance of Harry Stamper's daughter that gets chosen, who's also a part of things.

01:13:47

And so Harry, you know, the main protagonist, Harry takes him down. That's Bruce Willis takes, takes the other guy down and to get him ready to do the thing.

01:13:55

But then in the last minute, he puts him in the thing to, to go back up and Harry's going to just do it himself. And he's essentially going to give his life to save the world.

01:14:04

And everybody loves that. Everybody loves that story because we, we know deep down,

01:14:09

I mean, the law of God is written on our hearts, right? We know deep down, it's better to give your life for other people than to be selfish and save your own skin.

01:14:18

Why is that? Like, just think about it. Why, why do we know that if, if Harry Stamper would have gotten to the bottom and said, well, you know,

01:14:26

I still never fulfilled my dream of doing that startup company. And, you know, I've never,

01:14:31

I've never fulfilled all my goals and I want to show my daughter what it's like to not give up on your dreams.

01:14:36

And so I'm just going to let this guy do it and I'll go back up and do all the things I wanted to do and have more time with my daughter and all this stuff.

01:14:44

But no, he gives us, he forgets all of that stuff. It's like Iron Man, right? If, you know, if anybody saw

01:14:49

Endgame, you have, you have, why can't

01:14:54

I think of his name? Tony Stark. Tony Stark. Tony Stark. Thank you. Tony Stark, you know, essentially at the end, giving his life for the universe.

01:15:01

Well, if there was anybody that probably would have been important for rebuilding to survive, it would have been him. He's like the smartest guy.

01:15:06

He's the richest guy. He knows how to make all the costumes for all the other superheroes. And I know

01:15:12

I'm using all the wrong words, but you know what I mean? And yet he does it, he does it. And we love it because he's a hero and he puts all of that aside and gives his life.

01:15:21

And so I think, you know, the cultural message is put yourself first, you know, be the first of your own priorities, be the hero of your own story.

01:15:29

But ultimately we know those stories are right, which really point to the real story, which is

01:15:34

Jesus giving his life for the world. That's, that's why we resonate with those stories because it reflects the real story.

01:15:41

And that's why even, even when I think about, you know, when I read some of these people's stories and I, and I'm relating with them, right?

01:15:49

I'm listening to these deconstruction stories and I'm thinking that makes a lot of sense what they're saying, right? Like, I get it.

01:15:54

I get, if you've been through that or that's your experience, like I totally get that. But then at the end of the day, though,

01:16:00

I don't think I could do that because it's like you mentioned before, you are trading one thing for another.

01:16:06

And if there's even some things about the Christian worldview that I might be unsure about, or it might not really resonate with me deeply in every area, it makes better sense of everything than anything else, right?

01:16:16

So even at the most base level for an unbeliever, that would be the message. Like, just give it a shot and think about it because even if all of it, you don't, you know, there's some things that you might have to surrender to and go, you know,

01:16:27

I don't really get this, but I get it's part of it. I surrender to that. It makes so much better sense of everything.

01:16:33

And it gives you such a stable place to stand. I mean, think about culture where you have to check social media every five minutes.

01:16:39

This is another interesting phenomenon in researching deconstruction is how many things get deleted, right? So we've been writing the book over the course of about a year.

01:16:47

We'll go back and double check the footnotes. Well, half the posts are deleted because I don't know.

01:16:53

And I couldn't figure out why. And my coauthor, Tim was like, well, it's just because of cancel culture. Like they have to, they have to get rid of stuff if it doesn't drive with what's happening now.

01:17:02

And it's true. But with the Bible, with Christianity, you plant your feet in God's word. It doesn't change. It never changes.

01:17:07

God does not change. His word does not change. And that gives us stability, even if culture disagrees with it for a while.

01:17:13

But man, what a more stable foundation than just the shifting tides of social media.

01:17:19

It's just like a hamster wheel. No, absolutely. In fact, it's funny. I've always thought about this when it comes to like cancel culture.

01:17:26

I feel that even this is like relatively new. The very first time I think I even remember anything when it came to like modern day cancer culture was the guy from Duck Dynasty.

01:17:36

One of the bearded, they're all bearded, but one of them, one of them, yeah, the bearded one, one of them said something, one of his sermons about same sex marriage.

01:17:45

And that was, and he got kicked off of whatever the network it was on, but I guess there's a big outlash, backlash back and forth.

01:17:52

And apparently he came back home and he was like, this was like the birth pangs. And then you had, you know, the whole thing of like Chick -fil -A like forever ago.

01:17:59

Then everyone did, everyone went and like shopped at Chick -fil -A to like support them. And then, but now it's like, you are now seeing an everywhere where everyone's getting canceled and it doesn't matter what you do.

01:18:12

It's like you, um, eventually like it's going to come for you. Like there's no, there's always there's no end in sight.

01:18:20

And it's almost like every single person that is virtue signaling or adhering to the current popular cultural zeitgeist.

01:18:28

I mean, who's to say not all of that is going to be taboo. It is going to be taboo and obscure and blasphemy laws like two to three years from now.

01:18:38

So if you're going to get canceled, at least can't get canceled for something that's consistent, that's a non -changing, which is the word of God.

01:18:44

Like I want to, I want to get canceled. I just want to get canceled for the right reasons. Right. And honestly,

01:18:49

I think, you know, I think it was Matt Walsh or somebody who said you can only get canceled if you consent to it. Right. You know,

01:18:56

I, you've seen it. We've seen this when people, they've tried to cancel people and they just keep going and they ignore it. And then they, they tend to be okay after a little while it dies down, but it's the ones that come back and,

01:19:05

Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm going to do the work and check my privilege and all that. They do that. And then they go away. They it's like, they're done.

01:19:11

Yeah. You, you only can really get canceled if you get consent, give consent, because you can't get canceled in the eyes of God.

01:19:18

So you really can't get canceled. That's good. So how do we, how do we not care so much then what people think about us?

01:19:26

Right? Like, that's like part of the question. How do we pick up our cross and follow Christ and not care so much about what other people think about us?

01:19:35

Well, I mean, I think your answer's in the question. It's, it's denying ourselves, pick up our cross and follow

01:19:41

Christ. I mean, in the book, I talk about how the world talks about authenticity and it's like, it's almost like the world would rewrite that verse to say, if anyone would come after me, let him find himself and follow.

01:19:52

No, he doesn't say that. It says, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me.

01:19:57

You can't deny yourself and be carrying a cross and care what people think.

01:20:03

I mean, look, we all care what people think. I want to have a good reputation. I want my reputation to reflect truth about myself.

01:20:10

But the truth is there's so much slander out there. I read things about myself all the time where I'm just like, man,

01:20:16

I would never say that about my worst enemy, right? I wouldn't assume such diabolical motives that they assume to me, but you know what gives me the reason that that just rolls off kind of like a water off a duck's back is because I know before my father, he knows my heart.

01:20:32

He knows my motives. He knows why I say what I say. And it's him that I have to be accountable to. And of course, being accountable to people in my life as well, my husband, my pastor and some others.

01:20:43

But I mean, ultimately, if we have the mindset that what we're doing is for God's like and share rather than human like and share, then

01:20:54

I think that that's a better way to live and a better way to think about it. No, definitely.

01:21:00

Well, I definitely think this has been a great conversation. I mean, there's so many layers to this, but the overall lining premise of your book, tell everyone the name of the book again.

01:21:10

So it's called Live Your Truth and Other Lies. And it's yeah, it's available on Amazon anywhere, anywhere books are sold.

01:21:16

Okay, well, we'll definitely have links in the description. When you drop this episode, have the book out there. And you have a website where people can find out more about you.

01:21:24

Yeah, elisachilders .com. And I'll say this about the book, too. I wrote the book in a very conversational tone.

01:21:32

It's very easy to read. It is not academic. It is not, you know, super deep, deep, deep theological.

01:21:39

It's really more like if we're just sitting and I'm telling you what the Bible says over coffee, but we're sharing funny stories and how these all right.

01:21:45

So this is really something you could give to a high schooler. It's something you could give to somebody who might be following some of these people like the

01:21:51

Glennon Doyles and the gen hat makers. And just to give them kind of another perspective, but from a disarming kind of stance, it doesn't it's not super in your face about, you know, there's it gets, you know,

01:22:02

I take some shots in there that I think are fair, but it's it's very conversational, very easy to read.

01:22:07

And there's a lot of story in it as well. Gotcha. All right. Well, Lisa, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on here today.

01:22:14

And I know you avoid got got a lot on your plate. And we'll definitely need to have you back on maybe when you drop the the other book on deconstruction, because I'm sure this is going to get a lot of talk as well.

01:22:23

So if you all enjoyed this episode, definitely let us know what you thought. Definitely leave a post on our social media.

01:22:30

And also as a program like this cannot continue without your support. So if you feel led to support us and get to help this ministry continue, go to the cult to show dot com.

01:22:38

You can go to the donate tab. You can donate one time or monthly. All right. All that being said, we'll talk to you all next time on cultish where we enter into the kingdom of the cults.