These last few days have been filled with long conversations with dear friends. I treasure them and their words with my heart. On one evening, we delved into each other’s lives and history; on another evening, we spent time dissecting the glories and agonies of life; and the other night, we sat around good food and delved–again–deep into our histories and who the shaping figures are in our lives. Even though parents speak in fragments to one another, I trust even those incomplete sentences–interrupted seven or eight times by the needs of four-year-olds–bore good fruit.

This is all a tribute to good conversation; the kind that leaves an imprint on the next day, and the next day. I am the kind of romantic who believes discipleship happens like that; through long conversations in the right direction. Some intimate, some intriguing, but always stimulating. There are people, and then there are people who are curious. The latter make good friends. These friendships are enriched by resurrection meals around a fire in good and in bad times.

One of the blessings I’ve had over the years is to speak freely about a host of issues that few pastors wish to discuss on social media, unless, of course, they take upon themselves anonymous identities. I met with a pastor a few months ago who wondered if I get a lot of “hate” from readers for the things I say. I was genuinely puzzled by his words. I simply take it as an exercise in written dialogue with others. Yes, some don’t like this or that, but I will take that rather than this sentiment.

I am part of a denomination that rarely if ever makes the map when it comes to national discourse. Our pastors are not well known; with few exceptions, they don’t make headlines, and when we do, it’s to engage in intramural discussions that 0.001% of evangelicals care to ponder and the other times, we find ourselves as the amusement of leftists.

I actually find this lack of exposure fairly comforting. It means that I, as a pastor of a growing congregation, have the luxury of opining about a host of topics I find to be biblically important, culturally necessary, and pastorally expedient without distractions. This allows me to minister to a small group of people that are interested in growth and find arguments built in lengthy paragraphs compelling.

In some ways, my goal of writing has always been to slowly, but surely, convince my readers that building frameworks for life are important, and thinking about current issues or rituals through a Christian perspective is crucial for the well-being of any society. I am still a believer in long-form conversation and dialogue about the good, true and beautiful, and I view it as an investment in the kingdom of God.

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I have no regrets re-discussing the current brouhaha over deconstructionist thought because I view it as a threat to Christian society. So, once again, it seems that the Neo-Decons are treating themselves as revolutionaries, or better yet, Reformers. If you think of the Protestant Reformation, we had a man like Luther who saw the exegesis of Rome as deficient, to put it mildly. The German Reformer viewed Rome’s abandonment of the Bible as a big deal. He was right, in case you were wondering. But here comes the Decons viewing themselves as heroes and arguing that they are true Reformers like Luther and stuff.

Except, of course, they are not. Decons are tearing the Bible asunder to restore it from its ancient ways to provide sufferers and victims new hope. Because, after all, what hope can prophecies of judgment provide? What can overthrowing tables provide? What can divine justice provide? Well, for the Christian, everything! But judgment texts won’t suffice for those who believe the Church needs a new orientation–to find better and more suitable ways to deal with the suffering– and a total re-modeling of the faith. Since European white men ruined exegesis, we now need a new interpretive framework to consider the Bible afresh.

Let me take this opportunity to mention someone who has been causing me some concern over the years. It’s someone I met personally in my field of interest—counseling—but whose trajectory leads me to doubt his overall project, which is Paul Tripp. Tripp has done much good, and I’d recommend several things he’s written, but his recent urges towards the cultures of victimization and racial reconciliation led him to make the following statements:

“We should all be deconstructing our faith, we better do it. Because our faith becomes a culture, a culture so webbed into the purity of truth that it’s hard to separate the two. I celebrate the church of Jesus Christ…but I’m sad for the church.”

In another place, he notes:

“I’m sad we’ve become so loyal to [evangelical] culture, we’re afraid to deconstruct in places where it’s lost its way, it’s harmful, it’s producing things that allow the world to mock & cause young people to walk away.”

This is a prime example where the answer leads to greater damage than the question itself. Now, there is a lot to dissect and read in its raw form; one can find some nuggets of kindness and generosity. And I am certainly not in the “Burn the witch” camp. But one should be relatively cautious about Tripp’s attempts at rehearsing for the play while using the enemy’s playbook. Theologically, I would suspect that Tripp and Derrida hold nothing in common. But attempts to revise/deconstruct the faith is somewhat troubling to me. Even if the rationale is pure, hell is paved…etc. etc.

As Dustin Messer noted about ex-evangelicals, and what appears to be the future of Decons–in my understanding:

“What they’ve deconstructed is the faith, what they’ve kept is the ethos of the subculture that weaned them on emotional appeals, swallowing goldfish for entertainment, & an obsession with who’s “in” & who’s “out.”‘

There is additionally a layer of borrowed vocabulary that we must consider. I read counseling material too often and know that counseling vocabulary can be a language in itself. It’s possible that “deconstruction” can make sense in a separate context. But overall, the language of deconstruction attached to “our faith” is dangerous, even if the attempts are noble.

Vocabularies can be shared to make sense of things, but when we borrow Jemar Tisby’s lexicon to make sense out of the current cultural milieu, we borrow from the wrong source. In fact, you may notice that the farther one is from embodying cultural and political conservative values, the more prone he is to re-imagining the faith into something more privatized and particularized that keeps us away from the nasty Constantinians.

I genuinely hope that Tripp is not going in that direction. After all, our faith is a culture and produces particular cultures. It may not be what Tripp and others wish it to be, but you simply can’t split that baby. 

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My primary concern is whether our worship is preparing for a muscular Christendom. My argument is that saying “no” to government overreach requires heavy lifting, and not many people are willing to do that. They’d be comfortable doing whatever uncomfortable yoga poses the guba’ment demands. “Warrior poses on left foot,” please!” “Absolutely, as long as my right foot can remain where it is. This little series of contorted positions eventually leads to directions the body is not meant to go.

Little by little the ability to say, “no” is fleshed out of you one arduous pose at a time. So, if you want to say “no” as a way of life to the many and boost-erous amount of demands from the state, then you need to lift up holy hands and kneel and sing out. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit precisely because it is a training ground for the weightiness of God to abide in you. Therefore, you must say “no” with consistency.

You can’t collapse under the weight of statist imperatives, but you will if all you do is participate in the spontaneity of evangelical masses with floppy hands in the air one chorus at a time. When Paul says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” I think he meant every part of that phrase in English and Greek. Work this whole liturgical thing first so that your muscles are ready for war when war cometh. Weak worship produces unsteady hands (Ps. 144:1).

If men think they can opine on social media against these efforts without the efforts of worship, it is in vain. They must respond to the rhetoric of the left with the worship of heaven. They need to take the weekly task as preparation for the Sunday duty. When this becomes common parlance in the home, then saying “no” to bureaucrats is as easy as spreading gee butter on freshly-baked sourdough bread.

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I mentioned in my sermon yesterday that Christians too often live in the glory of the past and therefore wish to repeat slogans of the past as a mode of operation. This can be a clear case of nostalgia or a clear case of laziness. Unlike whatever those Q-Anon imbeciles believe, Reagan is not coming back from the grave, and neither is J.F.K.’s brother.

It is much easier to repeat slogans than to refresh slogans to apply to our current societal decay. The latter takes hard work and muscle-building rituals, whereas the first requires only a handy textbook and memorization techniques.

Christians need to move forward and seek the glory of God in our regular exercise of killing sin lest sin kills us. It begins now by shutting off those stupid apps that consume our day; by giving your son a hug; by encouraging our wives in their domestic labors; by opening the Bible and our homes to others; by doing the hard work of worship when the world around us thinks it’s non-sensical.

You want to build your liturgical muscles, then fight it out in the private square and then watch the public square bow before Christendom like Caesar did to Messiah Jesus and how Biden will one day to the Ascended Lord of glory. 

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