Paul Tripp and Deconstruction

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.