My Reconstruction Journey, Part 1

Officially called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, when someone suggested that I was going through a deconstruction, the term started popping up everywhere. Now a "trend" or "fad," I'm not trying to be cool or hip or trendy. As a middle-aged mother of many, I am, in fact, the opposite of cool, hip, or trendy. 

What I am is trying to do is communicate clearly my own journey of disappointment with God and the grace with which He led me back into a more intimate relationship with Him than I ever could have imagined. It isn't built on the simplistic Gospel of short outlines or Sunday school songs. Rather, my faith is built on what Cas Monaco describes as "The True Story of the Whole World." It is a foundation solid enough to address the world's worst atrocities, which are, I believe, part of the underlying issue with deconstruction; the god of short outlines and simple songs isn't big enough to deal with the broken realities of life. That and the church is so divided over social justice. The reasons for our current situation are, as with everything, very complex. But, based on my studies and reading over the last five years, I would say a large part of the problem is with the emphasis within evangelicalism to focus on the fulfillment of the Great Commission, but with a slight deviation from the original intent. 

In Matthew 28:19 and 20, Jesus tells the ragtag bunch of social misfits who would change the world to go and "make disciples." Unfortunately, the concept of making disciples has, for all intents and purposes, been reduced to simply making converts. My goal isn't to point fingers at a particular person, group, or organization. Rather, my goal is to simply highlight that we started focusing on the wrong thing. Where the missionaries of previous generations literally created the world we take for granted (see link below), missionaries today are measured (speaking as a missionary) by how many:

• how many people pray to receive Christ
• how many people get baptized
• how many people complete a prescribed "discipleship" program (which often amounts to little more than a transfer of intellectual information)
• how many people participated in whatever event a group, church, or organization may host (including attendance on Sunday)
• how much is coming in through the offering or how much support someone has. 

The unfortunate reality is, you get what you measure. And what we have measured has not necessarily been related to or a direct result of fulfilling the Great Commission. Rather, it's been focused on performance and transaction. Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of what the Great Commission was really about and how the Great Commandments of Matthew 22 fit in, with serious but completely unintended consequences. Let me explain...

When Jesus said to "go and make disciples of all the nations... baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" and to "teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you..." (Matthew 28:19-20, The Filament Bible, NLT), He had something specific in mind. What did Jesus teach His disciples, ultimately? Did He just transfer information so they could rattle off intellectual answers to theological questions? I would say no. In fact, but our traditional metrics, the disciples failed the test - they did not recognize who Jesus really was! Even after Jesus rose from the dead, Peter went back to fishing (John 21).  

I would argue that, when Jesus commissioned His disciples to go and teach others what He taught them, He was talking about loving God with your all and loving your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:34-40). Paul actually takes it one step further, in Galatians 5, and says that the whole law can be summed up in loving your neighbor as yourself. I contend that the reason for that is we cannot truly love our neighbor if we don't love God first, Augustine's arguments regarding self-love aside. 

Having taken a very long detour, this will bring us back to the discussion of a solid foundation and why I think we're seeing so many people deconstruct (or actually destruct) their faith. It is not robust enough to address the problems of the world. Recognizing that we are sinners and Jesus can fix us just doesn't answer the questions of why bad things happen to good people, why good people do bad things, and why a good, loving God would allow evil in the first place. I'm not going to address all of those, but I am going to argue that looking at Scripture differently, looking at faith differently, and looking at the Great Commission differently will help. 

Addressing bad things happening to good people, why good people do bad things, and how a good God can allow suffering is, I believe, tied into the current conversation about social justice. 

The way social is currently defined, in the US specifically or Western culture generally, retains  vestiages of true justice, but it is almost so adulterated as to be unrecognizable. Let me explain.

First I want to state clearly that "social justice" as it is defined in a Western context, is not universally accepted. Let me say that again - 

social justice as it is defined in a Western context is not universally accepted. 

The best example of this is an article from about twenty years ago by a Kenyan law professor, Makau Mutua, titled "Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights." It is a long article and parts of it will be very challenging for someone from a Western context to read (I'll give you a hint - we are definitely the bad guys). What it shows, though, is a perceived "social justice" or "human rights" issue (and yes, I understand those are different, but they are closely connected) is seen completely differently from a non-Western context. 

As difficult as it is, Mutua's essay is well worth reading. It reveals clearly the perception of how a growing number of non-Western intellectuals (thoroughly educated, however, in a Western context) view the efforts by the "West" (in whatever form that may take) to help other countries become more "just." The reality is, however, what we're really trying to do (speaking collectively from a member of "The West") is to make other places more like us. Which is exactly what Mutua is complaining about... we identify "victims," who are treated unjustly by our definition of justice, we identify "savages", defined as such based on our definition of "civilized" or "just" behavior, then we step in, as the savior, to help make sure everybody generally meets our Western cultural expectations. But in so doing, Mutua contends that the West is wrong. He suggests that we have artifically created victims and identified savages so we could come in as saviors and save the day. Instead of our efforts being about benevolence or compassion or justice, it's been about power and control. 

I know, this is getting long, and kind of convoluted; maybe not a little bit confusing. This is a complex topic, though, and it is very important to our conversation about social justice. Plus, it's just about to start getting good. Seriously. Just keep reading... 

Robert Woodberry is a sociologist who has done some absolutely amazing quantitative research on the impact of Protestant Conversionary missionaries. His research was published in American Political Science Review in May 2012 and won the American Political Science Association’s 2013 Luebbert Best Article Award, given for the best article in the field of comparative politics published in the previous two years. It's a complicated article with a lot of supporting articles and research; very dense reading, for sure. But, you can listen to Dr. Woodberry share about his research in this excellent presentation. It is long, and it may be boring if you don't enjoy resesarch as much as a data nerd like me. Still, it is so fascinating, and eye-opening. It is also provides an interesting comparision to the accusations made by Mutua in his essay and highlights (in my opinion) the work of missionaries committed to a much more robust and dynamic reading of Matthew 28 than many in evangelicalism are today. Yet, the impact Dr. Woodberry highlights was from the work of Protestant, conversionary missionaries! Or, simply stated, what we could consider today evangelicals! 

Yes, I recognize that not everyone who goes out as a missionary goes with pure or genuine motives and horror stories of misdirected missionaries abound. White savior syndrome is real. Yet, the data is clear; conversionary missionaries have an astoundingly positive legacy. In fact, according to Mark Sayer's, in his book Disappearing Church, the confusion of the Enlightenment and the reactionary romanticism is is as much responsible for "white savior syndrome" as over-zealous missionaries are. He says, that following the Enlightenment, and the subsequent reactionary "Romanticism," Europeans (but not necessarily Christ-followers) had a new vision:

...although culture came to be used in a sociological sense in the nineteenth century, it was not used in the plural. There was one 'civilization' and the various peoples encountered in other continents were on lower or higher rungs of this one ladder. They did not have different 'cultures' (until the present century) but were considered either less or more civilized. It was the task of the European peoples to bring the blessings of civilization to the rest of the world (p. 33). 

The biggest question that leaps off the page to me, and part of the reason I am so passionate about this whole issue centers around the definition of "civilization." Who gets to define what "civilized" really is? That is an important question to answer and one that ties into both our concern for justice in the West, be it social justice or otherwise, and the frustration of people like Mutua. Because, as I said before, our Western perspective on justice is not universal, though it has been codified into international law. 

Briefly, let me present an opinion that is shared by sociologists, historians, and theologians, as well as at least one notable atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche. That opinion is that 

Christianity laid the groundwork for the recognition of human value, is the source for international human rights, and is the foundation upon which Western-style morality is built. 

I can't include footnotes or references here, but having made such a strong statement, it feels like I need to provide supporting evidence: please check out Tom Hollands Dominion, Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason, How the West Won, and The Rise of Christianity, Robert Woodberry's article The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy, published in the May 2012 edition of American Political Science Review, and finally Nietzsche's books Twilight of the Idols and Will to Power.  

Thank you for sticking with me through to the end. This is definitely not easy reading or simple concepts. In the end, though, I really do believe that the conversation on social justice is tied into, as Nietzsche put it, "the death of God." I'll explain more in my next post.