A plea for deconstruction

God is dead.

God is dead, he remains dead, and the Internet would have killed Him if Nietzsche hadn’t gotten to it first.

I do not mean that there is no meaning or value in God; emphatically, I believe that there is. I mean that I cannot fit God into my cultural context without confronting what that context has to say. Technology has given us the godly power to wield lightning and speak through the ether. Science asserts that our Pale Blue Dot is but one of many, and firmly refutes the notion of the Bible being literal truth. Psychology dismisses communication from God as a symptom of an unwell mind, and my experiences with the sensation agree. And how, praytell how, am I supposed to look to history’s stories of false prophets, oppression, and war without seeing the errors of His way!

I do not have the option of living in a world where deconstruction is merely a valid thing to go through. If I am to follow a faith, it must be one in which deconstruction is a vital part of the process!

I see the Unitarian Universalists do this. It is easy for them, because they have nothing to deconstruct. There is no story there, no character to reconsider. They stopped being Christian ages ago. It’s a decent way to be, and in another life I would be that way. In this life, I cannot.

I died when I was 2. It was important to my parents that I soldier on, and that I did, until I no longer could. When I lost my mind, I fell back on the stories of my childhood to find it again. Having a canon of stories, something definitive to reference and check my understanding against, was immensely valuable. The UUs don’t have this. They tell a new story every week, and that is exhausting to my tired mind. I need the comfort of the unchanging, the stories and hymns and prayers that stick around for generation after generation. But I also need awareness of the new millennium, and the certainty in deicide it brings.

To be online is to constantly share space with people who are antagonistic to religion. One cannot mention religion, let alone God, without expecting a reply which contains the word “skydaddy”. All religion is delusional and exploitative, says the Internet (except the one commenter who remembers UUs exist). Oh how I wish I could give a concise refutation of that interpretation of my beliefs! I want to reply with a link to a page that details an understanding of the death of God, and the resilient value of Christian teachings in spite of it. I want that page not to be merely my own explanation, but the explanation given by a denomination, a group of congregations who practice their veneration of a dead but meaningful God. To say it with a URL (and a clean URL does, indeed, speak), I want rca.org/god-is-dead, or at least rca.org/deconstruction.

I do not mean to say that those who retain a literal faith would be unwelcome in a church that welcomes me. On the contrary, they should be honored. Who better to teach it! The true believers can show us meanings in the stories in ways we might never find ourselves. But this cannot be what is expected in the third millennium.

What must be expected is that we, the online, will come to the church first through its website. We will come with worry that we will not be welcome, because we are insistent upon the death of God. We will worry that the church is one that preaches hatred and shame, as so many churches do, and as the scripture they cite does. We will worry that we will not be welcome because our interpretation, our specific way of deconstructing, is not acceptable. These are all worries that can be allayed, if a response to them is featured prominently.

I do not expect my former denomination, or any existing denomination, to follow my prescription. I expect the Church of Reform to retain its old form even as it continues losing people. I expect another Great Awakening, as the online generations learn the value of communing with our neighbors and families. I expect the UUs to win it, and lead us into an era of kind but shallow syncretism. I expect their inevitable lost to be harder to find, as the tongues of their infancy are forgotten even before adolescence. I don’t mean to rag on UUs here (tonally, this whole post isn’t really what I want), but just as something is lost by not teaching all religions, something is lost by not teaching a singular one in depth.

My hope, despite my expectations, is that a Christian denomination will come which takes deconstruction seriously. I believe it will be more effective at this goal if it starts from the infrastructure—the chapels and congregations and trained priests—of an existing denomination, rather than starting from scratch. Perhaps it is hubris to imagine that the denomination of my ancestors could be the one to take the lead, but I believe its story here to have power. I consider it hubris, grandiosity, and every other synonym of conceit to imagine that I might even nudge it in that direction. Nevertheless, I confess that it’s a dream that has long kept me awake at night.