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Dec. 16, 2021 - Straight White American Jesus
11:21
Deconstruction: 2021's Hottest Sexy AF Trend

Brad responds to pastor Matt Chandler's claim that deconstruction is only for those who were never real Christians in the first place. Brad dissects Chandler's blithe reference to Derrida (and moral relativism), explains why this is a convenient straw man that skips over the devastating process of leaving one's faith, and then explains why Chandler's response comes from a place of helplessness at the hands of a story that doesn't make any sense, but tries to make sense of everything. Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC Order Brad's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163 SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron To Donate: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi Venmo: @straightwhitejc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What's up, y'all?
Brad here.
Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
Today we have a kind of break in between our Mild at Heart series and something new coming up from Dan Miller.
So I wanted to take a chance to just talk about the sexiest, hottest trend of 2021, and that is, of course, deconstruction.
Recently, and I know I'm a little bit late to this party, but I felt like talking about this today, so excuse me if I'm a few days past the social media hubbub, but about a week ago, Matt Chandler, who is a pastor of the Village Church in Texas,
And also the leader of the Acts 29 Network, which has about 400 churches and was, as many of you I'm sure know, started by Mark Driscoll and others, and Chandler actually replaced Driscoll as the head of the Acts 29 Network a couple of years ago when Driscoll was in trouble for all of his, quote, ungodly actions and language and so on and so forth.
Anyway, Chandler's now head of not only the network, but this large church down in Texas, and he recently gave a sermon called The Depth of the Gospel, and during that sermon, he said, you and I are in a day and age where deconstruction and the turning away from and leaving the faith has become some sort of sexy thing you and I are in a day and age where deconstruction and I contend that if you ever experience the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, actually, that that's really impossible to deconstruct from.
But if all you ever understood Christianity to be is a moral code, then I totally get it.
Now, there was a big sort of hubbub on social media, on Twitter and other places about this, and many of you, I'm sure, will have seen it.
Many of you may have been responding to Chandler and his very blithe comments.
And since then, there have been articles written that have mentioned my irreverent colleagues Blake Chastain and Adrian Gibbs from Dirty Rotten Church Kids.
And this led Chandler to sort of respond, right, to what everyone was saying, and he wanted to, in his mind, clarify what he meant by deconstruction.
So he says, it seems there are as many definitions of deconstruction as there are people going through what John of the Cross called the dark night of the soul, or even wrestling through significant and real church hurt.
When I use the term, I am using it in a vein of its father, French philosopher Derry Da, who believed that the meaning of a text was unknowable and therefore truth was not really knowable.
Deconstruction doesn't mean doubt or theological wrestle or struggling through church hurt.
Chandler says, I have the deepest empathy and compassion for those who find themselves awaiting in those waters.
I certainly don't want to make things harder for anyone in those seasons and struggles.
I've journeyed through all three of those spaces in my 30 years of following after Jesus.
If that's where you are, I think you're going to get to the other side and see Jesus as a more beautiful than you previously imagined.
That's the way I'm praying.
Okay, so there's a lot to say here about all of this, and I want to just make like three points.
First is, let's just start with deconstruction and Derrida, right?
So he says, Chandler says, I'm using the term In the vein of its father, French philosopher Derrida, who believed that the meaning of a text was unknowable and therefore truth was not really knowable.
So my first response here as somebody who spent way too many years of his life actually reading Derrida, spent a year in France studying with phenomenologists and Derridians, have been back to France dozens of times since then to give talks and attend conferences and be part of a
network of philosophers of religion who are working in the same domain as Derrida did, as somebody who has spent significant time with mentors who were actually mentored by and colleagues of Derrida.
I have to say to Chandler that Deconstruction in the Derridian vein may seem sexy, but I would contend that if you think that this is what it means, then you never understood it in the first place.
And so if you actually understood deconstruction, then In the Derridian term, then that is impossible to deconstruct from, but if all you ever understood it is blithe moral relativism, as evangelical leaders want to do generation after generation, then I would say you might have not ever tried it.
So, here's the thing.
He claims that he's using deconstruction.
He's trying to do something that's kind of sly here, right?
He's like, well, all these trendy kids who are leaving the faith are calling it deconstruction.
Not me.
I'm an OG.
I'm going back to the real deconstructor, Derrida, okay?
And for him, the meaning of a text was unknowable, and therefore truth was not really knowable, okay?
So, I see the move here, right?
Deconstruction was a term coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
And for Derrida, deconstruction is a strategy of reading.
It is a way to approach texts in a way that tries to unravel them and unspool them from the kind of foundational lens or foundational referent That seems to be guiding them, or is at least guiding the interpretation of them by a certain reader or certain school of readers, by a certain tradition, and so on.
Okay?
Now, what happens with Derrida over the course of years is that he's used as a bogeyman by people like Chandler to say, oh, he's one of those French atheists who just doesn't believe in truth at all.
So that's what I'm saying.
If you're doing deconstruction and you're with Derrida and you don't believe there's any truth and truth's unknowable, then, well, see you later.
That just doesn't work.
No way that can be a thing.
So that's a straw man, right?
We're going to set up this thing and it's going to have a straw man that kind of looks, you know, pretty sophisticated because it's a French philosopher straw man.
And then we're going to knock that down and say, look, that's just if deconstruction is just relativism in Derridian terms, then yeah, of course, that's not something that me, Matt Chandler, is going to think is worthwhile in any way.
So let's just stop, right?
It's such an easy tactic.
Skip over deconstruction as somehow a complex process and so many of you on social media have pointed this out right that skip over deconstruction as a process of questioning your worldview questioning your religious beliefs questioning your the mores and practices of your culture and
Trying to understand how that whole system of belief and ritual and practice and doctrine all fits together.
That includes cognitive elements, that includes emotional elements, that includes familial elements, that includes social and psychological elements.
But instead of like admitting that when one breaks down their entire worldview, And begins again, that that no matter if you agree with what they're up to, that that requires immense effort and immense persistence.
It's so much easier to say, well, deconstruction, the way I'm using it, Matt Chandler, is the way Derrida used it.
And Derrida, we all know, French philosopher, and he said, truth unknowable.
So if you can't know truth and you're deconstructing, then deconstructing means you can't know truth.
And look at that.
Come on, guys.
This is a sexy trend.
But that's all it is.
It's moral relativism.
It's eschewing truth of any kind.
It's secular humanism in its worst form, right?
It's just so easy, man.
It's so easy to skip over the hurt and pain and confusion and determination and all, all of the mixed bag of goodies that goes along with actually deconstructing your faith.
And that goes along with what he says.
He says, right, we live in a day and age where deconstructing and turning away from and leaving the faith has become sort of a sexy thing to do.
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