Wade Poe

Other bright spots through deconstruction and rebuilding?  Awareness. For me, part of it comes from life experience, some of it comes from a sociological background, and some of it comes from “stepping outside” of your own assumptions. The ability to stand as close as you can in someone else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes or position is pretty high on the list of good things.   It also has a negative side, but overall it’s a good thing. I don’t pretend to believe that anyone can really stand in someone else’s shoes, but you can at least try to have empathy and see life from what appears to be the perspective of others. With that dynamic or process, you can get a larger sense of awareness than you might have had before.   Awareness of why people think and behave the way they do, or at least a better understanding of why or what we might call motive. Awareness of how people think or process information - a reminder of the fact that there are very d...

What else is a bright spot through deconstruction and rebuilding?  Forgiveness We are forgiven of all our sins.  Past sin.  Present sin.  Future sin. Already done.   Already forgiven. This was different for me.   I grew up believing you needed to keep good records with God so that you could ask forgiveness for all your sins regularly, so that nothing was left unforgiven. The idea being that if you died without asking for forgiveness recently, you could go to hell for that.  For example, a friend of mine in high school had a pretty serious car crash when someone pulled out in front of him and he couldn’t stop in time.   On a Sunday a few weeks after he’d recovered, a well meaning deacon asked him what the last thought was that went through his mind before impact. My friend said, “Well, I can say that in here” - we were standing in the lobby of the church building.  The deacon’s reply was, “How would you have liked to have died a...

On the bright side of deconstruction and rebuilding… I'm jumping ahead a good bit, but to keep hope alive for those who think I’m somewhere in a dark place from months and years back, here are some of the good things that have come in the rebuilding.   Starting first with worship… For me now, worship is something we do with and through life. It’s no longer a time, place, or list of things to “go through” in order to “worship” God.  It’s not to say I don’t enjoy a good song, a good message that’s shared, or other things that I used to think you had to do “just right” to please God, those things are fine things to do. But they aren’t the sum total or even the main part of what worship is.   Jesus told a woman by a well that God is looking for people who worship him in spirit and truth. Paul said that offering your life to God is true worship. Worship was unhooked from a building and made to be something between us and God.   People can 100% gather toget...

Deconstruction seems kinda squishy. To someone who hasn’t gone into or through deconstruction, someone reacting so strongly to a change can seem unusual or even suspicious.  Like it’s an excuse to be rebellious or to complain.   There are probably situations where that is the case.   Lots of times, it’s both - where the person is experiencing massive internal change AND their response to it is to lash out or respond strongly in ways or at targets that may or may not be predictable. Learning something different CAN change how you see the world, people, and yourself. It is the main thing that causes deconstruction in general, and specifically the religious kind.   The things you learn can be both knowledge AND experiences, positive or negative.  That’s probably a little redundant to say since experiences that change how you see are simply knowledge that comes through the delivery system of something that happens to you or near you in some way and n...