Deconstruction & reconstruction of faith (and maybe chairs)

Of chairs and faith

Deconstruction is simply taking something apart. 

How something is taken apart shapes what can be done next. 

 

If you quickly and repeatedly smash an old wooden chair with a hammer until it is jagged pieces, there’s likely not a lot that can be done with it except burn it or throw it away. 

If you’re creative, you might be able to use the pieces in the making of something else.

 

If you somewhat carefully take an old wooden chair apart with the proper tools and time, you can likely refinish it and remake it into a new, updated chair.

 

Faith deconstruction, and really, any kind of deconstruction, is usually somewhere in between those two extremes - destruction and disposal or some kind of restoration.

 

Unless you’ve watched someone else do it, it can be hard to know how to take that chair apart. 

 

Unless you’ve seen one built or examined one very closely, it can be difficult to know how the process of taking something apart can impact the pieces that you are removing.

 

The experience of seeing something being built is or can be very enlightening.  Seeing raw materials being reshaped into a new design can open your mind as you see someone’s imagination coming into reality in a physical form.

 

For example, some chairs are made with screws, nails, staples, or tiny dowels that hold the parts together.  Other chairs are made with glue or other adhesives.  Some are a blend of all the above.  And some chairs are made out of completely different materials and processes!

 

The way the chair is held together and the way it has worn can and does shape how easily it might come apart. A screw can break off inside. The glue could have seeped deeper into the wood and pull away parts that were originally separate, but now cannot be separated.

 

In addition to the how a person can take apart a chair, the why is also important.  

Who randomly takes a chair apart?  

What’s a person’s motivation to deconstruct?

What did *that chair* do to deserve *that* kind of attention?

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And that is the same with faith, or "church", or even of your whole worldview.  More soon...