Well, I'm glad we had this conversation.

Some years ago a friend and I were in a conversation about a trip we were both taking to somewhere in Oklahoma. After about five minutes of talking, we were considering riding together to save money.  And after about five more minutes, we realized we were talking about two separate events in separate cities. Though the events were kinda, sorta similar in description, they were definitely not the same.

A part of "deconstruction" and rebuilding for me over the decades has been having conversations with people - some planned and some happening organically, right on the spot, perhaps providentially.  These conversations over the years were like the one I just talked about above, though not as comical and yet way more subtle and impactful on my understanding of God, church, and relationships.

You know the kind of conversation - where you're both assuming what the other person is thinking, that your pop culture references are the same, and that you're both talking about the same thing - until you realize that maybe you're not.  Or maybe you have very different conclusions about the same thing that you just realized in the middle of the conversation so it's time to redirect to avoid a hard conversation.

Those were big for me over the years, in all sorts of directions.  Some examples:

• Finding out that some fellow believers had a much more expansive view of grace and God's love AND also finding out that some fellow believers had an even more narrow view of God's grace that I had previously imagined.  And, yes, those were different conversations, by the way.
• Finding out some fellow believers had never really considered the idea that something other than guilt or fear of loss/fear of hell could motivate a person in their walk with God.  And when I showed them 2 Corinthians 5:14 where it actually says the love of Christ is what compels us, they seemed puzzled.
• Finding out that some fellow believers didn't know that a good number of people in the church actually were afraid that God was mad at them.  Like that was a kind of surprise to them.  And it was surprising to me because that's pretty much all the people I grew up around.
• Finding out other believers didn't think a lot of the stories in scripture were super important to believe, much less learn about or know.  For them it was a nice thing to be "biblically literate" but what was most important was being nice and having a nice community of people you enjoyed being around.
• Finding out that other believers had incredibly strong political views that merged church and government at the hip - both to the right and left side of the political spectrum.  AND that if you didn't agree with them, you were either a Communist or an oppressive Capitalist pig and probably an unbeliever.
• Finding out that some people agreed or disagreed with things publicly, but privately held the opposite view of whatever topic - and would privately say, "I will not rock the boat by disagreeing about anything." because to them, the more important thing was keeping things going.

And I could list off a lot more conversational surprises from over the years.  And I'm sure you could too.  It's how all of us grow, figure things out, decide what we believe, hear about what options might be available, play the game, find ourselves, etc.

Scripture says that love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8) and I do believe it's important to let a lot of things go and wait and see what actions line up with words over time.  And with some people I would ask about the surprising thing they just said and with others it didn't seem like an appropriate battle to fight at the time.

And so, over time, the collective weight of surprising conversations - especially those that revealed a very different way of seeing the gospel, grace, God, and such - had a heavy thumb on the scales of leaning into or away from what I'd call deconstruction.

Over time, words, ideas, and basic assumptions have significant impact and you can see them either being shared or squashed in the life of a group of people.  For me, enough important things were squashed and enough important things, for the wrong reasons, proliferated.

That doesn't mean I think all people in churches are wrong, deceived, hated by God, and going to hell.  It just means that was a dynamic that moved me beyond "growing more" and into dismantling a lot of things for closer inspection with the hope of a nice rebuild.  Which is ongoing!

A whole lot of grace and peace.