MY STRUGGLE WITH DECONSTRUCTION

During the second semester of my fourth year of highschool I was forced to stay in my house as COVID was ravaging through Italy. I was so happy not to have to go to school anymore and suffer 6 hours a day of boredom. Finally I could live freely! No more pedantic teaching, no more sense of discomfort in a class where I felt ostracized, the same was true for basketball practice, no more excessive homework, finally I could be by myself, doing what I wanted.
For those who haven’t guessed, I’m an introvert.
I stayed blissfully in my room all day, playing video games, ‘attending’ school online, studying a little bit, working out with great intensity, I left my room mainly to cook many exotic dishes. Yet, after a few weeks of this rhythm, I started feeling a crippling existential vacuum which led me to begin my musings on the meaning of life. I started looking on YouTube for some answers, hoping to find some relief. I encountered many schools of thought and ideas that were contrary to my faith, Christianity. Thus, as a ‘Kingdom Kid’ -  someone born and raised in our christian faith community - who had taken his faith for granted, facing these challenging ideas pushed me into a  spiritual crisis driven by doubt and confusion. I was introduced to the world of apologetics and atheism, and for two years I consumed great amounts of debates between different faiths and worldviews. I started reading books written by atheists as well as christian theologians and teachers. I started writing my reasons for believing in God or not. In the beginning, I was never tempted to leave the church, I just wanted the truth. 

Unfortunately, soon after, I was diagnosed with cancer, stage 3 lymphoma. It was not an easy battle. There were moments when I was attached like never before to God, others when I fiercely resented Him. After having overcome this disease I was left with a great amount of unresolved trauma and a deep passion for understanding the human condition (the philosophical term referring to what it means to be a fragile, mortal human in a cruel yet rich world).

When I tried to return to my 'normal' life—going to university, playing sports again, attending church, and participating in church activities—I found myself struggling to find the same joy and commitment I had before. My lingering questions about faith continued to weigh heavily on me, making it difficult to fully engage with the things I once loved.  As a hurting, prideful, passionate idealist, many of my hopes and expectations for my spiritual life and especially my spiritual community were not being met. Even if I felt deeply cared for,  there were other unresolved  issues at hand that left  me resentful and disappointed. 

I traveled to Florence, my intellectual and artistic haven, where I spent my days reading books against God, hammering my faith until it crumbled  under atheistic philosophy. Part of my endeavor was an honest search for the truth, but there was a stronger desire to rebel from the dissatisfactory system that I found myself in. Thus, driven by bitterness, discouragement and pride I decided that I was going to leave the church. Thankfully, after a few phone calls with my pastor and my mother, I was able to calm down my emotions at least to the extent of not making any rash decisions and wrestling with my feelings. I soon realized that I had too many questions and was not looking for answers but for reasons to doubt even more and that I had leveraged my resentment and feelings of detachment  to justify my actions. I placed my questions on hold for the most part, in order to truly wrestle with my current state rather than allowing doubt to accumulate. I also decided to focus less on my struggles with faith and shift towards my spiritual growth by attending spiritual conferences (ESOM - European School of Missions). It soon became evident that I was quite immature and lacking in knowledge and understanding. 

I’m so grateful that I had people in my life that stopped me from falling away during a very unstable period of my life. Since then, I have experienced many blessings from the Lord and found profound intimacy with him. He has healed me and transformed me into a person of love, and given me a spiritual family where I can love and be loved. This doesn’t mean I don’t have doubts and questions. I do, and some of them fill me with pain and confusion. Yet, being part of the People of God, Israel, means, literally, being part of those who wrestle with God. Thus, confident of the goodness of his ways, I will walk with Him as I wrestle with Him and as I struggle to walk up Jacob’s ladder of holiness.

DECONSTRUCTION AS A MEANS TO SPIRITUAL MATURITY

The overarching question that drives my pursuit regards living life to the full, ‘the good life’. As stated in my introductory paper, the initial condition, the starting point, the bias of my approach is Christianity. Thus, I found it to be good to start the journey by testing the validity of such initial conditions and validate the bias. Given the popularity in the recent years of “Kingdom Kids” going through a process of deconstruction and subsequently leaving the faith, I recognized a need to be addressed.
Many young disciples who are in an immature stage of their spirituality, when faced with a spiritual crisis, can find their relationship with God growing dysfunctional. The reasons and situations can vary, hurt from a member of church, feeling lonely and not cared for, strong romantic feelings for a non-believer, dissatisfaction and tiredness from their moral effort or maybe just creeping disillusionment following the first euphoric stage after baptism. At that point all the doubts and struggles once, either ignored or dealt with improperly, become a motive to further question their faith, to dissect it to its core, and leave their faith.

I think that deconstruction is good and necessary when properly done. As a matter of fact, the father of deconstructionism, Jacques Derrida, used it not to destroy truth structures, as many have interpreted his work as, but he used it to reevaluate them. Indeed, generally speaking, it is an approach that aims to show the inconsistencies, tensions, and hidden assumptions of a theory to come to a new more complete and coherent understanding. It’s a great tool to improve one’s faith, understanding the complexity of our worldviews as we crawl nearer to the truth, even if it wasn’t meant for religious analysis. 
There are three challenges to overcome spiritual immaturity:
(1) Wrestling with the Devil, the emotional challenge - (2) From finding our lives to giving it away, the practical challenge - (3) Reconstructing our faith, the intellectual challenge.
The first two challenges come from the theory of spiritual formation within ‘A Sacred Fire' and ‘ The Holy Longing’ by Ronald Rolheiser (highly suggested books, the first for mature Christians, the second for younger Christians). The third is my area of research. I use the term reconstruction and not deconstruction since the latter is mostly intended as breaking down one’s faith to shine light on the bias and inconsistencies, and are left there, whereas the former also requires rebuilding one’s faith. It is improved and corroborated, in a constant state of tension and wrestling with God. Such endeavors must occur while or after the other two challenges are being confronted. Only then, one overcomes spiritual immaturity, becoming a mature Christian who gives his life away to the benefit of the world whilst wrestling in a healthy way with the struggles in life and in faith.

THE NEXT STEPS

Here follows the structure of the pursuit for this topic:

- First Part, The philosophical tradition of Deconstructionism 

Understanding what and how to use deconstruction. It’s history leading up to evangelical deconstruction, the latter’s methodology to dissect faith. 

- Second Part, Wrestling with doubts and pain 

Understanding how to tackle some of the major intellectual and emotional struggles that are faced walking the Christian life, through a deep dive in biblical wisdom literature,and a discrete study of apologetics wrestling with the strongest and most recurring doubts (testing the validity of Christianity).

- Third Part, Building New Foundations

Understanding how to use deconstruction of a deeper, corroborated, not naive faith, both intellectually and emotionally. 

- Conclusion, A guide to: Reconstructionism, overcoming spiritual immaturity

Brief summary of the findings in a structure to support those who seek to begin the process of reaching spiritual maturity.

The reading schedule for the first part will be:

• The passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas [September and October]

• A primer on Postmodernism, Stanley J. Grenz [November]

• J. Derrida’s first 6 works and papers or manuals on him [December to February]

• F. Nietzsche (unsure which texts) [March]

• M. Foucault (unsure which texts) [April]

• Other relevant philosophers (to decide) [May]

(This is a pure estimation, it could take longer or less)

If we want to live our life to the full, we have to first verify the validity of our worldview, but most importantly to set ourselves on a longlife journey of improving our understanding, shedding light on inconsistencies and biases, assumptions and flaws in the models of reality within comprehensive worldviews. At once this scary and exciting journey starts.

FINAL COMMENTS

I apologize for the length of this paper and the previous one. Being both introductory it’s necessary. The upcoming newsletters will be very concise and shorter, not more than a thousand words (I hope).
I dearly appreciate all the positive comments and constructive criticism that I was given, keep it coming :). It’s unexplored territory for me as well so having feedback really helps me navigate it better. Finding the balance between complexity and simplicity, length and conciseness, academic and readable will be an ongoing process, please bear with me. 

To conclude my newsletter I will leave a catch phrase proposed by a dear sister from Paris.

Laugh, Love, Live to the Max.