Two Children's Books about God
Pictured above are two great kids books that our family owns. The first is Jesus Showed Us! by Brad Jersak (illustrated by Shari Anne Vis). The second is What is God Like? by the late Rachel Held Evans and Matthew Paul Turner. After reading them with my kids recently it struck me that they are both centred around the same question. The key question of the Evans/Turner book is, as the title suggests, "What is God like?" It turns out Jersak's book asks the same question: at the the top of every page is the question "What is God like?" But where the books diverge is how they go about answering it.
Evans and Turner answer the question with a series of metaphors. God is like an eagle, "with wings so wide you can play under their shadows." God is like a river, "constant and lifegiving." God is like a fort, "strong and secure with walls that are mighty and safe." They also compare God to the stars, a shepherd, a gardener, the flame of a candle, the wind, and more. The last page encourages kids that whenever they aren't sure what God is like, to "think about what makes you feel safe, what makes you feel brave, and what makes you feel loved"—that's what God is like.
As the title of Jersak's book suggests, he says that "Jesus Showed Us" what God is like. Each page of his book takes a different story from the Gospels. For example, because Jesus is the revelation of God, when Jesus welcomed the little children to him he showed that God loves children. When Jesus interacted with the woman at the well, he showed us that God loves even the people who are different from us. When Jesus healed people, he showed that God cares about the hurting and sick, and He is on the side of healing.
Now, if you're expecting me to beat up on Evans and Turner and their book for not mentioning Jesus, that is not my point. I'm actually a big fan of Rachel Held Evans. I've long admired her willingness to ask big questions about faith, have compassion for outsiders, and point out the unhealthy aspects of contemporary Christian culture. Similarly, I think What is God Like? is a wonderful and effective book that gets children imagining God from different vantage points. And to be fair, most (but not all) of the metaphors they use for God can be found in the bible itself.
My main point is not to analyze the books themselves, but to use them as symbols and a launching pad to discuss two different ways of "deconstructing", or reckoning with where Christianity has gone wrong.
Two Different Ways
Clearly Christianity, as a world religion, has gone wrong in a number of ways. I discuss many of them in the first post of my Apology for Church series, so I don't need to rehash them here. These issues have caused a real reckoning with Christianity in modern times, which has led some people to leave the faith entirely, some people to keep faith but leave church, and others to enter a process of "deconstructing" in some way or another.
First Way: Deconstruction
We can imagine the Evans/Turner book symbolizing one major trend of deconstruction that pulls away from the specificity of Christianity and embraces a more generalized spirituality. These people might, for example, use words like "Creator", "Spirit", "Love", or "The Universe" for God. They might want to emphasize the ways that Christianity is essentially the same as every other religion. They may believe that the bible (or parts of it) is inspiring, but not inspired in the sense of uniquely true and authoritative. Maybe they affirm Jesus' ethical teaching when it comes to love of neighbor and caring for the poor, but are skeptical about the miracles he performed. They would probably approach God as a somewhat unknowable—and perhaps distant and uninvolved—mystery, rather than a person who can be befriended, who makes Himself known, and who intervenes in the world.
To borrow from the phrase "don't throw out the baby with the bathwater", folks in this style of deconstruction would to some extent see Christianity itself as the "bathwater" that needs to be gotten rid of. The things that make Christianity most distinct, its core doctrines, its most radical claims, and its central story that there is a personal Father-Son-Spirit God at work in the world to redeem and heal it and who calls all people into a loving relationship with Him—these things to some degree must be discarded or minimized. Conversely, "the baby" that should be preserved are generally progressive ethics, like tolerance and social justice, and perhaps an appreciation or awareness of a greater spiritual power of some kind.
Second Way: Purification
Jersak's book, Jesus Showed Us!, could symbolize a second way of responding to what's wrong with Christianity. Whereas the Evans/Turner book symbolizes a pulling away from the specificity of Christianity, Jersak's book symbolizes a leaning into what is most distinctive about Christianity. My guess is that Jersak would have no issue with learning about God by comparing Him to a strong fort, a caring shepherd, etc., but the primary and authoritative revelation of God is found in Jesus.
Rather than withdrawl from Christianity, Jersak's book symbolizes a different way of responding to all that has gone wrong with the Christian religion. Perhaps all the bad things associated with Christianity are the result of not being authentically Christian enough. Perhaps we need to draw closer to Jesus, not further away. From this perspective, all of the bad things that people criticize Christianity for are like layers of metaphorical dirt that have accumulated over time but are not actually characteristics inherent in the movement Jesus started two thousand years ago. Patriarchy and the subjugation of women, judgementalism, colonialism—these are abuses of the way of Jesus, not expressions of it. White Christian nationalism, clergy sexual abuse, anti-science ideology—these are a hijacking of the movement Jesus started, not faithfulness to it.
From this perspective, Jesus, his way of life, his teaching and message, his worldview, they are like a precious gem. But over the years, layers metaphorical of dirt and grime (i.e. patriarchy, racism, lust for power, etc.) have accumulated. What is needed is to clear away all the dirt and grime, pressing further in to (re)discover the precious gem in the center.
But this purification way of responding to the dark side of the Christian religion is not for the faint of heart. In many ways it is a call to be more radical. You may have heard that etymologically the word "radical" is actually connected to the word "root". Getting back to the roots—the heart, the core, the essence—of Christianity is, in this specific sense, radicalization. It leads people to ask "what did Jesus believe?", "what did he do?", "what was his worldview?", "what did he think God is like?", and to copy him as closely as possible. Whatever beliefs Jesus had about the bible, God, salvation, angels and demons, sexuality, miracles, prayer, other religions—fill in the blank!—the goal is to have those same beliefs.
So What?
Maybe you've guessed I'm biased towards the second way (purification). You'd be correct. But I want to be clear that I don't say any of this with judgment, superiority, or intention to shame those who have deconstructed.
From what I have seen, deconstruction is not something that a person one day chooses to do: it is typically thrust upon them. The catalyst of deconstruction is often when a Christian witnesses or experiences suffering, or abuse or toxicity in the church, and that leads to a domino effect of doubts about the whole edifice of their faith. So it's not as easy as simply choosing to go the route of purification instead. We cannot force ourselves to believe things that we honestly just don't believe anymore, and it's an admirable act of integrity to acknowledge the things one honestly does and does not believe. The hurts, doubts, and skepticism are real and valid—and understandable! Often when I hear someone share the story of hurt or suffering that led them to deconstruct, I think that I could see myself doing the same if I was in their shoes. So no judgment, no superiority, no shame.
An additional challenge to the purification route is that some Christian contexts have done such a poor job representing the gospel that it isn't clear there's a "precious gem" underneath the "layers of dirt" at all. Maybe the whole Christian thing is just a lump of dirt! Imagine, for example, that someone has grown up their whole life in a church context where the senior pastor is a male that leads with an authoritarian rule, church feels like a "boys club" where females are second-class citizens, women are not given opportunities to truly express their God-given gifts, and that is the only expression of Christianity they know. It makes sense that if they reach the point of rejecting patriarchy they will assume they need to reject the whole Christian faith. In these situations "the baby" and "the bathwater" are indistinguishable.
So don't mistake me for thinking there is anything easy about deconstructing or reconstructing one's faith. But even while acknowledging the complexity and difficulty of navigating doubt, I think it is still important to be clear that there are (at least) two options on the table. The purification process I described above has been integral to keeping my own faith alive and intact. There are so many things in the world and in the church that cast doubt on Christianity, and I have wrestled and still do wrestle with them, but my personal experience has been that the more I press in and get better clarity on Jesus the more he strikes me as a "precious gem". Christian thinkers like NT Wright, Scot McKnight, and Tim Mackie have been invaluable in this regard, as they help us see past the "layers of dirt" that have accumulated over the years and get a better picture of Jesus in his first-century, Middle Eastern, Jewish context.