Faith deconstruction resources

by Adam Morse

 (I did expect to have published more posts this year than this, and I still hope to flesh out more of my series on social media, but before much more time goes by, I want to share this.)

Faith transitions are hard.  It's called a deconstruction by the community for a reason.  For most and for me, it's felt like a ruthless demolition of all I held dear.  When the walls started falling around me, I was terrified because I didn't know when it would end, if it would end, or what would be left standing.

I've talked with many who had to go to the very, very bottom before they saw any hope for a rebuilding phase, which then brought its own worries.  What if my new set of beliefs don't match up with anyone else's?  What if my church doesn't accept me?  What will my family think?

If you've had any of these questions, this post is for you.  You're not alone, there are tens of thousands of us wading in the murk, stretching out our hands to blindly feel for what we hope will bring clarity and comfort.  My own outstretched hands have been grasped by others pulling me upward to where I can see just a little better.  The community of searchers I've bumped into and the resources they've pointed me to have been a saving grace, and I want to share these things in case you need it, too.

(Last updated: February 8, 2021)

Community

• The Deconstruction Network  :  something of a social network for people who have deconstructed
  
  

Movies

• Come Sunday  :  the true story of a Charismatic pastor's changing theology
• Silence  :   the true story of Jesuit missionaries trying to find God in Japan
• I am Michael  :   the true story of a young gay man who transitioned to an anti-gay pastor
  
• Bonus TV show  :  Queer Eye on Netflix  :  true stories of 5 gay guys making the world a better place

 
Podcasts

• The Bible for Normal People  :  my new favorite! goes deep into understanding the Bible
• The Liturgists  :  where I first learned about deconstruction
• The Deconstructionists  :  longer, deeper discussions often with theologians
• Shot of Torah  :  midrash-based podcast that digs into different interpretations of the Torah in 7 minutes

Books

• A Flexible Faith  :  by Bonnie Kristian, about the myriad ways people have been Christian through the ages
  
• Falling Upward  :  by Richard Rohr, about the two halves of life
• Finding God in the Waves  :  by Mike McHargue, about his deconstruction story
• The Bible Tells Me So  :  by Peter Enns, about making sense of the Bible (or What is the Bible? by Rob Bell)
  
• Inspired  :  book by Rachel Held Evans, about making sense of the Bible, but this time with more creativity

 Songs

• "Give me Something to Believe In"  :  Young the Giant
• "Vapor"  :  Gungor
• Palms (album)  :  Thrice
• "Leave the City" (and the whole album)  :  Twenty One Pilots

  
LGBTQ+ and Faith

• Resource repository  :  This was curated by a friend of mine.
• The Reformation Project  :  a Bible-based approach to LBTQ inclusion
• Radiolab podcast episode X &Y  :  fascinating episode about the science of male and female within all of us
• Church Clarity  :   a crowd-sourced list of where churches stand on LGBT and women in membership and leadership
• When they denied my baptism in Passion City Church  :  a story from a lesbian church volunteer 
• "Has 'Homosexual' Always Been in the Bible?"  :  blog post, and no, it has not always been in the Bible
  

The feminine character of God & Women in the Church resources

• God described as feminine and as Mother in the Bible  :  a Google doc I pulled together of research and references
• Half the Church  :  book by Carolyn Custus James about God's design for women and men, highly recommended
• The Junia Project  :  a huge resource of articles advocating for women in church leadership and egalitarian theology
• CBE International  :  another huge online resource equipping Christians for ministry regardless of gender
• 10 Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained for Ministry  :  blog post, humor
• Godde  :  another word for the divine and a beautiful and a thoughtful explanation as to why

Enneagram resources

• The Enneagram Institute  :  very helpful for determining your type and going deeper.
• Typology podcast  :  I recommend starting with episodes 14 & 15.
• How to practice your Enneagram type  :  blog post previewing next steps to deeper spirituality
• Sleeping At Last podcast and songs  :  This fellow makes songs for every type.

A little update on me - I am really happy with where my faith currently is.  The fear of not knowing has been shrinking fast this year, and I'm comfortable being in the in between.  There's not a common term for where I'm at, but I've used "agnostic Christian," "hopeful agnostic Christian," "progressive Christian," and I've joked saying I'm a "bad Christian."

If you'd asked 2010 Lindsay if 2018 Lindsay is a Christian, she'd probably say no, because she had a very strict definition (one that wouldn't cover much of the world's Christians).  I don't think there's a literal hell, I don't believe the Bible is inerrant, I don't know if Adam and Eve were real people, and I don't really care either way.  What I care about is living like Jesus' example, caring about what He cares about, and bringing that goodness to the world more fully.  I hope there's some kind of reward at the end of all this, but even if the lights just go out at the end, bettering this world in the way Jesus did is how I've chosen to live.

I sometimes pray.  I sometimes read the Bible.  I love learning about the Bible and about what the authors really meant.  (I currently have 15+ pages of a paper I'm writing about how women should be teaching and preaching and leading in the church, and it's all based on research from the Bible, its history and the culture of the original audience.  If you're interested in seeing the final product, let me know.)

There are still some areas of tension, but most of them occur when I'm interacting with more traditional Christian ideas and the people who hold them.  Being different isn't easy, especially when religion is involved, and I'm uncomfortable in some church environments due to things the preacher may say or the song lyrics or the Sunday Morning Face™ I never liked.  (Does anyone like that?)

I'm glad to be where I am.  I'm glad I didn't throw it all away when my doubts came in pronounced.  I'd been brought by my schooling to believe that doubt was opposite of faith, but I've found that's not true.  Certainty is the opposite of faith.  Doubt is more than welcome to join the dance, and having doubt doesn't make you any less of a Christian, however you choose to define that term.

With love.

How to cull your social media feeds

Last we talked about social media, I touched on a few of the risks paired with living life on social.  I've had a smart phone for only 4 years, I've been on social for 8, and in that little bit of time I've fallen for many of the false promises social media offers.  I can't imagine growing up on smartphones and not having a framework for life without social media.  Just like with friends and ice cream, in order to enjoy social media best, you need healthy boundaries in place.

While it's possible to break from the norm and go off grid, it's not viable or even attractive to everyone.  I get value from the community and inspiration social media opens up to me, but since real life happens off grid, I want to spend as little time on my phone as possible.  My personal compromise is to carefully judge what I keep in my feeds.  If content is good for me, it stays.  If it’s bad or even neutral for me, it goes.  This lets me consume what brings me value while not wasting time on the filler stuff.

Here are some questions I ask myself as I determine which feeds to follow and which to skip:

•  How does this content make me feel?  Does it ignite jealousy or unhealthy self criticism?  Do I find it delightful or encouraging?

• How does this content make me think?  
Does it challenge me and encourage critical thinking?  Does it create an echo chamber?

• Is this content redundant?  Do I need to follow this account and these twelve others?  Which ones are most worth my time?  Also, do I need to keep following this feed or have I already seen what they’re about?

• What would change if I unfollow this account?  (Hint: if the answer is "nothing," it's not worth my time.)


What are you thinking?  What do these questions stir up for you?  And further - what effects have you noticed in your life from social media?  What questions would you add to the list?


If you want to keep Facebook around for Facebook messenger or because you want to look back on your photo albums, check out the News Feed Eradicator for Facebook.  You can still access all your friends’ material and add your own, but you won’t see the news feed on your home page.  You’ll only see what you intentionally seek out.


I also recommend checking out this Twitter thread for more thoughts on our social media behaviors and how to be a good human being when interacting with people through our screens.

I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on how you're using social media and how it's using you.  I often need to reevaluate every few months.  Each time, I find that flushing out the content that doesn't serve me encourages me to view what's left, what truly brings me value, with more appreciation.  I hope the same happens for you.

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Keep an eye on this space.  More is coming to this social media series.  And please comment below about your thoughts, your journey, and your challenge to me to keep to my boundaries!

The good and evil of social

In the spring of 2006, when I was just accepted to college, my high school senior classmates suggested I sign up for Facebook.com.  (Facebook dot com.)  Way cooler than MySpace, Facebook needed a .edu email address to join, and it was the cool new place for college kids to be.


By 2011, after collecting hundreds and hundreds of Facebook friends, I grew tired of the superficiality of those internet connections.  What used to be life updates and real-time invitations to dorm events changed to shared news stories, memes, game play requests, and invitations to buy multi level marketing products I am definitely not interested in trying.


Facebook wasn’t a collection of friendships anymore, not really.  It was a collection of acquaintanceships, and when I realized that’s all they were, it dawned on me that I didn’t have to keep them.  Superficial relationships aren’t bad, but they also aren’t something I want to spend my online time on.  I’d rather invest my time in something that invests in me.


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Here’s where it gets real.


Your social media activity triggers your body to release the chemical rewards your brain gets when you have positive interactions, when you accomplish something, or when sharing physical contact with another human.  When you have a positive interaction with social media, you get the same physiological rush that comes from interacting with people in real life without interacting with people in real life.  It’s basically the crappy, fake porn version of sex, but for your social life.


Call me traditional, but this doesn’t seem like a good thing.  The science behind the legitimate addiction people develop is real, and precautions should be considered to make the time we spend on social media thoughtful and intentional instead of compulsory and constant.  The key is to use these tools as tools, not as pacifiers, escapes, or indicators of personal worth.  (Awareness of your own addiction levels helps, too.)  I appreciate how Facebook helps me find interesting events to attend, how Instagram helps me learn most of my foraging skills, and how Pinterest helps me collect creative inspiration for my home, but once my social media goals become social media-focused, I’ve missed the point.


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This past week, I joined The Plywood People for a talk about platforms.  Eric Brown, founder of Whiteboard.is, shared his thoughts on using social well and using it poorly.  Social media was originally designed to facilitate real life, not to be real life.  The goal of social was always to enhance real relationships, connect people who live far from one another, and to better the tangible.  If we forsake the tangible (real life) in favor if the intangible (social media), we’re doing it wrong.  We’re missing out on the purpose of living.  We’re choosing hollow rewards over fulfilling relationships and experiences.  And in that way, we’re actually contributing to making the world a darker place.


Focus on tangible wins.  Keep this in mind the next time you tap “Follow.”  Lives aren’t changed by retweets or drip campaign emails.  Invest your time wisely in something that invests back in you.

When friendships change

I never had much success making friends growing up.  We moved three times before settling in Georgia in 4th grade.  I remember ferociously praying for a best friend friend, but instead I got bullied on an off until senior year of high school.  It wasn’t until college that I met girls (and guys) who truly cared about me. They invested in me, shared with me, challenged me, and ran around campus dressed as ninjas with me (yes, we were those freshmen).  Spending time with them changed me and how I related to others for the better, and being with them was my new home. Finally, I started to feel secure in my friendships and in the community we had.

Senior year, Lydia, one of my core friends, started spending more time with a different group.  She was finishing up classes for her major that year, and she naturally became closer with the folks in the same courses.  Logistics be damned, I quickly became jealous and internalized the hurt. I reverted back to my middle school mindset and couldn’t understand why Lydia didn’t want to be my friend anymore.




Years later, Megan was a new girl at work.  She was the exuberant kind of person you instantly love.  The time we spent together was always good and deep and real, and when she got a new job at a different company, I was certain our friendship would transcend the situation.  She seemed to agree, and her verbal invitation to a rooftop dinner party (date and time TBD) kept me hopeful. Soon after, she stopped responding to my texts. I was perplexed and crushed.




Around the same time, Jasmine and I were in a tight knit tell-each-other-everything small group together and in an awkward group shift, our third member separated from the group and just Jasmine and I were left.  I reached out to her to see what her thoughts were and if she’d like to keep getting together. Despite my repeated messages, she didn’t respond for an entire semester. I’ll spare you the embarrassing details, but I did not handle it well as I waited.

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I always thought adults didn’t have to deal with the emotional baggage of friendship break ups, but I’m just now starting to identify and explore my struggle and how I can do better.  Here’s where I am so far.

Social media presents this idea that we’ll be friends forever, but that’s not true.

I was in one of the first groups of Facebook users, and back in 2006, it was a place to connect with friends.  But people aren’t time capsules. They change and grow. Never before has humanity had this social media glue to keep people together when they’d naturally fall apart, but the glue isn’t strong enough to maintain deep relationships in our transient, short-term society.  Long distance, new commitments, and shifting interests make a difference to friendships that Facebook can’t completely bridge.

You don’t deserve people’s attention.

This is a harsh one, but hear me out.  Placing expectations and demands on the time and attention of others isn’t love.  If that’s your main idea of friendship, you’re not being a good friend. Yes, committed relationships are worth fighting for, but if the other person has already checked out or has other opportunities they’re moving toward, don’t allow yourself to be someone who holds others back.

If you place your worth in the people around you, you’re gonna have a bad time.

It wasn’t until I admitted and owned the struggle of my past friendship vacuum that I realized I needed to figure out how to fill the need with something that isn’t dependent on others.  As much as I joke about needing handcuffs so my friends can’t leave me (never out loud, of course), life is change that doesn’t ask for permission. Finding security and love within myself and other stable places (family, faith, nature, etc.) is proving to be one of the best antidotes to my white knuckled grip on others and their opinions of me.

When someone no longer wants to invest in the friendship, know when it’s time to let go.

When my friendships changed, I interpreted it as rejection.  This led to feeling devalued and worrying that something was “wrong with me,” which bred insecurity I still carry now.  Don’t do this. Don’t fixate on where to place the blame. Don’t grasp for reasons that might not be there. There’s no nice way to put this, but sometimes people just aren’t that into you, and that’s okay.  You’re okay. Every relationship is not meant to last, and obsessing over the ones that are sunsetting could keep you from seeing the sunrises. You have value and goodness and beauty to share with the world.  Not everyone’s going to recognize it, but the ones who do are absolutely worth your time. The ones who don’t simply aren’t.

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Self awareness has been the first step to recovery, and If you have any other wisdom to add, I am all ears!  I have many years ahead of me still (I hope), and I’m sure I’ll go through plenty more ups and downs. My goal is to treat others and myself with grace and understanding.  To release control over my life and to not strive to change the things I have no power over. To be thankful for the friends I do have and to not waste my time on the people who aren’t interested in a two-way relationship.  In the end, that's the best way I can respect myself, and I hope my true friends keep me to it.

The Most Dangerous Writing App

I did something brand new this week.  I opened up the most dangerous writing app and spent 5 minutes writing down my stream of consciousness.  I had 5 minutes, and I had to keep typing or else all progress would be lost.  This is what I wrote, heavily inspired by Jeff Goins' newsletter, which I read religiously in 2011.  It'd be hard for me to articulate why, but I think it's important for me to publish this here.

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Here we are, together, reading through my writing.  I'm not really sure what I'm doing or why I'm doing this, but I want to be a writer.  I want to be good at it.  And I want people to read it.

The trouble is, I'm not always sure what I have to say.  What value can I add to the world that hasn't already been churned out by hundreds, thousands of others.  Thousands of other writers who've been doing this for years.  Thousands of people who are better than me.

And I know what they say.  There's always room at the top, and nobody ever starts there.  But isn't the space at the bottom just too saturated?  Can there really be a place for me at the table?

And I know what I need to do.  I need to practice.  I need to put myself out there.  I need to find people who will critique and suggest and build up and tear down my work.  (It sounds so professional and "together" when I call it "my work.")

And so, as I move forward into the uncertainty, into the fear, into the insecurity, I must keep writing.  Because I believe that deep down, I am a writer.  I suppose, I hope, that I just haven't fully blossomed yet.  I hope that some day I'll cross that invisible line.  Someone will tell me, "Lindsay!  You're a writer now!"  And I suppose that's what I've needed to hear this entire time.

I've needed someone else to tell me I'm a writer.  Or maybe, I've wanted someone else to tell me I'm a writer.  Maybe, I've just needed anyone at all to tell me I'm a writer.  Maybe I can tell myself.

That's what I'm going with.  For today, at least.  Because as I remind myself (sometimes), Van Gogh told us that when someone tells you you're not a painter, by all means, paint to shut them up.

Internet famous

When anyone talks about the spotlight, it's usually to say "I don't like it" or "I prefer to stay out of the center of attention."  Just like how you never hear anyone saying "I love getting presents!" you never hear anyone saying "I love being in the spotlight."  Except for celebrities, I guess.  And except for me.

Since I was a little kid, I've loved having people's attention.  I performed puppet shows for my parents growing up and I loved watching the home videos of the puppet shows when I was older.  I managed and acted in our high school senior talent show.  I performed in a few Directing Class scenes in college, and I was really disappointed when I was passed over for our college plays and musicals.

When creative social media platforms came on the scene and I noticed how much influence (and money) bloggers were getting, I yearned for that reality to be a part of my life, too.  I read tons of posts about how to hike my follower count.  I churned out posts three times a week with the main goal of creating shareable content.  I analyzed and agonized over what I could be doing differently, how I could better present myself, and how little luck I was finding.

Then, my BFF Millie would share with me how frustrated she was with the curated (fake) feeds on Instagram and I noticed most of the blogs I followed repeating themselves and each other.  I got to the point where every new picture of a coffee cup* in a beautiful setting made me roll my eyes, and if that's what I had to participate in to be internet famous, I wasn't sure I wanted it anymore.  I started to rethink what kind of contribution I was making to our internet society, and then I came across this piece "When Instagram Influencing isn't so Glamorous," which firmed up my gathering suspicions.

I think it's important for me to verbalize this.  Gaining and maintaining a constant, eager following takes resolve, work, and creativity I'm not willing to devote to this goal anymore.  As I've grown older, I've gravitated more toward one-on-one conversations and repetitive visits to my same favorite coffee shops, and I've turned further away from content for content's sake.  What I was creating wasn't benefiting others and it wasn't benefiting myself.  It's time to regroup and to shift my vision.

The life I have around me, however curated it is or isn't, is more valuable to me than the possibility of being internet famous.  And in fact, upon further introspection, I've been able to put more of a framework around what it is I really do want: to be an expert in my field, a mentor, someone people go to for guidance or nurturing.  Ultimately, what I want is to be respected and admired, and I don't have to be famous to cultivate those things.

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*Check out Delete to Feed to join me in donating meals to Americans in poverty just by deleting food photos on Instragram.

Minimalism in practice: social media

I wish I could pay someone money to opt out of ads in real life.  So far, no one's made an ad blocker for that, but Black Mirror makes me think it won't be long.  In the meantime, I fight the man by blocking every Twitter and Instagram account that advertises on my feed.  Yes, it takes time and yes, it's actually made a difference as far as Twitter's concerned.  I'm sure it's not likely, but I really hope someone at Instagram HQ starts to notice and blacklists me from ever receiving ads again.  I go to these apps for what I've subscribed for, and I don't want anything else invading that space trying to sell me something I don't want.

2017 was the Year of the Podcast for me, and one of the podcasts I consumed religiously was The Minimalist Podcast.  I've always loathed clutter, and it was so affirming and validating to find a group of people who agreed with me and my frustrations!  I think it was their episode about technology (or maybe this one about creating) that started to change my perspective on social media clutter.

It showed me I was contributing to it.

I was making the internet more cluttered.  I was filling it with content I thought people would like with the goal of wanting them to like (and follow) me.   I wasn't offering anything of real substance, I was playing the game to win, not to give, and what I posted reflected that.

As much as I'd love to have the perks that come with being internet famous, I've uncovered that it's more important to me to stick to my values about value.  I know I won't always get it right, and I know there are plenty of ways to define this, but moving forward, I want my contribution to matter.  If I don't believe my content will give value to others, I won't publish it.

Going one level deeper, I do want to reflect on how this newer perspective can lead to being overly critical and even afraid to speak, share, and create.  In fact, I already have internal struggles with what my voice is and what I should be saying, but I can take the time to figure that out and build on top of this new foundation I'm setting.  Regardless of how my voice evolves, I know Value will be one of the core pillars of my online presence.

Be the change you want to see in the world, even when it's something as trivial as what's trending on Twitter.