Deconstruction or Evaluation

 I’ve watched so many people in the public eye talk about “deconstructing” their faith. I try to read their stories from where they are and why they’re doing it. Most often, it seems to come when their world falls apart—as if their faith is to blame for bad things happening. Hebrews 2:1 – “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.”

The phrase “turned off by Christians” feels too broad. Christians, non-Christians, all people—every one of us—will disappoint. None of us are perfect. We are all seeking and failing daily. No one person is better than another and yet I understand the view is that Christians should KNOW BETTER and DO BETTER. I get it and I agree and yet.....here we are, blowing it time and time again. Sheep.....dirty, dumb, dependent.

The real struggle is the influence of social media and how closely people follow these “popular” voices. Why are we following them so intently? Why aren’t we following the Bible with the same focus? Why don’t we turn first to the Word of God?

I see people criticize churches as “machines.” Maybe that’s true at times, but churches are led and attended by sinners. They will never be perfect. Still, each of us is called to do our part faithfully in the place God has us. Proverbs 4:23 – “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”

That’s why the word deconstruction doesn’t sit well with me. To me, a better word is evaluation. I’ve had to evaluate what is right and Godly in situations that were slowly turning sour. It’s rarely an instant fall—it’s the slow fade. We must watch carefully for that fade, staying in God’s Word so we can see it and make the hard choices—even when they’re uncomfortable.

I’ve seen this slow fade in a well-known author who once seemed on fire for Christ. Over time, her focus shifted from Scripture to trends and popular social issues. Following trends isn’t wrong, but we must walk them through biblical principles and measure them against God’s Word. Without that, the slow fade takes over. Now she admits she “loves Jesus,” but in a “different” way, and says she’ll never attend church again. But where is Scripture shaping her daily life? I can't honestly say, because I am NOT her and not here to judge her journey with Jesus. If scripture is missing—then that’s the slow fade in action. Galatians 5:7-8 – “You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.”

Another example is a social media personality once admired for her joyful spirit. After her divorce, she has distanced herself from Christians who offered shallow reassurances. Sadly, she too has grown disillusioned and her influence is shifting away from Christ. But again, the issue is not Jesus—it’s the sin nature in all of us. Christians can misuse verses, apply personal bias to Scripture, and fail to simply sit with people in their pain. That doesn’t mean Jesus has left or the Bible is wrong. It means satan is working hard!!! Really hard.

This slow fade is everywhere—in church life, in culture, even in our families. I see it in how kids’ activities consume every hour. Wednesdays and Sundays were once protected for church and family; now practices and games fill them too. We’ve been unpopular for refusing to compromise on those days, but I believe it matters. Our pastor just preached on this Sunday and it was so appropriate as I have been writing this post for the last 10 days or so. AND yet we DO sometimes have activities on Sunday. We have to be careful to check ourselves and we are not always right, in fact, more likely wrong than right in so many ways.

For me, I’m not deconstructing my faith—I’m deconstructing my life. I want to return to the simplicity of God’s Word. What does HE say about this? How can I shift to be more like Him? How can I correct wrong thoughts and values that don’t align with Scripture? How can I make sure my home is in connection with Jesus in everything I do.

Writers, pastors, social media influencers, parents—all of us—carry enormous pressure. But the call is the same: stay in God’s Word and weigh our own actions against it. Not other people’s, our own. I am not here to judge those I’ve mentioned. I only need to guard against the slow fade that Satan uses to confuse and distract.

I pray those who have drifted will turn back to Christ, but that is their journey. For me, I know I have plenty of work to do in my own heart and life—and that list is long. Yet God uses sinners, and I pray I can always keep my eyes on Him. Today is a new day and God isn’t done with me yet.

I am adding this post here because so much of this resonated with me. NOT BECAUSE I BELIEVE THE WAY HE DOES. I DO NOT, BUT he makes some valid points. I have chosen to view God based on my experiences that have shaped my faith into a deeper, more profound way. I believe others are on their own journey and just haven't experienced God in the same way. That's okay. I find many with RELIGIOUS spirits and that dictates how they respond and react and quite frankly it can be tiring. They have the scripture wrapped up and by rote say and believe so many things, but do not have the vision for JESUS on a deeper level at this stage. I will admit, many are leaders and that's okay too. I don't have expectations for us to all be at the same place at the same time and I am far from where I am going. I have lots of growth ahead. I just pray I can call it out when I see it and walk into the faith God has for me.

andyfilmsandhikes 

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Losing My Religion

I spent 15 years in ministry inside evangelical Christianity, not as a casual attendee, but as someone who built my whole life around it. I preached it. I defended it. I tried to live it with sincerity. For a long time it gave me structure, community, meaning, and a sense that the world was ordered and safe.

I also grew up Christian. This was not some adult curiosity I picked up on a whim. This was family air. I was raised as the son of two disillusioned Baptist preacher kids, which meant I inherited both the faith and the complicated relationship with the faith. If you know, you know. You can learn the language early, you can learn the culture early, and you can also learn early how much damage can hide behind a polished smile and a well timed Bible verse.

And I want to say this clearly up front because it matters. I do not hate Christians. I do not think everyone who identifies as Christian is harmful. I know people of faith who are gentle, thoughtful, generous, and deeply committed to love. If Christianity brings you peace, if it helps you stay grounded, if it makes you more compassionate and more human, then by all means hold onto it. I mean that.

But I also need to tell the truth about why I left. And why I did not just slide into a more progressive or progressive version of the same thing.

I did not leave because I wanted to party or rebel or be edgy. I left because I hit a wall I could not pray my way through. The longer I stayed, the more I felt like I was being asked to deny parts of my own conscience. The more I watched the system protect itself instead of protecting people. The more I saw certainty used like a weapon. The more I felt my nervous system bracing every time certain topics came up, because I knew what would follow. The jokes. The warnings. The coded language. The thinly veiled disgust framed as concern. The control disguised as holiness.

There is a specific kind of religious trauma that comes from living inside a world where you are taught that love has conditions, where belonging can be revoked, where doubt is treated like a disease, and where the worst thing you can be is wrong. And when you spend years in that environment, you do not just change your mind on a few issues and call it a day. Your whole relationship with certainty gets scorched.

Before I go further, I need to say this because I can already hear the comments forming.

There will be many people who respond to this with some version of, “You put your faith in institutions or people, not Jesus.”

And listen, I get why you will say that.

Because Andy in 2016 would have encountered Andy in 2026 and said the exact same thing.

I would have said it with confidence. I would have believed it was compassionate. I would have believed it was the mic drop that solved the whole problem. I would have believed it preserved the purity of the faith while placing the blame on “imperfect humans” and “broken churches.”

It is a familiar script for a reason. It helps people keep their theology intact.

But I need to be clear. I am no longer a Christian.

And I do not say that casually, or dramatically, or with a sense of superiority. I say it with sobriety. With grief. With respect for the weight of what I am saying. With a deep awareness that for many people reading this, that sentence alone will feel like a loss.

It was a loss for me too.

And here is why I am making that distinction. Yes, the catalyst was watching the church harm people, especially LGBTQ+ people, and then call that harm holy. Yes, the catalyst was realizing that I could not keep shrinking my empathy in order to protect a system. Yes, the catalyst was the trauma and baggage I could not carry anymore.

But the result was not just that I got annoyed with church culture.

The result is that I no longer hold to the core theological claims that are required if one considers themselves a Christian.

That is what I mean when I say I lost my religion.

At some point in this journey, I stopped believing the framework itself. Not just the institutions. Not just the politics. Not just the celebrity pastors. Not just the weird subculture stuff. The whole foundation shifted under me. Slowly. Painfully. And then, finally, honestly.

And I know that is hard to hear for some of you, because you would rather believe this is a story about hurt feelings, or a bad church experience, or human failure, because then it can be fixed by saying, “Find a better church.”

But what I am describing is deeper than that.

This is where the word deconstruction comes in.

Deconstruction is a word that has gotten weaponized online, so let me explain it in plain language.

Deconstruction is the process of taking apart the belief system you inherited or adopted and asking what is actually true, what is actually good, what is actually life giving, and what was built on fear, control, shame, or power. It is examining your faith at the level of assumptions. It is looking at the architecture underneath the house. It is pulling the threads to see what the sweater is really made of. It is realizing that some of the things you called “God” were actually just culture. Or control. Or trauma. Or tribal identity. Or a need for certainty.

Some people deconstruct and remain Christian. They rebuild a kinder faith. They find a healthier community. They hold onto Jesus while letting go of evangelicalism. I respect that. I am genuinely glad that path exists for people.

But for me, deconstruction did not end in reconstruction.

Part of that is because I tried. I tried to find the progressive version. I tried to see if I could keep the language and just change the posture. I tried to see if I could stay connected to the tradition without feeling like I was betraying my own conscience.

But I could not, because there was too much trauma and baggage.

There were too many memories attached to that language. Too many moments where the same words that were supposed to heal were the words that harmed. Too many manipulations disguised as spiritual guidance. Too many times I watched women be minimized and controlled. Too many times I watched mental health turned into a morality test. Too many times I watched “God told me” become a trump card used to shut down healthy disagreement. Too many times I watched people get more passionate about being right than being kind.

And one of the deepest fractures for me was the way evangelicalism treated the LGBTQ+ community.

I watched people use the name of God to harm LGBTQ+ people while calling it love. I watched people talk about “truth” in a way that flattened human beings into a debate topic. I watched teenagers absorb the message that their existence was a problem to solve. I watched adults carry decades of shame because they were told that who they are is unacceptable, broken, disordered, or dangerous.

I know some will say, “That is not real Christianity.”

I understand the impulse to say that. It is a way of protecting something you love.

But outcomes matter more than branding.

If a tree keeps producing rotten fruit, I am allowed to ask what kind of tree it is.

My problem was never with people finding comfort in faith.

My problem is what happens when people hurt others in God’s name, and then call the harm holy.

That is the line for me.

Another fracture for me, one that sits right alongside the LGBTQ+ issue, was the marriage between evangelical Christianity and politics. Specifically, the way so many evangelicals welded their faith to the GOP, and then, in the Trump era, doubled down in a way that felt like spiritual whiplash.

I watched people who taught me about integrity, humility, character, and sexual ethics suddenly become experts in excuses.

I watched Christians who had spent years telling the rest of the world that morals matter suddenly say that morals do not matter, as long as their side wins.

I watched people defend things in Trump that they would have condemned in any other person, and then call that discernment.

I watched the faith get reduced to culture war slogans. I watched sermons turn into campaign speeches. I watched church become a place where you could feel like you were defending God when really you were defending a political tribe.

And there was a specific moment in this whole phenomenon that became almost darkly comical to me. The way people would talk about a candidate like they were Gods chosen instrument. Like the election was spiritual warfare. Like God had ordained a victory.

And then, when that candidate lost, suddenly it was rigged, or the devil, or the end times.

And I remember thinking, if your God is only powerful when your candidate wins, then your God must be pretty weak.

That sentence might make some people mad, but I am saying it because it reveals the deeper problem. When religion and politics mix at that level, you stop seeking truth and you start seeking control. You stop cultivating humility and you start cultivating certainty. You stop listening to your neighbors and you start sorting them into categories of enemy and ally.

And once you do that, you can justify almost anything.

You can justify cruelty because it is for the greater good. You can justify misinformation because it is for the cause. You can justify dehumanization because you are fighting evil.

That is a spiritual trap.

It is not faith. It is power wearing faith as a costume.

And it did something to me. It made me realize how easily sincere religion can be manipulated. How easily a community that is trained to obey can be turned into a political weapon. How easily people can be told that voting a certain way is obedience to God, and then shamed if they do not comply.

It made me realize that I could not separate the theology from the outcomes. Because the outcomes kept showing me what the system was built to produce.

So where am I now.

I consider myself a pantheist.

That means I do not experience God as a distant ruler keeping score. I experience the sacred as woven into everything. Into forests and rivers and breath and sunlight. Into the fact that existence is even happening at all. Into kindness. Into creativity. Into the feeling you get when you are standing somewhere beautiful and your body goes quiet for a second.

Pantheism does not give me certainty the way evangelicalism did. But it gives me honesty. It gives me humility. It gives me room to say I do not know and not feel like I am failing. It gives me a spirituality that does not require an enemy. It lets me find wonder without needing to control it.

I still understand why people stay. I still understand why people cling to faith when life is falling apart. I have been there. I have needed something to hold onto. I have needed a story big enough to survive inside.

If your faith helps you become more loving, more patient, more compassionate, more willing to learn, then I am not here to take it from you.

But if your faith requires someone else to be dehumanized. If it requires LGBTQ+ people to live under constant judgment. If it requires women to be smaller. If it requires outsiders to be feared. If it requires you to call harm love and call control care. If it requires you to merge your faith with a political tribe and treat dissent as sin. Then I am going to say what I wish someone had said out loud when I was still inside it.

That is not peace. That is power.

I am not writing this to start a fight. I am writing it because I know there are people reading this who feel what I felt. The slow heartbreak. The private panic when you realize your values and your community no longer match. The exhaustion of trying to make yourself believe harder. The fear of losing your people. The guilt of questioning. The grief of realizing you might not be able to go back.

If that is you, I see you.

And if you stayed, and your faith is gentle, and you are actively refusing the parts that harm people, I see you too. We might not believe the same things anymore, but I can still respect the way you are trying to live with love at the center.

For me, this is what it came down to.

I could not keep participating in a version of Christianity that demanded I shut off my empathy for the sake of certainty. I could not keep pretending that damage was just a side effect. I could not keep watching the LGBTQ+ community get treated like collateral. I could not keep watching politics hijack pulpits and call it righteousness. I could not keep calling that good news.

So I left.

Not with a mic drop. Not with a manifesto. But with a tired heart and a nervous system that needed safety. And I started walking toward something quieter, wider, less afraid.

If you have questions, you can ask them respectfully. If you are angry, I get it. I used to be angry when people left too. And if you are in the middle of your own unraveling, I hope you know this.

You are not broken because you changed.

You are not bad because you could not stay.

Sometimes it is how you finally find your soul.

I will not make excuses why I sit with former drug addicts or stand by them in court. I won't answer the questions about why I was with this person or that person and why I chose to be a part of this or that. It's my journey and my walk. Sometimes you will find me by the well. It's okay. Jesus was there too. I won't sit in the Christian culdesac that calls to every God fearing Christian, because I have walked in dark places that beckoned me in because Jesus is there and wants me there too. The church is a building. It's a building that satan inhabits often more than each of us because he knows it can be there that he can break us. Call it what it is. Call him what he is. A LIAR and Spiritual Warfare is found in the most sacred places because satan knows.....if he whispers enough, he can break you. I'm not faking it and I won't hide behind those well placed verses. I want those verses to be swords, not against fellow Christians, but the enemy that stands whispering behind each of us. I'm living in the place God has me. He won't walk away. That place is broken, and its hard, but JESUS REIGNS in it all. It's not hard because he's not there, it's hard because satan intends it to be. This life promises nothing, but Jesus, soveirgn over all. The outcomes in my life may not measure up to victories this side of heaven. I can't count those baptisms and praise the victories where I walk sometimes because I simply don't have time to count anything. I just have a savior to COUNT ON and CALL on. We have to just march forward living for HIM and sharing HIM. God sometimes only asked that the seed is planted and for us to walk away and let him chose the next person to water the plant. Walk away. Do not try to control the outcome. The victory is his not mine, not yours. Live. Live out loud. Shine him. Walk with him and make him KNOWN. My story won't look like yours and thats okay. Let's walk together and apart and still shine Jesus. Let's stand in unity of the one true God. who calls each of us to different places at different times. Let's seek him in every step. In every misstep. In all moments HOLY.

**** At some point in the seeking of control, you stop seeking truth. You stop cultivating humility and you start cultivating your personal truth view of the world You stop listening to your neighbors and friends and you start seeing allies and enemies based on beliefs.

And once you do that, you can justify almost anything.

You can justify cruelty because it has a better outcome in your mind. You can justify dehumanization because you are fighting evil and yet isn't any form of dehumanization evil? Where did we lose sight?

That is the trap of spiritual warfare and you dropped the true armor for what felt light and better and yet more powerful. Sitting uncomfortable became unbearable. Power felt better, but your iron was not being sharpened with iron. It was being dulled with complacency and a fight for things that weren't to be fought over.

That is not faith. It is power wearing faith as a cloak of righteousness only there is no righteousness in that. Only misrepresentation of the gospel and who Jesus really is. He never went for power. He always laid that down. He didn't wear the robe or the King's gold crown. He wore simplicity and love and gentleness. He walked quietly and spoke few words. He listened and wasn't worried about what fit a mold, but what resonated with restoration.