Finding Wisdom For Your Reconstruction

If you’ve been with us since the beginning of April, our theme has been Reconstruction, and we’ve been looking at ways to strengthen our faith, and possibly reconstruct our faith, if we’ve been struggling with what we believe and why we believe it.

Often, when you talk to people who have walked away from their faith or the church, they will use the term deconstruction. They will say they took their faith apart, deconstructed it, and examined it, and it was found wanting.

But instead of sorting through it, and finding what might be valid, they leave it lying on the ground in a pile.

It sounds noble and well thought through, but often that’s not the reality.

Often if you talk to them, you discover that their faith wasn’t deconstructed, there wasn’t a lot of time and examination put into their deconversion.

Instead, it was shattered, often by something they read, or something they heard. They saw a meme on Facebook ridiculing the bible, they listened to a podcast that seemed to make sense, or they read the blog of someone who had a bad experience with the church. Or maybe they had that bad experience.

They were hurt or betrayed by someone in the church, or maybe they were disappointed after a moral failure of a Christian they respected and looked up to.

Or maybe they were sucked down that black hole of conspiracy theories that some believers seem to relish playing in and decided that if that is the church or Christianity, then they didn’t want anything to do with it.

I would challenge you in establishing your faith or rebuilding your faith to seek wisdom. And if there are things that you are at odds with, take the time to examine them.

In the scripture that was read this morning, Paul is writing to a young preacher, and he tells him in 2 Timothy 2:15–16 Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth. Avoid worthless, foolish talk that only leads to more godless behaviour.

And just in case Timothy misses this, Paul reiterates it in 2 Timothy 2:23 Again I say, don’t get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights.

There was a time when I thought that foolish and ignorant arguments were about topics like how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, or whether or not God could create a rock so large that he couldn’t lift it.

Conspiracy theories were for outside the church, they were about such things as who really shot JFK, whether it was really the Titanic that sank, or her sister ship the Olympic. And did the moon landing happen on the moon or in New Mexico?

Twenty years ago, Dan Brown published his book The DaVinci Code. If you aren’t familiar with the book or the movie, the entire premise was there was a vast conspiracy to keep the truth of the bible from being revealed. Of course, the book would have us believe that Jesus was really married to Mary Magdalene and that somewhere in the world today is his one true descendant. And people believed it. They would talk about it as if it were fact. It was wild. I preached an entire series on it.

But over the past ten years, with US elections, COVID and some of the stuff happening in Canadian politics I’ve seen Christians fighting over some of the strangest things.

Things that won’t matter one iota in eternity. And because of that some people have thrown up their hands and walked away from the church, simply out of frustration. They think we’re kooks.

Sometimes they have had their faith questioned because they didn’t agree with someone’s choice of politician or because during COVID they either chose to wear a mask or not wear a mask, chose to be vaccinated or unvaccinated.

I want to thank those of you who were at Cornerstone during COVID for not allowing those issues to become divisive. I know we lost people who didn’t agree with how Cornerstone handled the restrictions, but it never became an issue. At least not publicly.

By the way, we followed all the guidelines laid down by the provincial Department of Health.

And some people thought we did too much and others who thought we didn’t do enough.

And it’s alright to disagree with one another. You put two people in a room together and it’s only a matter of time until they disagree over something. Seriously I can’t be in a room by myself for more than twenty minutes before I start to question my opinions.

But when those disagreements become toxic and divisive, I truly believe it becomes sinful. It’s like your mother used to tell you, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.