Deconstruction: Problem or Prophetic Voice?

SPEAKERS
JULIE ROYS, SCOT MCKNIGHT

Julie: [00:00:00] Is the deconstruction movement a problem to be solved, or as my guest today suggests, is this movement a prophetic voice resisting a distorted gospel? Welcome to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys and joining me today is New Testament scholar and author Scot McKnight, whose recent book challenges a popular narrative.

Some have suggested that those who are deconstructing their faith are just doing it because it’s fashionable or sexy. Or they’re just malcontents who want to complain about Christians in the church. But Scot says that’s not true. Most of those who are deconstructing aren’t moving away from Jesus.

They’re moving toward Jesus. And many emerge with their faith intact, though it may look different than it did before. Rather than shunning these people, the church should be leaning in and listening to them. I’ll get to my conversation with Scot in just a moment. But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, The RESTORE Conference and Marquardt of Barrington.

If you’re someone who’s experienced church hurt or abuse, there are few places you can go to pursue healing. Similarly, if you’re an advocate, counselor, or pastor, there are few conferences designed to equip you to minister to people traumatized in the church. But the RESTORE Conference, this February 7th and 8th in Phoenix, Arizona, is designed to do just that.

Joining us will be leading abuse survivor advocates like Mary DeMuth and Dr. David Pooler, an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. Also joining us will be Scot McKnight, author of A Church Called Tov, Diane Langberg, a psychologist and trauma expert, yours truly and more. For more information, just go to RESTORE2025.COM.

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Well, again, joining me is Scot McKnight, a professor of New Testament for four decades. He’s also the author of more than 90 books, 90 books, including the Jesus Creed, the Blue Parakeet, A Church Called Tov, and then his latest, Invisible Jesus. So Scot, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you join me.

Scot: Good to be with you again, Julie. Thank you for this invitation.

Julie: And I am so, so looking forward to seeing you in person pretty soon down in Phoenix at the RESTORE Conference. Very pleased about that, that you’re coming back. And I love that when you come, you bring Chris with you, your wife. And one of the things that I think is so different about this conference is, that speakers like you, you guys hang out, you stay, you linger.

Scot: We’re looking forward to it because it’s so cold here in Chicagoland right now.

Julie: As I know, and it’s going to be pretty fun going to Phoenix in February. So, yeah, really, really looking forward to that. But thank you for writing this book too, because I think this particular group of people, de-constructors, and I would, I don’t know if I would call deconstruction what I’ve been through over the past few years, but a form of it for sure. And I can relate to so many things in there. And yet this is a group of people that have been really maligned, I think, by the church and misunderstood. I’m sure you’ve heard the line about how Christians can be the only faith that shoots their own wounded.

So often when I hear that, I hear it in relation to a pastor who’s done an awful thing and people are being chastised for saying something about him. But I think where it really applies is with people like this who really need care and need love. And so I thank you for writing this and for the understanding that really comes through.

Scot: Well, thank you. And, as someone who’s watched you for the last few years, maybe decade, maybe longer, I guess,  I would say deconstruction applies at least in part to what I’ve witnessed. So, we have some common experience here.

Julie: Yeah, I guess I’m a little bit different than I was as Julie, the Moody Radio host. And there are some things I look back and I cringe, go, wow, that, that is not what I would say today or the way that I would say it. You always been saying in your book that deconstruction, and we’ll get into your own story, a little bit, but it’s not something that you feel like it’s ended, like something that,  we continue to grow and evolve, or we kind of stagnate, don’t we?

Scot: I agree. I mean, we could just take the basic old Reformation principle that the Church is always reforming, Semper Reform Anda. And in that sense, there’s deconstruction going on in the Protestant impulses, and renewal and change and shift and growth that there’s something new and fresh from the Word of God in different settings for different people in different churches all the time. And those are, those often, those moments require getting rid of some things, some old habits. And that’s what deconstruction for many people is all about.

Julie: Well, and I should mention that we’re offering your book,  Invisible Jesus, along with another book that  you wrote a chapter for, Need to Know: Empowering Female Leadership and Why It’s Essential for the Future of the Church. I can’t wait to dig into that book. I’m going to be doing a podcast actually with Lori Anne Thompson, I believe, on that book, but maybe you could give us a little preview about what that book’s about because we’re offering both Invisible Jesus and this book as kind of a pack for December.

Scot: Oh, that’s very good. That’s kind. The bigger book, Need to Know, there’s a lot of chapters in that book, and I haven’t read the whole book.

Julie: Lori Anne’s chapter is gripping. I’ve read that one, and wow.

Scot: Well, it’s a book, in a sense, for men. Male leaders in churches, these are the things you need to know if you’re going to be engaged and participate with women in leadership and in pastoring women in churches. And it’s just one story after another. It’s women witnesses. I think I was, where was I was in San Diego. And I think someone said there were only two or three men in the whole book. And it, that might be true. One of the editors is Alan Hirsch, so he’s involved, but as chapter writers.

So it features the stories of women. And the perspectives of women, and the theology of women, and the biblical exposition of women. So it’s good. And I think it’ll be helpful to many, many people if they’d just read it. And Danielle Strickland, she’s been a courageous voice and leader for women, and she was the perfect person to launch this volume.

Julie: Yeah. Well, I’m excited about that again, folks, if you want to get Invisible Jesus and, Need to Know you can do that by giving, I think it’s $75 or more to The Roys Report. As you know, Scot, you’ve been a part of a lot of nonprofits. This is like our biggest time of fundraising for the year. We actually raise about a third of our budget during December. And so folks, if you want to see us keep doing what we’re doing and expanding what we’re doing, please be gracious to us in this month, and we will try to be gracious with you as well and get you this pack of books, which again, is a phenomenal resource. So if you’re interested in doing that, uh, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE.

Well, Scot, your book is based on just a very bold premise, and that is that these de-constructors who are leaving the church in pretty decent numbers and are often thought of as the problem in the church, that they’re actually not the problem, but they’re the prophets of the church. Would you describe why you think that?

Scot: This book is with a student pastor, Tommy Preson Phillips, who’s a musician as well, and he did his master’s thesis on the I Am Sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John. And as he was working on it, I said, Tommy, I think we could write a book together and work this out in the direction of the de-constructors, because he, as a pastor, I think you could say he’s, he attracts de-constructors, and he ministers to de-constructors in his music ministry.

He had a natural inclination for this, and in the writing process, stuff just bubbled out of him about what was going on among de-constructors. But what we’re contending, I’m aware that there are some people who think de-constructors are leaving the faith, and that they’re deconstructing because they want to sleep around. Or they’re deconstructing because they want to get drunk all the time, or they’re deconstructing because they don’t really believe. Alright, I’m aware that this voice is out there. But our experience with so many people who were using the word deconstruction was the opposite of this.

These were not people trying to walk away from the faith. These were people who were seeking for a deeper sense of the faith; one that centered Jesus and the kingdom of God, and the way of Jesus in this world. And they wanted, in a sense, we kind of came up with the slogan, they were leaving the church to find Jesus. Of course, that’s a bit of a slogan, it’s not always the case, but they were many times leaving their own church and finding themselves in another church.

Well, we had access to a study done by Harper Collins in social media on the basis of people who used the word deconstruction for what they’re doing. There’s a very popular slogan for at least for five years. It was out there all over the place. And frankly, Julie, I was getting kind of irritated with the way people were using it because I thought they should have more respect for the French deconstruction movement, and they said, forget it, Scot, that’s not what we’re talking about.

Well, this study of Harper Collins showed that 86 percent of those people who use the word deconstruction, remain in the church, and many of them change churches, but they’re not leaving the church. So, the idea that de-constructors are walking away from the faith is, in a sense, sociologically, socially, social scientifically, however you want to measure it, is not accurate to what we can measure.

So what’s being measured is simply anecdotes that people have. And of course, we know people who’ve walked from the faith and say, Oh, I deconstructed, and I no longer go to church, or I believe in all religions. I make up my own religion. But that’s not the people we’re talking to and that we’re writing about; we’re writing about that 86 percent who have remained in the church and who are working toward a deeper sense of the faith.

And I can’t tell you the number of pastors that I have met in the last five years who’ve said they’ve gone through some recent deconstruction. I’m thinking, what’s happening here? They never once thought of giving up their ministry, or a lot of them. Some of them did, of course. But they wanted to see the church revitalized, revived, and have a deeper root in the teachings of Jesus. And that’s who we’re talking about.

Julie: So given that people are moving towards Christ, and I have to say, a lot of the de-constructors that I know would still call themselves Christians. Most of them don’t go to church, but they definitely have a relationship with God. But given this is where they’re at, why is it that this group is so maligned by the church?

Scot: It’s a really good question, and this is a question that both Tommy and I have been asked in a number of ways. One thing is we think it makes pastors and leaders uncomfortable to be told that what they’re doing is not striking home with these people.

A second thing is, It gets under the skin of some leaders and thought leaders and some pastors, professors, because they have the same problems. And if they were to say what the de-constructors are saying, they could lose their job, which is never the right motive for pursuing truth. And frankly, to admit that what the de-constructors are pursuing and doing is at the same time an admission that we don’t have all the answers that we like to think we have with the certainty that we like to think we have.

I only know a couple people who have the confidence of John MacArthur, but I do run into people who are pretty dang confident about some of what they believe and I’m sitting here thinking, I think I had that confidence at one time about the authorship of Isaiah, but I don’t anymore.

And these sorts of things start to unravel people’s system when that system is suddenly realized it’s not as important as maybe some other things. And what we’ve discovered is, and maybe what you’ve seen, is these people say, I want to follow Jesus, I’m committed to His way, I don’t find it in the church that I grew up in.

I don’t find it in some of these megachurches. But I find it with some of my best friends, and we’re in pretty good fellowship, and I’m okay with that. And that’s stories that we’ve been told over and over, is, okay, I really do want to follow Jesus, but I find going to church right now re-traumatizing, and I’m just not gonna go there for that.

Julie: One of the really awful examples, I think, of what you’re talking about as far as the church and the response, was Matt Chandler, pastor of the Village Church. Something that he said is about three years ago. It’s a clip that went viral.. And I’m going to play it, but I’m not just playing the clip. I want to play Tim Whitaker of the new evangelicals, his take on the clip. So it’s kind of interspersed between you hear the clip and then he gives comment of it. And I think, I think it’s really helpful to hear from a de-constructor, Okay, this is how this makes us feel. So I’m going to play this clip and then I’d love your thoughts on it.

Matt Chandler: You and I are in a day and age where deconstruction and the turning away from and leaving the faith has become some sort of sexy thing to do.

Tim Whitaker: I’m not sure how many times you have to say it, but we’ll say it again just to be really clear. Deconstruction is not sexy. Many of us are deconstructing to find our faith, not to lose it. And white evangelical pastors like Matt, unfortunately, continue to reinforce our perspective that they are here to gatekeep and are not interested in actual dialogue with people like us.

Matt Chandler: I contend that if you ever experience the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, actually. That that’s really impossible to deconstruct from.

Tim Whitaker: This is called gaslighting So what he’s saying is that after 30 or more years of being in church culture, giving everything, believing all the right things praying all the right prayers studying the theology, you just never experienced true grace. But Matt has; so be more like Matt.

Matt Chandler: But if all you ever understand Christianity to be is a moral code, then I totally get it.

Tim Whitaker: And who taught us that moral code Matt? You did. Evangelical leaders did. Purity culture did. Bad theology did. You taught us what it means to be a Christian. So don’t blame us for deconstructing bad faith or bad theology. Honestly, Matt, you want to know an example of, I think, some bad theology and teaching? When you refuse to talk about Mark Driscoll, when Mike Cosper, host of the Rise and Fall of Marsville podcast, asks you for comment and to come on the podcast and you say no. But you have no problem saying things like this about a community that you clearly know so little about. Classic evangelical gatekeeping protects the abusers and victimizes the abuse.

Scot: Whoa.

Julie: Yeah. Right.

Scot: Where’d you find this? This is real. Did he do this with you?

Julie: No, no. This is a clip he put out and I remembered it. I went looking for it actually today. I’m like, I gotta play this.

Scot: Oh, that’s good. Oh, I think, I don’t know if you want my comment, but I think it’s Tim Whitaker. I think he’s right on there. I think Matt Chandler. I don’t know Matt Chandler. I don’t think he has any idea what de-constructors are actually going through.

And I think it might be because they have experienced the true grace of God in Jesus Christ, that they’re so disappointed with some features of the church. And for him to move to the idea, if you treat Christianity as a moral code, well, that’s a smoke screen that they can use for everybody.

It’s the old idea that you either believe in grace or you believe in religion. Which Tim Keller used all the time, and I think it’s all based on a failure to understand Judaism. It’s a failure of understanding Jewish history. It’s a failure of understanding the relationship of the old and new. And it’s a failure of understanding the strongest moral code I’ve ever seen in the Sermon on the Mount.

I mean, what else can you get out of the Sermon on the Mount other than a pretty dang strong call to discipleship? Now, call it a moral code if you want. I think Matt has failed. I know he apologized at some level after making that statement, and I don’t know if it was a response to Tim Whitaker. All I know is that what he said, I have heard repeatedly as if they never understood that he actually tried to back off of what he had said. So we give him a little credit for backing off.

Julie: Yeah, they all tend to back off when they get a lot of flak. That’s what I’ve noticed. But, but yeah, I mean, I do think when you bring up the moral code, the people that I see that are most disappointed, and not in, it’s not legalism. It is actually, this is what Jesus said. Why isn’t the church matching up to it? Why are we seeing so much hypocrisy? And they’re calling it out. And that’s where I think you’re absolutely right that they’re being prophetic. I think Tim, I don’t agree with Tim on everything. I mean, we definitely would land differently on certain probably doctrines, probably politics, although we’re probably closer than we used to be.

I think he’s a prophetic voice. I think so much of what he says are things that the rest of the church needs to listen and instead they will again, close their ears. And that’s what I love about your book is it’s an invitation to basically the rest of the church, like listen, listen to these folks because what they’re saying is important.

Scot: No, this is what happened with Tommy and me is when we started hearing criticisms of de-constructors, we both thought, what in the world are these people doing? Have they listened to these people? We know these people. They are my students. They are Tommy’s congregants. They are in Tommy’s small group.

They are in some of the small groups that I’ve participated in. And Julie, as someone privileged to get to travel, I travel all around and I talk to people, and I have met hundreds of people who are going through deconstruction and are looking for voices like Tom Wright’s, or someone who’s giving them a vision of Jesus that they can latch on to.

And the number of people who have written to me or made comments to me, or to Tommy about this book, simply encourages us that we are talking to a sizable group of people out there who are calling the church to account for its lack of Christlikeness, which is Tommy’s favorite term, and I think he uses it because he knows I like Christoformity instead of Christlikeness.

But they’re calling him out and saying, look, this is the way you’re behaving. This is not like Jesus. So, I think Tim Whitaker is pointing out the fact that Matt Chandler has not listened adequately to the de-constructors to describe them fairly and honestly in ways that they would describe themselves.

Now, there are some people, but I don’t think many people walk away from the faith because it’s sexy. I really don’t think that happens that often. I have studied why people walk away from the Christian faith. And it measures up with some of these challenges that de-constructors are pointing out.

But these de-constructors are ones who don’t want to let go of Jesus, while people who walk away from the faith will often say, the only thing I miss is Jesus. You remember, Billy Graham had a rival in evangelism in his day, and I can’t remember the Canadian’s name right now.

Julie: I know who you’re talking about. I’ve heard him interviewed before, yeah.

Scot: And at the end of his life, he was interviewed, and someone asked him, What did he miss about Christianity? I mean, this is a man who built a sizable church in Toronto and who was genuinely a rival to Billy Graham in revivals. And in tears, he said, I miss Jesus. And that’s what these de-constructors are not missing. They have, in a sense, they have found Jesus by getting away from cultures that are smothering Jesus with other things that don’t matter as much.

Julie: One of the things I was surprised to read in your book, not super surprised, but you talk about your background. You grew up in a fundamentalist home and you had a deconstruction period. And it was while you were, I mean, in seminary going through college part of it, but then when you were in seminary. Would you talk a little bit about that, like what it was for you? Obviously this was many years before this became a movement, but I think a lot of us, I think especially in our twenties go through similar type wrestling with our faith. What caused you to say, yeah, these are some things that just aren’t measuring up for me?

Scot: Well, I did grow up in fundamentalism, and the fundamentalist church that I grew up in was in some ways loving. These were good people. They were very conservative theologically. Some of them were a little bit of a head case. It wasn’t really a bad theological setting for me, but very rigid. When I was in college, I read Francis Schaeffer, and Francis Schaeffer was famous at the time for his lectures that he had been giving at Wheaton College.

Now, this is before you were at Wheaton College, Julie. And he gave Death in the City he gave all these lectures, and they turned into books that he was using at Labrie in Switzerland, and they just went all around the world. It was everywhere. And what Francis Schaeffer did to me is make me aware that the church has problems, and the church needs to be called out. I grew up in a world where you didn’t criticize the pastor, you didn’t criticize the church. I remember hearing this one quite often, do not touch the Lord’s anointed.

Julie: Yeah.

Scot: This was like a mantra of, If you’re going to criticize the pastor, you just might be going to hell. So I became critical in a good way. I saw problems. It wasn’t my own discoveries. It was Francis Schaeffer’s discoveries. But he led me to see things, and they were confirmed in my own experience. And I graduated knowing that I wanted to become either a missionary or a professor. I wasn’t certain.

I had more of a professor’s life than I had a missionary’s life. Then I started reading Ronald Sider, Howard Snyder, I remember people said, Sider and Snyder, and you’re going to be in trouble. And Ronald Sider gave me a different angle on the criticism of the church, and while I was in seminary, Chris and I got involved in a Catholic Worker House in downtown Waukegan.

And at that point, I was convinced of what I didn’t believe. I wasn’t certain what I did believe, but I was working on it. And the opportunity to be at the Catholic Worker House gave me an opportunity to work out my understanding of Jesus and the poor, and Jesus and money. And I became an Anabaptist. I just thought, these are the people who get this right. Now Snyder, I don’t know what Snyder was, to be honest with you.

Julie: I think he was Anabaptist because I grew up Anabaptist.

Scot: Yeah. Oh, you did? Ronald Snyder was, for me, a superstar.

Julie: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.

Scot: In an Age of Hunger. That was the book. Yeah. Yeah. But I, then I started reading everything Ronald Snyder wrote, and you’d find his stuff in magazines. I entered into a process of reconstructing Christian faith absent of the things that I shed, and I found the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel of Matthew, the teachings of Jesus to be the heartbeat of where I wanted to build my Christian beliefs.

And it’s not like anyone was asking me to write a systematic theology or anything. I was working out what I thought was important, and I think I can say it was a period of three or four years that I was deconstructing and beginning to reconstruct. It was in my early years of teaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, from, 80, 83, let’s say, to 86 or 87, that I felt like my feet landed on some theology.

And it gave me, in a sense, a place to stand, a place to look, from which to look, and to say, I like that, and I don’t like that. And so I went through the deconstruction. Chris went through it with me a little bit more quietly, but in some ways she anticipated this when we were in college, she was quite perceptive about the zaniness of fundamentalism. And I was in the system; I was on the basketball team; I had to behave.

Julie: What school was this?

Scot: Cornerstone University.

Julie: Okay.

Scot: Yeah. So, I had to behave, and she could offer the criticisms, and once I graduated, we moved on, and moved away from all that, and we began to worship in churches that were much more based upon our understanding of who Jesus was. So how’s that?

Julie: Well, it sounds a lot like what I’ve seen a lot of people go through. I went through my own, it was more of a really wrestling with my faith and my relationship with God in my 20s. I feel like my relationship with the church is what I’ve wrestled through the past 5 years. And so I could really relate when you talked about the three phases of deconstruction. I’m like, yep. Been there. So let’s unpack those because I think there’s probably folks listening that are maybe right in the middle of one of them.

Scot: That started as a Substack because I just all of a sudden began to think about this. I think I’d add a fourth. Let’s just say we start in security.

We’re in some secure situation and something provokes us to begin to think and we let that provocation have its way in our heart, our soul, our mind. And all of a sudden we discover we’re in what we call, Tommy and I would call liminality, where we’re not sure what we believe about this. And it could be something that really unnerves the heart of a system.

Let’s just say that you’re a Calvinist and you come up on something, you go, I don’t think I can be a Calvinist anymore. And then all of a sudden you think I can’t go to this church, this pastor, I can’t read John Piper. I can’t pay attention to these people who’ve been my prophetic voices. And now where am I? That’s liminality wondering where you are. You’re in between phases. And, then we talk about a phase that we call elimination, where we begin to just discard things that we do not consider, and I think a lot of people go through this. They just don’t consider that important.

I remember when I was in college, I deconstructed eschatology. I grew up with, I have my Schofield Bible in the other room of my library.

Julie: Premillennial.

Scot: I bought it. It was leather, Morocco leather, and it had all the notes, and I knew dispensationalism. My mom and dad were dispensationalists. Everybody I knew was a dispensationalist. And I read Robert Gundry’s The Church and the Tribulation. And that led me to George Ladd, The Blessed Hope: Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God, The Presence of the Future. And by the time I had finished reading those, I knew I wasn’t a dispensationalist.

And I knew I was post- Trib. And this was, in a sense, my first exploration of elimination. I knew I had been in liminality, and I knew that what I was exploring was not acceptable to my pastor, who was a really strong dispensationalist. He’s a good man and he was confident of this, and I remember him telling me in the 19, this is no kidding, about 1974 or 5, that he was absolutely convinced that the Lord would return before 1980. And it’s 44 years later.

Julie: My mother was convinced that God was going to come back before she went to college. So she couldn’t figure out why she was going to college.

Scot: This happened to me. I came home from college, my sophomore and freshman years, and I asked my youth pastor, should I continue in college? The Lord is coming back. He said, I think you should, just in case this preacher you just listened to was wrong. A lot of people experienced this, and I moved into post Trib type stuff. I’ve since pushed away from that, even. But we go through that period of elimination where, okay, I can get rid of this belief, but I’m still really solid in my Christian faith.

In fact, I have found not a diminishment of the faith, but liberation in the faith. So, that’s the final phase, liminality, elimination, and liberation, where I know, Julie, what happened to me internally when I began to study the Gospels intensively. I mean, I did a Ph. D. in the Gospel of Matthew. I know what happened to me inside as a result of studying the teachings of Jesus, the Gospels, so intensively that I just felt liberated from so many things that I had grown up with, and I was just happy. I think the word to use is I experienced the joy of a faith in Jesus, of following Jesus and thought this is what it’s all about. And so those are the phases, and I think that this is, you could say that this is a pattern of what all people go through when they change their mind about something significant.

Now, if you change your  mind about which gas station to go to, it’s probably not going to make a big deal in your life. But if you change your church, you go, let’s say you move from an evangelical mega church to a Lutheran church or to a Catholic church or to an Anglican church, there’s going to be quite a bit of change. And that’s probably going to require some liminality and some elimination and some liberation. I hope it leads to liberation, or you shouldn’t do it.

Julie: That’s interesting, because I grew up Anabaptist, although my parents were never very denominational. Even though they, I mean, I can trace back in the Brethren in Christ church, like my great, great, great, great, great whatever grandfather was one of the founding members of that church.

Scot: Pennsylvania?

Julie: Pennsylvania. Yeah. He was one of the first when they were the river brethren, and he emigrated here from Switzerland. He was Anabaptist, so it was getting, I mean, people he knew were getting burned at the stake. And so they came here for religious freedom. And my parents were always, my mother grew up Wesleyan and were very, their relationship with Jesus was what was important. I mean, that’s what was central. And they really felt like these other things, and they love their church, but I mean, they also were able to look at it critically. They were, they were never hook, line, and sinker for everything. They were able to see the good and throw out the bad.

That’s just the way we were brought up. Which I’m really grateful for because it enabled me to go through. I mean, I’ve seen the beauty in the charismatic church  and Willow Creek, we were there for a time and Vineyard and then Anglican church was our last church. I mean, I’ve been through so many different churches, and I’ve loved them all, I really have loved them all and seen something beautiful about God in all of them.

Right now we’re in a house church because of our particular journey, which I’m absolutely loving. But as I was going through this, I was thinking, what has really changed? Because my theology hasn’t changed. My theology is pretty much the same. How I hold it is different. And I think what’s really different is I used to have, and this is kind of embarrassing to say, but I used to have a thought where liberals were bad, conservatives were good. Which is really hard because most of the people that I report on are conservatives, which everybody always labels me as that must mean I’m a radical really far left liberal, which is so funny because anybody that knows me knows that’s the furthest thing from the truth.

But, I’ve seen in that, and I think some of it is when you talk about the certainty of holding, like the pride of thinking that you have it  all figured out and being so dogmatic about it that you can almost impose those beliefs on everyone else. And if they don’t exactly have that, that they’re wrong.

That’s the kind of conservatism that I think has really turned me off. But the bottom line is I don’t care so much what you believe anymore. I care how you live. How do you treat people? I know people who are very liberal. in their theology and maybe in their politics, but they act more like Jesus than a lot of these conservatives who I might agree with their doctrine.

And at the end of the day, I really don’t think it’s a theology test when we meet Jesus. I think it’s going to be; did you know me? And if you knew him, you’ll act like him, you’ll have his heart. Right? And so when I see the way some people who call themselves Christians with such perfect theology and the way they behave, it’s just so disconcerting.

And so I feel like now there’s so much diversity in our church, in our little house church and actually like with the election and we did a debrief after the election and that was intense. It was definitely intense. But one of the things I thought was so beautiful is I saw someone who voted for Harris, come up to someone that she suspected voted for Trump and she said I don’t know if you did or you didn’t and  I don’t really care, but I just want you to know, I read an article on five reasons that evangelicals voted for Trump and even though I can came to different conclusions, I have to say that all of those five reasons are things that I care about and so I think we have much more in common than we do difference.

And to just see that kind of I think a lot of times we think of unity as really conformity and uniformity. And really to have unity, you have to have diversity, but to have something that’s more strong than that. And I think there’s so many people who are de-constructors who are like, I haven’t seen that in the church. What I’ve seen is that politics is all important or theology is all important, but I haven’t seen that Jesus is all important or that Jesus trumps that.

Scot: Well, I remember when I was doing a PhD in England, hearing a lecture by I. Howard Marshall, you may know Howard Marshall.

Julie: I don’t. That’s a new name.

Scot: A great New Testament scholar, and Howard Marshall’s academic lecture was on justification by faith and judgement by works. And he made a statement in his paper. And I’m sitting next to my professor, Jimmy Dunn, and I’m a Ph. D. student, minding my own business, and Howard said, every judgment scene in the New Testament is a judgment of works, not of theology.

Now, theology mattered to Howard Marshall. It mattered to Jimmy Dunn. It matters to me. It matters to you. But this is a little bit  unnerving. It can lead people to some liminality and some elimination, and I think you’re exactly right. I want to know what your life is like. And that doesn’t mean we’re not going to disagree.

I mean, we can have some strong disagreements. I’m not talking about with you. I’m just saying in the Christian church, and it can be really, really difficult sometimes,  even to express our differences. And it may lead to separation for a while. Paul had to get away from Barnabas and John Mark over some things.

But I really agree with you that I want to know how you’re treating people. And if you can, or are you pretending to agree when you actually disagree really strongly? I cannot stand the false fronts on those sorts of things. Charles Marsh at the University of Virginia, who is famous for his work both on Martin Luther King and on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, has a group, I don’t know what they call it, an institute of lived theology.

And, how we live is expresses theology. Not that it expresses ideas, but the life is a witness to the reality of God in the face of Jesus Christ in our world. And this has been a big impact on me, of lived theology, and it’s helped me put together all these years of studying discipleship and listening from Howard Marshall on the judgment.

Live theology is what matters, and, as I said, I’m pretty much direct in my discourse with people about what I agree with and what I disagree with. But what I cannot stand is hypocrisy when people pretend to be saying that they’re doing something for one reason, when you know full well that that’s not what’s going on, is they’re just giving a smokescreen.

And in the Tov book, my daughter, Laura Berenger, and I, map out false narratives which we saw in megachurches in abundance, and of course you see them as well. And I think I have an instinctive radar for the nonsense and the lies that churches have learned to tell about what’s actually going on.

And I think we have; I don’t find this in with mainline pastors and leaders. Now, I do agree with those people who say, well, they confess the creed, but they don’t actually believe in the deity of Christ. I don’t like that. I think that’s lying. It’s hypocrisy. My experience with mainliners has been more of a high integrity of life and theology, and a lot less interest in systematic theology. And sometimes one that bothers me a little bit, and more than a little bit, but at the same time, I really appreciate people who are marked by integrity.

Julie: And a lot of that does start with just intellectual honesty and yet you referenced this a little bit earlier, like for some of these pastors, if they actually say what they’re thinking, they’ll get kicked out of their church.

I know a guy who, in fact, it’s one of the authors of the Elephant’s Debt that blog for those who aren’t familiar with it. It’s kind of a protest blog that was launched, I think, back in 2012 about James McDonald Harvest Bible Chapel. It was great. I couldn’t have done the work that I did on Harvest without their help.

But I know Scot was interviewing at some churches and the problem with Scot is he’s so intellectually honest, and when it would come to the doctrinal statement that they wanted him to affirm, he just was like, I know why you believe that, and I know why I could believe that, but I can’t say that I know that that’s true, and neither can you I mean.

Scot: I like that.

Julie: He’s just too intellectually honest, I think, and this is sad, though, I mean, what does it say about our church, if you’re really intellectually honest, that you can’t get hired by half the churches, because they want you to assert certainty in areas where there isn’t certainty?

You talk about this, about stumbling blocks, about maybe minor theologies. They want you to make things that are minor, major. Like if you believe in women pastors, you’re going to hell. You know, if you believe in old earth, you’re going to hell. This is a central, you can’t know Jesus if you don’t believe in a six-day 24-hour creationism. I mean, what has happened to our church that we need to press all these flags, and we can’t as believers just gather and be honest and have a diversity of opinion on secondary things?

Scot: You know, the sociologists would say, I’m reading Samuel Perry’s book. A Religion for Realists. It’s really, it’s really sharp. I like Samuel Perry. And he would say that things like sixth day creationism, pre trib rapture, inerrancy, King James Version only, that these are Ideological stands of a group, and what really matters is the group that you belong to. And since this is what the group adheres to, this is what I defend, and it doesn’t matter whether there’s evidence for it or not.

Now, anybody who would deny that group doesn’t influence this is just simply mistaken. And it’s sad that they would deny it, but there’s a lot of truth in this is that these are symptoms, symbols, of our group that we adhere to far more than what we  intellectually can affirm. But we realize in denying those symptoms, those systems, those totems, we lose the group. And this is one of the major existential crises of those who go through deconstruction, is they suddenly realize, I can’t be a part of this group of people, and these are my friends.

But when they discover that I don’t believe what they believe, they will disown me. And any people who, any person who has experienced Let’s say the blackballing of a group, the catcalling of a group the judgment of a group knows exactly what this feels like. It’s traumatizing. It’s profoundly traumatizing.

When you say, these are my friends and now they don’t like me, and now they’re saying things about me that are not only untrue, but It’s so uncharitable. We should be able to get along about these things, even if we differ. And unfortunately, a lot of churches have sick systems where this is the way they operate.

And you know, people experience the rough side of churches because it’s more a tribe and a group than it is theology and truth. And there’s a lot of scapegoating in churches. If we can all blame, we may be at odds with one another, but if we can find someone to blame, we’re going to all feel better about ourselves. It’s so profoundly unchristian to scapegoat and it happens in churches.

Julie: I found it interesting that you kind of land your book at the end with a call for shepherds. Yeah. And of course, for a lot of this group, shepherds have not been, have not been shepherds, right? The pastors that they’ve known have treated them very poorly, or they’ve treated people they loved very poorly.

And yet at the same time, when I read that, I was just like, cause we do the RESTORE conference. We were talking about this at the beginning. And I adore these people, the people that come. whose hearts have been broken and wounded. And yet I do believe their prophetic voice.

I do believe they see a lot more clearly than a lot of the church. Like they’ve had their eyes opened and yet they still hold on to faith. And I love when we get together because it’s such a powerful gathering. At the same time, I get to go home to a house church where they get me, and I get them and we’ve kind of been through a lot of this together.

My heart breaks for people who don’t have that because at the end of the day, the reason when you’re talking about wanting to be a part of a group is that we all want to be a part of a group. We all need, we want to belong, we want to be loved. And you know, We are the body of Christ. We want to be with brothers and sisters.

And so to, to live an isolated existence with just me and Jesus, is not how it was intended to be. No, it’s very lonely. What I see in this book is some hope that I I’m hearing you express hope because you wouldn’t be writing this book if you didn’t have hope that one, maybe the church, there’ll be a certain amount of people that will hear have ears to hear, and will maybe change the way they’re doing things, but also for people to get a, maybe a vision and a heart, for this group of people. So where do you see hope and what would you like to see happen because of what you’ve written?

Scot: One of the things we want, we want the de-constructors to be heard. We want churches to listen to them. And in fact, one of our editors, we’d like to take credit for it, but we can’t. One of our editors said, this is the exit interview that churches refuse to give, and you’ve provided it for the churches. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that. So it was very clever. We can’t take credit.

But I have hope about the de-constructors. There are so many believers, followers of Jesus in the world, in the church, in the United States, who are exactly where you are. They’re not in some famous church. They gather in fellowship with other believers, and they find fellowship, they find worship, they find genuine encouragement and consolation and support, and that’s what the church is supposed to be.

And there’s so much of this going on. One of my hopes is that of the exposure of the nonsense going on behind the curtains and behind closed doors in churches. So I appreciate so much what you are doing at The Roys Report. And I know you have to take your heat. I’m glad I’m not taking some of that heat, but I’ve taken some myself.

I really, I really do believe that there’s hope in this. I also believe that there’s going to be a new generation of church leaders and pastors. We have a system right now that props up charismatic males with great speaking skills and clever words and clever images. And that’s what we think a pastor is.

Eugene Peterson griped about this his entire career, that a pastor is a spiritual director of a limited number of people. That’s what he believed. And I totally agree with him. A pastor is someone who is pastoring people. A pastor is not someone who stands on a platform Sunday morning and delivers brilliant sermons.

I believe in sermons. But that’s not what a pastor is. A pastor cares for people in their care. And if you discover that your pastor doesn’t know your name and you’ve introduced yourself to him the fifteenth time, find another church,  because you don’t have a pastor. And having a pastor who cares for you is really important.

So my hope is in the next generation. My hope is in pastors who will take the task of spiritual formation seriously. But ultimately, my hope is in the resurrection of Jesus descending of the Spirit that can empower us to a long faithfulness in the same direction. I think that’s a play on something Eugene Peterson wrote. Didn’t he say, a long obedience in the same direction? Is that the title of a book? It’s a long faithfulness that we are called to, it’s not being a superstar. It’s not being full of miracles. It’s a daily living of loving God, loving your neighbor, and doing what we should as followers of Jesus. So I’m hopeful in that.

Julie: Amen. I’m hopeful as well. I see so many good things but it’s coming, it’s growing out of the ashes out of the desolation . For example, I was talking to one of my board members, he’s just telling me about micro churches in the Dallas area because you know, Dallas, man! have they had the implosion of a lot of ministries and mega churches and yet where are all those people going?

Well, now they’re finding new expressions. And that’s what I see in the spirit is that you don’t know where it’s coming from, you don’t know where it’s going, but there’s always doing something new and it’s always bringing life where there was none. And so I’m hopeful. I am hopeful. I couldn’t exist without hope, and I see it in your writing as well. I love this book. So thank you, Scot, for putting it together and for letting de-constructors know that they’re heard. That is huge.

Scot: Thank you.

Julie: And I look forward to seeing you in a few months too.

Scot: Yeah, that’s right. Well, thank you, Julie, for all you do for your ministry, for your transparency about even change and some deconstruction, and for hosting RESTORE because you know, when we’ve been with you, we’ve come away saying, these are our people.

Julie: I feel the same way. All right. Blessings to you. Thanks so much.

Scot: You too.

Julie: Thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church.

I’m Julie Roys, and just a reminder that if you give $75 or more to The Roys Report this month, we’ll send you Scot’s book, Invisible Jesus, as well as Need to Know: Empowering Female Leadership and Why It’s Essential for the Future of the Church. Again, the end of the year is a crucial fundraising time for us, and our goal to end in the black and set us up to provide even more resources for survivors and people interested in reforming the church is $95,000.

To do that, we’ll need people who not only believe in what we’re doing here at The Roys Report, but who are also willing to sacrificially give to make it happen. So if that’s you, would you please consider giving your best gift during December, and as an expression of our thanks, we’ll send you Invisible Jesus and Need to Know.

Just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATED  Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Spotify, or YouTube. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review, and then please share the podcast on social media. So more people can hear about this great content again. Thanks so much for joining us today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged.