Faith.In.Life

#Deconstruction

The Death of a “Thousand and One” Cuts

In a January 23, 2023 blog, Philip Yancey recounted an long standing email conversation he had with Bart Campolo.  For those of who don’t know, Bart is the son of the famous Baptist speaker and writer Tony Campolo.  Once a Christian and teacher himself, Bart ultimately declared himself an atheist and launched a new career as a “humanist chaplain” and podcaster.   Bart and Philip were reflecting on Yancey’s book and memoir Where the Light Fell.  The blog begins with Bart’s own words where he says:

First of all, thank you for thinking of me that way. You were right, of course, about me identifying with some of your story, but honestly, given my impressions of our few conversations, I was surprised by how little our journeys have in common. Indeed, one might fairly say we are polar opposites: You’ve worked out and kept faith in a good, loving and distinctively Christian God in the face of a thousand and one life experiences suggesting no such person exists, while I’ve let go of that same story despite growing up with every emotional, economic, and spiritual privilege imaginable and having more than my share of moments when the Holy Spirit seemed to be whispering in my ear.…

While many people will ultimately use a crisis point to leave their faith or give them permission to start deconstructing, there are many like Bart Campolo who, at some point, will look back on their life and faith and realize that their faith died slowly through the death of “a thousand and one life experiences,” or what I call the death of a thousand cuts.  The strange thing about this perspective, though, is we define the existence or non-existence of God on our experience of this sinful world, and not on the Truth of who God was, is, and forever more will be.  A little later one in the same section, Bart continues his questioning of God based on Philip’s own life experiences:

Please don’t get me wrong, Philip. I’m not suggesting that the Jesus you met as the Good Samaritan in that little prayer room wasn’t genuinely present to you. Rather, I’m wondering why, after all the terrible, ichthus-branded nonsense you’d endured to that point, you kept seeking out that experience, or even stayed open to it, even though you’d not yet seen any indication that Christianity was a sane or reliable pathway to love and happiness. In other words, I’m wondering why you cooperated with a worldview that hitherto had only let you down?

I have been working on a side project called “Confessions of a Pastor.”  There are two sections in the book talking about my own experiences of this sinful world.  The first section is called “The First Fall,” contemplating Adam and Eve’s own sin and their fall from Eden to then consider how it affected me as a young boy.  The second section is called “The Second Fall.”  In that section I contemplate my experiences in my first Lead Pastor call in Colorado where I experienced the realities of the fall in a different way - this time through the church I was serving.  I think the easiest way to summarize at least in a part of my time in CO was this:  There was one person on the nominating committee who, as I understood it, gave their approval to offering the position to me, and then they left the church before I ever got there.  I never understood quite what happened there other than to see that a person can say one thing, then turn around and do another.  

There are two realities of this world that I am convinced that many of us may have been told, but even if we were told, we outright ignored the advice:  First, this world is broken and bad things will happen.  From a Christian point of view, the Bible calls this sin.  Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but we will not be completely delivered from our sins until Jesus returns.  Even Jesus said the hungry will always be among you.  I have often thought you could replace “the hungry” with any other sin to say “The naked will always be among you,” or “There will always be murder or death among you,” etc.  Therefore, our work will never be completely over because Jesus calls us to care for the vulnerable and even love our enemy.  Second, and maybe more importantly, because this world is sinful it means people are sinners.  The Pastor I worked under in Overland Park, KS, Tim Waggoner, put it this way “The church would be great if it was not for the people.”  When I first heard him say that, my first thought was can he even say that?  Then I realized Timothy Keller agreed with this sentiment.  He pointed out in his book “The Reasons for God” that because Christianity believes we are both sinners who also can be saved by grace, then there is something about Christians that, inevitably, are also hypocrites.   

As you listen to someone like Bart Campolo’s thought process play out, though, you will very quickly find that he has decided the existence of God is based off of the evidence the fallen and broken world gives us.  As we return to Campolo’s and Yancey’s interaction, you see that both Bart and Philip enounctemed hardships over and over again.  Bart walked away from the faith, while God found Philip.  In the quote I referenced from Bart earlier, Campolo is basically saying that our bad experiences disprove God.  If this is true, one doesn’t need to live very long to have plenty of evidence to disprove God.  If this is true, every Christian should stop believing in God eventually, its just a matter of how many cuts a faith can take until it dies.

And yet, if Bart’s assumption is true, then one should be able to assume that anyone throughout Scripture who faces hardship would deconstruct and deconvert from the faith.  Two examples come to mind of the many that I could refer to, but I am specifically thinking of Job and Joseph.  In Job’s case, he loses everything and has every reason to deconstruct or deconvert.  Yet, the text itself says Job remained faithful and Job is even admonished by God for questioning who is in charge of our very life and death.  In Joseph’s case, his life is turned upside down by ,first, his brothers beating him and leaving for dead only for Jospeh to end up as a slave.  Then, Potiphar’s wife accused Joseph of attempted rape after he rejected her advances placing him in prison.  Even still, when Jospeh ascends to power as a high official and finally has the chance to exact revenge on his brothers who were the catalyst for his terrible experience,  he instead says: 

“…what you meant for evil against me, God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

Both Job and Jospeh have some of the worst experiences and every reason to deconstruct, but don’t.  Rather, they both give us a framework of how God is still God even when the world is crashing in around us.  

The greatest example of this is found through Jesus Christ.  While Job and Jospeh are great examples of how the world will fail us, they still pale in comparison to what Jesus faced.  Jesus was rejected in his home town, the pharisees were constantly out to kill this ‘good teacher,’ and eventually every one of his disciples would deny him.  Jesus was innocent, and yet the crowds called for his crucifixion and death.  While Jesus may have had deep emotions about everything that happened to him, he always relied on God, his heavenly Father, and kept pushing forward.  As I faced what I did in CO, I started seeing Jesus’ words on Calvary very differently when he prayed to God about the crowds who called for his death saying “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  Jesus then gives us the framework for not only how we are to follow him through offering equally relentless forgiveness, but he also is the reason for why we continue to serve the least of these.  

Although Bart Campolos deconstructed or deconverted from the Christian faith, he now serves as a Humanist Chaplain.  What is particularly strange about this is that even he himself will reference Jesus’ work to be what he models his own work after.  He suggests that he believes in the efficacy of Jesus’ life, but then denies his death and resurrection.  I came upon another interview with Bart Campolo in the documentary “The American Gospel:  In Christ Alone.”  At one point Bart suggests that he looked at all the brokenness of the world and came to a certain peace when he came to accept the fact that all we have is what we can do in these terrible situations.  I found this so incredibly depressing for Bart to somehow base what he does on Jesus’ own actions, but ultimately does not find any hope in Jesus’ own promises.  Jesus promised us that when He returns all wrongs will be made right and the hungry will be fed.  Equally, Paul outright tells us in Romans 8:18:  18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory He will reveal to us later.  

From a true Biblical perspective they warn us that the thousand and one cuts will come.  In fact, in this life the cuts will be endless and it would be easy to throw up our hands and call it quits.  But, the Bible also points out that despite what seems like an endless amount of cuts, it is actually but a momentary affliction that cannot compare to the glory that is to come.  We know that the road to that glory is narrow, and not all will continue on their way to that Celestial City much like we see in the class tale “Pilgrim’s Progress.”  Yet, for those who do endure the cuts, for them there will be a Heavenly crown.  As we go through this momentary affliction, may we never lose site of where we are going.