Deconstruction is okay, to a point. It’s okay to change your beliefs, especially when you realize what you believed before was toxic/harmful/unloving/not actually in the Bible.

If you replace that, though, with something equally problematic but in the opposite direction, you’re not pursuing the truth, you didn’t repent, you’re just contrarian and/or like being right. You don’t love God or your neighbor, you just want to justify your selfishness.

And that is unfortunately what a lot of us got discipled to do, intentionally or unintentionally! So we have to not just stop at doctrine or even practice; we have to do what the Bible tells us to do and be transformed.

This is not easy, especially when our hurt or abuse by the church makes it hard to separate the trauma from the teaching. It may require walking away for a while. But I hope you find a place to heal where you don’t feel like you have to heal yourself.

By the way, while we’re trying to figure things out, we should listen—like really listen—to marginalized people who deeply love Jesus. The Black church, Hispanic/Latino folks, Asian Americans, LGBTQ folks, people with disabilities, abused people, poor people, incarcerated folks.

So much nonsense in evangelicalism has happened because we didn’t pay attention to what those folks had to say.