Thanks for reading another edition of CrossTalk!
A few months ago I mentioned how you can expect guest posts from time to time and today we have our first one from Amar Peterman. On top of being a close friend from Princeton, Amar is an Indian American author, speaker, and public theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He writes regularly in his weekly newsletter, This Common Life.
Today, he’s talking about Deconstruction and the process of refining and rebuilding our faith. For those who may not be familiar, Deconstruction is a hot topic among younger Christians today and it’s leaving a lot of people confused, despairing, and disoriented.
In today’s post, Amar offers a quick guide to how those going through this process can form their faith in Jesus again.
Enjoy 👇
The texture of deconstruction is rough and gritty.
It is the irritation of sandpaper rubbing against and tearing away at us bit by bit. The polish of young faith fades until all that is left is a tarnished core.
Some look at this core and say there is nothing good there. In their eyes, it is ugly, irredeemable—even dangerous.
However, for those willing to do the hard work of building, the core left after these questions is a firm foundation upon which faith can be formed.
But how do we form faith?
We form faith in a community of believers.
A fool picks up a hammer and decides to build a house on their own. This is because it is nearly impossible to build a long-lasting home without the help of others. In the Christian faith, we have what the author of Hebrews calls “a great cloud of witnesses.” These are saints who have gone before—cheering us on, offering their lives as an example of the spiritual life. We also have seasoned saints in our churches and communities who have built (and rebuilt) their “home” for decades.
Faith formed in isolation will always be prone to crumble.
We were not made to be alone. To the deepest parts of our theological, psychological, and physical selves, we have an innate desire to know and be known. Faith formed apart from the diverse community of followers of Jesus also hinders us from seeing God in God’s fullness.
This is because, as the Dutch-Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck writes in his dogmatics, the imago Dei is held in the collective. It is the people of God who collectively bear witness to God’s redemptive work in the world. If we want to form a faith that can stand the test of time, we must build in community.
But what about materials?
The most important “material” we need in building our faith is the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
Jesus is our blueprint and lead architect. He is the source of all our other materials. There is no firm faith without Jesus. He is ‘the way, the truth, and the life,’ the fullness of God made flesh.
We also need the Scriptures, which bear witness to God’s redemptive action throughout history.
The Scriptures are filled with stories of faith built on solid ground and those who thought they could build their home on their own. The Bible also contains the wisdom of that ‘great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. From this wisdom, we may build with confidence. The Bible gives us the big picture of faith. It reminds us of what faith does and why it must be formed in the first place.
Finally, to best build and reconstruct our faith, we must have glasses equipped with lenses that allow us to rightly perceive the world around us.
If we don’t understand the social context in which our faith resides, we will be horribly unprepared to build. Like the man who builds his house on the sand, if we fail to see where we are building we will soon find our home washed away by the sea.
This list is certainly non-exhaustive. The process of building up faith is not linear—it is a winding path we walk. But, by God’s grace, we have been given the tools to form faith well.