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The term “Deconstruction” is a threatening term to institutional power. To “deconstruct” is to undergo a process of self-criticism, to look critically at one’s own beliefs, assumptions about reality, truth, and faith. Deconstruction is captured really well in the movie The Truman Show when the character is in the boat facing the storm and his boat bonks into the wall of the studio. In this post, I will show that the unwinding of our truth assumptions is common to everyone, is healthy, but also cannot be taken too far.

If your parents perpetrated upon you the lies about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, then you probably remember the moment when the bigger framework of reality displaced the smaller one which you had enjoyed as a child. Remember those feelings of being duped, that everyone was in on the lie, or that you were the last to find out? It’s a form of humiliation which shapes our future assumptions about reality. This is one of many deconstruction processes which we undergo in life and like the bigger ones to follow, it may not have been initiated by your own discovery. It may have been forced upon you unexpectedly.

Our first institutional power which gives us a pseudonym is our family. Our family of origin is the first institution to define realty for us. We have no other framework for what is real and true other than how our family defines it. Family tells us our world is cruel and hostile, or full of awe and wonder, or a big booby trap of temptations, or a pass-fail test of our character, or if its just a random, meaningless, ongoing process in which we are a tiny speck. Once we start making friends, we realize that not all world-views are created equal, and by the time we get through our education, we have usually deconstructed our world-view of origin, in favor of a larger view which includes others.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” (Matthew 10:34-35)

Deconstruction is necessary for growth and to expand our consciousness. Like a root-bound plant in its formative container, our frameworks for truth must be replanted into larger containers.

“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” (Mark 2:22)

Institutional powers seek to define reality for everyone. These (hexousias–authorities) of the (kosmos-World systems) as the Bible describes them, presuppose that they possess The Truth, and can only remain in tact so long as people remain “in on the assumption.” The principalities and powers of this world form concentric circles, each widening and enlarging the framework of truth, with the largest circles being politics and religion. Deconstruction flows outward as follows:

1. Family of Origin
2. Friends and Peers
3. Education and Training
4. Vocation
5. Politics
6. Religion (including Science)

Remember that each institution is competing to define reality for you. If successful, it essentially renames you with a title, an “image.” If we accept that “image”, we take on this ‘mark’…this fake ID. Then we begin to live in such a way as to prove to others that we are our image, paying homage to the institutional power that named us. As a child I’d put on my Spider-man costume and insist I could climb walls. I would later wear many other costumes, I was a Winder, Ponderosa Mustang, a Pastoral Ministries major, pentecostal, pastor, elder, husband, fundraiser, father, doctoral grad, sales executive, district manager, Vice-president, reformed, independent, contemplative, blogger, podcaster, and on it goes forever.

We are each offered a million names and we cannot have them all at the same time. When we trade one fake ID in on the next one, we undergo a deconstruction in order to do it. This is normal, but we must gain eyes to see the deeper thing here, namely, that we are assessing what we determine to be the Truth. This critical examination of the truth is known as spirituality.

Deconstruction, while common and necessary, does come with a cost. Once our framework for truth outgrows the institution which framed it, we will fall out of uniformity with those who still uphold it. Try changing your political registration. Wear an opposing team’s jersey. See what happens if you explore other religions or abandon one altogether. To the degree that the institutional power can harm you, it will. First it will try and reason with you, keep you in, but if it cannot satisfy your questions, if its reality is too small for you, then it will turn on you, and kill you socially, financially, spiritually, and even physically if possible. This is how we know evil has co-opted the institution.

That’s how we know we must deconstruct. Freedom doesn’t come by way of “power-over”, but by subversion.

“Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 3:10)

Atheism is not the result of deconstruction, but the result of institutional renaming. If Christianity is viewed as an alternative religion in competition with all other world religions, then there is nothing after a person deconstructs from it. Fortunately, the Christian religion is not what saves us from deconstructing into oblivion, it has never saved anyone. Thus deconstructing from it doesn’t cause someone to lose something it never gave them. But the goal can’t be to deconstruct so far as to have nothing either. That’s a road to nihilism and apathy…two horrible prisons.

So what are we to do?

Christ following is different.

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39)

No other figure in human history that promised to lead people out of their prisons into the freedom of knowing their true name found in God. The Bible reveals that Jesus systematically deconstructed from each and every institutional power...his family, is community, his vocation, his religion and his politics. He was not named by any of them, by staying true to who He was in God. Christ following leads us in like manner to authenticity and reality. We become more real in Christ, more of ourselves in Christ, and more free in Christ. It’s counter-intuitive we gain ourselves when we deny ourselves or deconstruct.

This means that as we deconstruct from institutional powers, we become capable of reconstructing our real selves in God. We can now redeem every institution in life because we are no longer dependent upon them for an identity. We can challenge their assumptions, and lead people to self-criticism and healing. Once the institutions begins serving constituents instead of vice-versa, they morph into Jesus’ blueprint for the Church, and the redemption of the entire world becomes visible to everyone.

The New World is as close as our neighbor.