Name a single person who ever deconstructed and came out more biblically faithful, more conservative, and more of a fundamentalist in their word and deed.
They don’t exist, because deconstruction=death.
You ever hear someone say “I deconstructed and now I hate sin even more?”
You ever hear someone say “I deconstructed and now I’m even more against same-sex marriage and unbiblical sexual activity”?
You ever hear someone say “I deconstructed and now I have an even more particular and emphatic view of what the gospel is and what one must do to be saved”?
You ever hear someone say “I deconstructed and now I’m even a more ferocious defender of the exclusivity of Christ”?
You ever hear someone say “I deconstructed and now I’m more pro-life and even more of an abortion abolitionist”?
You ever hear someone say “I deconstructed and now I have an ever higher view of the scriptures and a greater intolerance for bible twisting and exegesis?”
No. You don’t.
All you hear is “I deconstructed and now I don’t go to church and am more open to other truths and also love is love and maybe it’s ok to curb stomp a fetus.”
Deconstruction is spiritual strychnine, and those looking to indulge in it never come out the other side whole or healthy, but rather passers-on of the very theological poison they claimed to reject.
Rapper and Producer Lecrae has released a new song, “Deconstruction” off his album Church Clothes 4, where he disses Voddie Baucham and mentions several pastors he once looked up to while extoling the deconstruction and he’s been through, which he thinks has made him a better Christian and saved his faith.
We’ve spoken at length about how by every measurable standard, the deconstruction Lecrae is so grateful to have undergone is not healthy, but rather is the picture of unhealth leading to death. Let’s look at his life over the last two years.
Lecrae believes this is all healthy, and in the song he takes a shot at pastor Voddie Baucham, while namedropping John Piper, Tony Evans, and even wishy-washy Churchome pastor Judah Smith as people who contributed to his deconstruction. In particular, he points to Baucham for telling him he needs to reorient his thinking after he bought the lie that an unarmed Michael Brown was murdered by police for no reason, rather than lawfully killed after attempting to grab a police officer’s gun after he committed a theft.
I would speak at churches, hang with leaders and such You know, Judah, Piper, and Keller, Tony Evans was clutch I was so involved, never thought that I could fall, y’all Right before the fall of 2015, I was all off It involved killing Michael Brown, had me feeling down Tweeted ’bout it, Christians call me clown, I was losing ground And Voddie was a hero of mine, met with him plenty times This time, when he spoke, it cut me deeper than I realized Doubled-down, spoke about my pain, I was met with blame “Shame on you, ‘Crae, stop crying, get back to Jesus’ name” Cut me deep, I was losing sleep, “God, ain’t these Your sheep?” Why they hate me like they do? Maybe grace is really cheap Maybe this is all a lie, they don’t really love me They just love it when I say the things they wanna hear in public They’re like following they God mean turnin’ on Black people Is Black evil? Why do they hate and attack people? I’m vulnerable and cautious, I’m reading (James) Baldwin Ta-Nehisi got me thinking, now I’m going all in I ain’t know if God was real no mo’ Every day we gettin’ killed, and I can’t deal no more
After reiterating the other lie that black folk are being shot by police officers for no reason, He goes on to explain that he fell into a period of depression and sin, where he doubted his faith, but then he had a Damascus-like encounter where he realized that “I let the church trauma turn into a God wound” and after reading Critical Race Theorists like James Baldwin and Ta-Henisi Coates, he’s made for himself a new faith which works for him.
I learned the western world is twisting up the scriptures So when I re-enlisted, I learned the eastern context the way that Jesus meant it My peace has been cemented, my soul has been re-lifted My deconstruction ended, reconstruction is beginning
With the fruit of his deconstruction that we’ve seen so far, we hate to see what the future of his construction will hold.
In a series of posts on Twitter, musical artist and producer Lecrae has challenged the notion that Christian ‘deconstruction’ is always bad, arguing that there are two types; one ‘healthy’ and the ‘dangerous’. One type of deconstruction is healthy and involves “using scriptures to deconstruct unhealthy ideas and practices” and the other is unhealthy because it “questions the bible on account of it not lining up with culture.
It is clear by every measurable standard that the deconstruction Lecrae is so grateful to have undergone is not healthy, but rather is the picture of unhealth that is leading to death. Let’s look at his life over the last two years:
Two days ago we told you about how Chris Llewellyn, frontman and lead singer of the well-known Christian Rock/ Worship Band The Rend Collective showed himself to be thoroughly compromised on the question of whether or not we should bow to our culture’s confusion on transgendered pronouns, telling Kris Valloton on Instagram:
“However you feel about the implications for sports (a wider conversation for sure) Calling a trans woman a man is hateful. Unkind. Don’t participate in this kind of hate speech. History won’t be kind to you.”
This was a surprise to many, as his public lyrics are at odd with his wretched theology and worldview. Upon digging into it further, we found that Llewellyn has some deep-seated problems, all of which likely stem from the deconstruction of his faith he’s widely acknowledged he’s undergone in the last 10 years, explaining: “When I started asking big bold questions about who God is, they warned me I was losing my faith. NOPE. I was finding the wonder all over again.” Here are a few of the many red flags we found:
LGBTQ
While Llewellyn is not at this point overtly and publicly professing that he personally believes that being an unrepentant homosexual is not a sin, he sure comes close. Writing on his Storied Substack and responding to someone who said homosexuality was sinful:
It seems that your position is that all LGBTQ expression is sinful and that there is no room for doubt about that. Fair enough. There’s room for that.
What I’m saying is that I think there is room for conversation around what is sinful and what is not. There always has been.
For example the church used to think the movie theatre, tattoos, dancing and consuming any quantity of alcohol were sins. A lot of people felt the Bible was ultra clear on these things. But there was room for debate here – within the church.
and:
“The ancient creeds, such as the Apostles’ Creed were designed as benchmarks to define the beliefs that qualify someone as Christian— and not a one of them mentions having a concrete stance either way on the inclusion and affirmation of the LGBTQ community as one of those critical beliefs.
Jesus doesn’t touch on the issue one time in four gospels worth of reporting. That’s not to say that he doesn’t care about the conversation. But He certainly didn’t make it the focal point of what it means to be a disciple. (Things like: love for the outsider, and unity among believers seemed to be the priority over hot takes on hot button issues….
Wherever you eventually land, I’m not sure it matters as much as we’ve been conditioned to think.
It’s not a deal breaker.
It’s my belief that there is room for diversity of opinion on this within the capital C Church.
In response to a completely orthodox post about how God designed sex between a man and a woman only:
What is a sad thing, exactly?
Hell
Several times within his page, Llewellyn recommends reading Rob Bell’s ‘Love Win’ which is basically a belief in radical inclusivity, and that all people will be saved in the end.
So when Christians want to win an argument, sometimes they say the sentence “The bible is very clear that…”. Is it though? Or is it a book that’s written in languages we don’t understand, by people whose culture and context we don’t understand, about a God whose text says we can’t fully understand? I prefer to think of the bible as beautiful and useful and God-breathed, those are claims it makes about itself. I love reading it every day, but ‘clear’ it ain’t.
Miscellaneous
This recommended reading list of books they love: basically self-explanatory.
In short, the frontman for Rend Collective is messed up theologically, yet in his deconstructed state, believes he’s closer to God than ever.
The Gospel Coalition is like one of the SBC’s Lifeway bookstores. There are a few good resources, but there are so many bad resources and falsities that a discerning pastor should hesitate to send a young undiscerning believer there. Pin-pointing unconventional sources of idolatry seems to be a favorite past-time of TGC authors. While western society grappled with the deconstruction of the nuclear family, one rocket science of a TGC author decided to tweet about the problematic nature of the Christian family becoming an idol, and then followed the tweet up with an article that identified idolatry of the family as a pressing issue for evangelical Christians. It is undeniable that anything in life can become an idol. John Calvin aptly stated, “The Human Heart is an Idol Factory.” Pointing out idolatry of family in the context of the deconstructing state of modern western society, however, is equivalent to straining a gnat and swallowing a camel.
In keeping with the TGC tradition of offering shoot-from-the-hip-Twitter-hot-takes on important cultural issues, John Starke, TGC Author and Pastor of Apostles Church Uptown in New York City recently offered an atrocious theory on deconstruction and idolatry.
Apparently, according to John, the deconstructing apostates who claim to have lost their faith on the road to embracing sexual debauchery, secularism, leftist views on infanticide, and Marxism; were all just experiencing the sanctifying work of “removing the cultural idolatry” from their faith.
If one follows Starke’s statement to its logical conclusion, deconstructionists like Josh Harris are merely growing in their faith by casting off the “conservative idolatry” of fundamentalism (ie everything that constitutes orthodox teaching in the church.), by embracing all that the world has to offer. At best, Starke’s position on deconstruction takes Christianity, guts it of the Gospel and all its scriptural implications, creating a rotting corpse of a body of faith-the creation of a latitudinarian. At worst, Starke presents true Christianity as the complete opposite of how Christianity is presented in scripture, with evil being good and good being evil.
To his credit, Starke doesn’t hide that his position is leftist, claiming leftism as his “camp”, unlike some TGC authors who masquerade as conservatives. Starke doesn’t pretend to be a complementarian or conservative and regularly aligns himself with such leftist woke Big Eva types as Thabiti Anyabwile (Ron Burns), Beth Moore, and Kristen Du-Mez.
For those who would claim that Starke is far removed from his TGC days, TGC continues to platform Starke’s previous body of work, and even recommends that you follow him on Twitter, effectively inviting TGC’s audience to seriously consider his heretical view on deconstruction.
Editor’s Note. This article was written by Paul Brown for Protestia
