“For the Bible Told Me So”: A Journey in Deconstruction
Are you Deconstructing your Christian faith?
Deconstructing your Christian faith is an experience that more and more Christians all over the world are engaging in and traveling through. It happens for many reasons but the heart is the same, the Christianity they were taught, given and believed in no longer works for their lives.
Many mainstream Christians believe there is only one way to be a Christian. Deconstruction happens when who you are and what you believe comes into conflict with what you’ve been taught. I am a lesbian woman and I was taught being gay was wrong. I want to take a second to mention that if you have trauma around these kinds of topics this is a trigger warning for those who were taught harmful theology.
Prior to college, everything I knew about Christianity came from my family, mostly my father. I was a naturally curious kid, and my dad liked teaching me about the world through his point of view. That’s where I first learned about the beliefs of other faiths and about his views on gay people. Later, I discovered there’s a lot more nuance to the Bible than my dad and family had made it seem, and I started to deconstruct the faith I was taught to have.
Every religious influence in my life prior to college fed me the narrative that being gay was not compatible with the teachings of the Bible.
I was taught to think it was unnatural and was praised by my family when I expressed those opinions. Deconstruction begins to happen when we are presented with the idea that there is one narrow path and there’s something wrong with you if you don’t fit in.
My first encounter with the idea of the word gay was when I was about six. I would often sneak down the staircase at night when I couldn’t sleep, wait for my parents to hear me, then walk over to where they were watching tv. I must have overheard the word and asked what it meant. I don’t remember the words my dad used. But I remember I said, “Ew.”
My dad said,
“Good.”
And my mom said,
“Matt!”
But, I felt pleased that I made him proud.
When I was young, my dad took me to Chick-fil-A. The line weaved out the door and into the parking lot. Hungry, I asked, “why is it so crowded, and why didn’t we go somewhere else for lunch?”
My dad explained to me how the owner of Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage.
He said we were there to show our support. I felt a surge of excitement to be a part of something bigger than me. What came next was the first pushback against my family’s values that I had ever experienced. This sparked the first line of questioning that eventually led to my deconstruction of my faith.
I later posted a picture of the line on my brand new Instagram account. My aunts lauded me while classmates from middle school questioned the morality of Chick-fil-A. I was horrified to find out there were people so ready to argue with me, and the only argument I had been prepared with was, “The Bible says so.”
This was my introduction to the idea that people who weren’t Christians should not have to be ruled by Christian ideals. It also showed me how ill equipped I was to argue a stance I’d only been told to believe in… because the Bible says so.
When I was in high school, I met and became friends with a few of my peers who were gay. As I got to know them, I really started to wonder why these people were condemned to hell as I had been taught. Additionally, the increase in representation of queer people in media and in movies over the years allowed the topic to remain at the forefront in my mind. I felt a strange draw to those characters that I wouldn’t understand until later, so I continued to seek those influences out. I wasn't actively deconstructing my faith yet because I did not know that existed. But at this time, I learned to live in a grey area between my taught faith and outside influences.
One day I really wanted to show my sister one of the queer movies I was obsessed with. I also hoped to expose her more to gay culture so she wouldn’t so easily adopt the opinions we’d been raised with. Midway through, my mom walked in upset with what we were watching. I asked her what was so bad about being gay. She didn’t have a solid answer for me other than simply stating the phrase “Sodom and Gomorrah” over and over again as her rebuttal.
I didn’t really remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but, when she left to run errands, I ran to the computer to look up the story. I read it, confused. It didn’t talk about being gay…
On our family computer, I continued looking for an answer on why being gay was bad while also looking for arguments that it might not be that bad.
This research would later become the foundation of my deconstruction of the Bible. It was also the start of further discussions with my mother as she started to deconstruct the social pressures of consistent church attendance and how purity culture pressured her into early marriage.
By the end of high school, I was very hesitant to go to a Christian college as was the norm in my family. I had found the Bible and Christian culture inconsistent. I saw healthy behaviors where I was taught to see evil. I saw toxic behaviors in spaces I was taught to see as holy. But it was my best option, so I accepted.
When I started college, I surprisingly found more diverse theologies and opinions than any I’d encountered in the Church. Don’t get me wrong, the administration was and still is extremely conservative when it comes to accepted doctrine. However, many of my teachers and peers showed me that Christianity can look vastly different for each person.
My first semester, I took my first Bible class ever. It was Intro to the New Testament. When I walked in the door, my professor was sipping coffee out of a Bernie 2016 mug preparing for class. I was shocked enough to see a professor at my college as a vocal Democrat, let alone a Democratic socialist.
I was introduced to a lot of new things in that class. I’d never really read the Bible. I’d never really read the gospels. I’d never really read any of Paul’s letters. Prior to that class, I’d only ever read excerpts out of context, both historically and textually, in church or in passing.
Midway through that semester, my professor decided to try something new with our class. He decided to give us two different interpretations of a certain topic in the Bible—one he’d been trying to figure out himself. The topic was on homosexuality.
He explained that it was a topic full of controversy, but that he’d had too many students over the years come to him stuck between what they’d been taught and how they felt. He laid out the facts and arguments people have made over the years and let us work it out for ourselves. He gave us the chance to reconcile how we felt versus what we were taught, which is at the heart of all deconstruction of Christianity.
“Which one do you believe?”
one student asked.
“I don’t know, and I think it is not for me to decide,”
he said.
I don't know what his own personal belief was or what it is now, but it was clear that he did not want to add to the struggle for his students. So he gave us a choice.
I walked away from that class still working it out. I knew what I wanted to believe, but one adult’s decision to let me choose wasn’t stronger than everyone else telling me what to believe.
The rest of my experiences with this discussion came from my internship in San Francisco, of all places. For my college’s program, they worked to shape the narrative in a more “admin-approved way” by bringing in a celibate gay priest to one of our classes. It soon became clear, however, that the program’s faculty preferred a different approach to introducing us to the city’s culture.
Our RA during that program was one of the coolest people and the coolest alumni I’d ever met. She had tattoos, a politically activist nature and suggested testing the waters of online dating in the city. Our RA was excited and supportive when one of the women in the house started dating another woman.
Meanwhile, the program director told us about affirming churches and even volunteered to take a group of us to one (it didn’t work out though because the church was temporarily closed due to a leasing dispute). He also had a handful of books on LGBTQ+ people in the church in his office library. This library was open to all when he was out of office.
On a free afternoon, I found myself picking up one of these books. I stopped reading before I’d really started because I was afraid of what it would say. I was afraid to hear the “gay people exist but need to be celebate” argument, an argument that began to gain a lot of traction during at the time. It seemed to me like the Church was finally acknowledging that people don’t choose to be gay, but still needed to fit it into the narrative they had created.
I became very familiar with that argument that summer during my internship at a church in the city. I loved that church with so much of my heart. It was the first church that I felt truly followed Jesus’ example. They helped the poor. They cared about racial justice and reconciliation. They cared for people in a way I’d never experienced. They genuinely tried to be good people. And while they were part of a church branch that didn’t let women be preachers, they were in the middle of dialogues to start the conversation around changing that policy.
However, they didn’t allow LGBTQ+ people to lead in the church.
And believed being in a gay romantic relationship was wrong. While they weren’t going to kick queer people out of the church, they only allowed certain levels of participation.
I remember there was a gay man who volunteered for the church. He was a great volunteer, incredibly enthusiastic and radiated God’s love. And yet, he was not allowed to lead other volunteers. Each volunteer team had a team lead, and, though a team lead was needed desperately, he wasn’t allowed to fill that role in the church.
My supervisor at that church recommended a series of sermons called the Controversial Jesus series. He said the beliefs from this series encompassed what the church I worked at believed. It was more of the same. Love radically, like Jesus would. Women can preach, because not allowing women to speak is outdated and based on scripture taken out of context. But gay people can’t exist in the church, not fully—not like straight people.
One evening back at college, I sat in the dark in bed with two of my friends, staring at the popcorn-textured ceiling of a dorm room. Interrupting the silence, my friend said, “I don't think I believe much in the church anymore...I don’t understand how the church can say being gay is wrong.”
I agreed and explained how frustrating I found that doctrine. I also explained the opinion I’d finally come to.
I said,
”I think it doesn’t matter as much. In the end, the fundamental doctrine is Jesus saves all. Christians are going around playing God—deciding who’s saved and who isn’t. “
In the end, your morality is between you and God. If you feel drawn to celibacy, that’s ok. If you embrace sexuality, that’s ok. If you’re gay, that’s ok. If you’re trans, that’s ok. If you’re straight, that’s ok. In the end, what matters most is your relationship with God and allowing yourself to live a healthy life that, in turn, allows you to treat others well.”
I hadn’t realized I was gay until a year after this conversation, but something in me drew me towards this disconnect in my faith.
Before I understood myself, I needed to come to terms with how others fit into God’s promise before I could understand how I fit into it.
I think the most painful hurdle in my faith and what led to my deconstruction was people trying to tell me what God and the Bible said.
It is still the sole reason I no longer trust the Church. At his root, Jesus teaches how to love people well. He also teaches that everyone is allowed a seat at the table, prostitutes, lepers, women, queer people. Unfortunately, many Christians get choosy about who gets a seat at their table, solely because someone else told them the Bible says so.