HOW TO DECONSTRUCT YOUR FAITH WITHOUT LOSING IT COMPLETELY WITH ERIN MOON | EP 29

[DAWN GABRIEL] Faith Fringes is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith in Practice, Beta Male Revolution, Empowered and Unapologetic or Impact Driven Leader, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. [DAWN] Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, host of Faith Fringes Podcast, recording live from Castle Rock Colorado, not only where I love to live, but I also work as the owner of a counseling center in the historic downtown. This podcast is a place to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. For those desiring deeper connection with God and engaging their spirituality in new ways, this will be a safe place to allow doubt, questions and curiosity, without judgment. We will be creating intentional space to listen in on other’s faith journeys, whether that is deconstruction or reconstruction, with the hope of traveling alongside you on your own spiritual path. If you’re interested in getting even more out of this podcast, grab my free email course Spiritual Reflections on my websitefaithfringes.com. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome back spiritual explorers. Today, I am so excited for my guest. I first heard Erin on a podcast. It was actually the Lizzy Jean’s podcast, and one of my friends had sent it to me saying, “Hey, you have to hear this. Erin is talking about deconstruction and this sounds like your podcast.” I had hadn’t even launched my podcast yet Erin, and she said, you have to listen. This is such a good show. So I listened. [ERIN MOON] Oh, that’s nice. [DAWN] Yes. So I listened and then I started stalking you and found you on all your podcasts and I just love and resonate so much with how you conceptualize deconstruction, how you conceptualize faith in the Bible and yes I’m so excited to have you. Let me tell my listeners a little bit about you. [ERIN] Yes, absolutely. [DAWN] Erin is the host of the Faith Adjacent podcast, as well as the resident Bible scholar on The Bible Binge podcast. She’s the author of Every Broken Thing, O Heavy Lightness, and Memento Mori, and she is also the Senior Creative at the Popcast Media Group. So welcome Erin to the podcast. [ERIN] Thank you so much for having me Dawn. I’m really glad to be here. [DAWN] So tell us a little bit more about all your podcasts. Give us some background about — [ERIN] Well, listen, I’m a former theater major, so my parents are just really excited that I have kind of landed in an industry that makes sense for me. I think they were like, “What are we doing here?” So I have a background with parachurch ministries and that led to me kind of learning about how to write Bible studies and how to create Bible studies. So I have this weird kind of product dramatic sort of mind that also just loves history and scripture. And I love the Bible. I love reading it. I think it’s endlessly fascinating and just a constant way to learn about God. It just always feels very fresh to me and it always has something new for me. So that’s just something that I’ve been really passionate about and learning more about the way, and the Bible bench, I really credit the Bible bench for being something that’s helped me in this a lot; just having to reexamine stories that I really haven’t thought about in much depth since I was probably in youth group has been so revolutionary to me as an adult to really look at them and consider them from an adult perspective, as opposed to the way we give stories to kids. It has been really revolutionary for me and truly just a really good time. We’ve had fun. [DAWN] I love what you said. You said the word fresh and I feel like that describes it so well. Oh yes, when I, it’s funny, I hike a lot and listen to your podcast. So it’s just so much energy and like you said, freshness of the way to look at Bible, especially in your Faith Adjacent too, is so fun hearing how you guys connect. And I don’t know, I’d say more about that, like you connect in this fresh way, like relevant things in today’s world. It’s not the old way of looking at the Bible. So many of us grew up more conservative or evangelical and I just feel like you blow it out of the water. [ERIN] Well, so this is interesting because my theater background here actually informs a lot of this, which you go, what, but when you’re studying theater, when you’re studying a script, you’re looking for subtext. You’re looking for, someone can say on the page, I love you and their tone and the way they deliver that and the relations that they have with the other characters and what’s going on in the life of their character is going to inform that reading of, I love you. It can either be like a genuine reading, it can be sarcastic, it can be angry, it can be sad. And there are all of these different ways. So what I really love to do, especially on and Faith Adjacent is I love to kind of consider things that we would not necessarily first really put in a spiritual or religious category, stuff like breakfast food, or extra terrestrials or Hamilton, The Musical. These things are, but they, I find God in these things often. [DAWN] I love that. Love it. [ERIN] And I think that is a good practice for people to participate in. And that’s really what the show is all about, kind of sending up your faith antenna to see if you can get reception in a weird place like Mr. Rogers. [DAWN] That is so fun. It’s so creative. I love hearing it. And I also like that you give so much like, I know we said this in the email back and forth, but I find people when they do start to deconstruct their faith. Sometimes they go so far away, they don’t come and they don’t base it on Bible or truth. But what I really love is that you can still be open to that deconstruction, but you also come back to grounding in the Bible, but it’s not this like shameful to-do list. It’s very freeing. It’s like an invitation. [ERIN] Well, I honestly, I think Jesus is the one who really laid that foundation for us. You know, when you think about it, deconstruction it’s trendy right now in the same way that the reformation was trendy, in the same way that the great schism of the early thousands. This has been happening for a really long time. I think we sometimes forget the historical context around that, but Jesus de and reconstructed the Jewish understanding of the Messiah and who He was and what He would do. The new Testament de and reconstructed ideas about God that we got from the old Testament. And that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong. It means there’s a new lens with which to look through this with. So I think it’s really I to pay attention to the historical ways that we have been reconstructing as Christians for a really, really, really long time. [DAWN] Yes, I love that you said that. We act like it’s this new term. I remember when I started researching it, I’m like, oh, I deconstructed like 20 years ago when it wasn’t popular. I just was like floundering and grappling and wrestling with God, but that was really deconstructing and now we have this term for it. [ERIN] Yes, and I think that’s okay. I know people get, they feel really uncomfortable with it because it feels very nebulous and ambiguous. And I understand that feeling. I love a guardrail, please give me an outline. It’s my favorite thing, but kind of experiencing some of this and going through on my own faith journey, whatever we’re going to call it has been really revolutionary to me in understanding the historical ways that this has happened before, that it’s not new, that people have been doing this for a really long time, and it is not a crisis. It’s not an emergency. It’s just a part of what it means to have faith. Especially if you had faith as a child and then you’ve kept that faith through adulthood, naturally, you’re going to reconsider things or look at things from a different perspective or you’re going to go, “Huh, that was taught to me in a weird way. Or I really like how this was taught to me, or I see a friend over here who was taught in a different way and I want to explore that more.” It’s an exploration. I don’t think it’s an emergency. [DAWN] I love that. Yes, it’s an exploration, not an emergency because I think sometimes yes, if we’re looking at it as an emergency, we go into like trauma mode and we throw things out the window. But if we have the freedom to explore it, it gives us way more freedom, it gives us time, it gives us, maybe we can actually talk about that now. Like what are some ways to deconstruct? I’m sure you have like healthier ways to deconstruct than a crisis. [ERIN] Well, I hope so. I mean, I think it’s hard because it’s hard to give tips on deconstruction. Tips, they connote, like here’s a tip on how to cook spaghetti Carbona. It’s just like, it’s very different. And I think the tips aren’t sexy, they’re not easy. There are any shortcuts. I think they are things like time. They are things like attention, quiet, solitude, taking in as opposed to pushing out. I think that this is the work of a religious or a spiritual person’s life. This is the thing, it deserves attention. I work with a parenting coach because I yell at my kids a lot because that’s my first reaction. So I really wanted to work through some of that. And I had a friend be like, wow, that feels like a, not, this is not, in a mean way, but she was like, “Wow, that’s intense. You’re getting a coach for parenting?” I was like, “Yes, this is the work of my life. These kids, I can’t, if I mess them up, what am I doing?” So in the same way, I think our faith is important. What we believe, who we are, how we shape the way we view the world, the way we view God, the way we view ourselves, others, the way we think God sees us, that’s really important. So it deserves time and attention. It deserves quiet. I think those things are really important for a deconstruction, reconstruction. [DAWN] Yes. So time, attention, and just giving that space to say this might be your whole Christian journey. [ERIN] Sorry, I’m really congested. We have a construction dust at our house. So I don’t have COVID, but it sounds like I do. [DAWN] No, I just got over COVID. [ERIN] Oh gosh. I’m so sorry. [DAWN] I know. So I’m totally fine, but I’m sorry about your cough. [ERIN] But I apologize if I continue to cough. I’m trying not to. [DAWN] No, edit it out. We’re fine. Thank you. I’ll just pause. [ERIN] Perfect. I think a good rule of thumb is to follow your curiosity. So I started being really curious about what the Bible said about women in particular, when I was in college and the people around me, they were very certain in what they believed, but I was hearing from other people and I was reading other books about a different perspective. So following that curiosity was really intense and beautiful and I learned so much. It’s that it’s that moment when you go from high school to college. Like you’re in high school, they tell you what to study, you have to study all of these things. You don’t have a choice if you want to graduate. In college, you get to choose what you want to study. You get to follow your interests and what you’re passionate about or what you think will be a good job to have in the future. So I think these things are, following your curiosity, I think is important. I think it’s a good starting point. And then you will be uncomfortable. That’s just true. You’re going to get uncomfortable, especially if you are taking in different perspectives from one that you have adhered to, for such a long time or different perspectives from people in your community. They’re going to, there’s going to be pushback. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s a part of the process and it’s okay. It’s totally okay. [DAWN] Yes. It’s like get comfortable with being uncomfortable. [ERIN] Yes, exactly. [DAWN] Because it is. It’s going to be part of it. And I think there is there’s some encourage there too, to say, I don’t care what people are going to think. I have to do this because it’s so important to my personal faith journey. [ERIN] And listen, this gets left out of this conversation a lot because it’s, if you have weird feelings about God, about Jesus, Holy Spirit, it’s weird to pray. It’s specifically weird to go, “Hey God, that I’m not positive, I understand fully. Are you there? Holy Spirit, are you real?” But also prayer is an important part of this. Staying connected to God, to the reason why you’re doing this is enormously important. And I think even praying like really simple broken prayers, like, I don’t know if you are there, but if you are, will you help me? And I think that’s an honest prayer. And I think that is an act of faith. Making those moves and taking those steps, those are acts of faith. And while I’m never going to be the person who tells someone how they should or shouldn’t de or reconstruct I believe that that is a crucial aspect to my own personal, how I did it, essentially. [DAWN] Yes, and what I’m hearing, there is a freedom to just enter in that space with God. I think sometimes we put God up on a shelf saying, this is how He is going to respond or not respond, or we shouldn’t do this. We shouldn’t do that. But in reality, He can handle it. And I say that a lot to my listeners, He can handle our anger. He can handle our questions. He can handle us just walking in and saying, I have no clue, but I’m here and that’s all I can do. [ERIN] Yes. My husband has a phrase that he likes to use and it is, He is big enough for me to beat on His chest. [DAWN] Oh, I love that. [ERIN] Yes, I’ve always really loved that. I don’t know who said it to him, but it has always been such a good reminder of like, especially when I see my kids going nuts about something and they’re really frustrated and they don’t even have the words to fully explain to me, what’s wrong. As a paraphrase to Jesus’ words, if I, a bad parent who asked to have a parenting coach, can accept that and know that and love my kids still in that and love them in their messiness, of course, God can do that as well. That’s, we are lesser versions of Him. So of course He is able to do that. [DAWN] Yes. I love that picture. I have two sons and my oldest sometimes gets so emotional and overwhelmed that sometimes I just need to hold him and he melts, even though he is super angry. And you’re right. If we can do that to our kids in our imperfect parenting, how much more can God do that to us? I love that picture of he’s big enough to beat on His chest. I love it. [ERIN] Yes. I’ve always liked that. [DAWN] Yes. Well, and it also yes, so a lot of this is like permission to just jump in and allow that to happen. And it’s going to be a journey. [ERIN] Well, I think, and I’m going to say this as a blanket statement and I don’t really mean it as a blanket statement because I actually grew up in a really healthy Southern Baptist community. I know that’s rare now in some cases but like your questions were valued. You’re, like, if you wanted to explore something or if you had a doubt that wasn’t shamed or it wasn’t put down, or it wasn’t suppressed or ignored. I know that’s not true for a lot of people. So I think we’ve been taught in some ways, if you ask question, you don’t have faith. But I think we all know at this point that the opposite of doubt is not, the opposite of faith is not doubt. It’s apathy. It’s not caring about the answers. I think apathy is also probably a part of the deconstruction reconstruction process at some point. [DAWN] Yes, absolutely. [ERIN] But you’re moving through a process. So I think it’s valuable to remember that there are a hundred different ways to think about a hundred different things in just the realm of Christianity, in just the realm of scripture. So many people, very intelligent, thoughtful, kind, spirit-led people are coming to different conclusions about things. So it’s just important for us to remember that and to consider all of the perspectives when we’re going through something like this. [DAWN] Yes. What you bring up, it makes me think of, I’ve had some emails from my listeners where they’re trying to figure out, they’re either coming back from religious trauma, but still wanting to connect to God or they are trying to deconstruct, but they feel like sometimes people are going of the extremes. And I love what you said, just allowing space that there’s going to be a lot of different people on this continuum and it’s their own journey. Maybe we can talk a little bit about how do we allow for that journey in someone else? What are some things we could do if we are watching someone else go through it? [ERIN] Yes. So I will speak, and I talked about this a little bit on Kendra’s podcast and I will speak from experience that I have, before I really, I’m often not a good deconstruction partner with people that I love because I think what I want more than anything is I do believe that Jesus has the words of life. I believe that. And it would be if I believe that, and I didn’t want people to come back to a place of faith in Him that may look different from a faith that you had previously, that would be disingenuous of me. But I understand that a lot of people, they’re not going to land in that same place. And that’s between them and Holy Spirit. I’m not in charge of that. But I think for the most part, it’s very basic. People want to be listened to, they want you to ask questions that are kind and curious and not judgmental. And then I think you pray for these people. I wanted to be prayed for. I did not want to lose my faith. I wanted to keep it. So I think prayer is such a crucial aspect. Again, it’s going to feel weird, but I think it’s just being a person to people, honestly, like not walking in with predetermined bias or judgment and just listening and acknowledging questions and acknowledging pain and acknowledging trauma and thinking about the ways that your experience may be different from theirs. And that is okay. [DAWN] Yes. Just allowing again, your curiosity about their story and saying what’s going on and listening. And I think, especially in our times, right now, I feel like so many things have polarized us. We’ve gotten really loud and passionate about stuff and it’s like, let’s come back and allow people’s space to just have their process and stop putting your process on them. [ERIN] Yes, I think that’s hard now because we have gurus, internet gurus and that’s not a bad thing. I’ve learned a lot from my personal internet gurus, but at the end of the day, this is very personal, very private work. It cannot really be outlined in a way. It’s an experience that you, that is literally just between you and Holy Spirit. That’s it. And that is scary because what that does is that puts you in a place of having to understand why you believe what you believe. And when we get into places like that, it can be really terrifying because so many of us, the way we grew up is we just, it was secondhand from someone else. Now, do I think that’s always a bad thing? I don’t. I give my children, their faith currently secondhand. At some point they’re going to grow and their brains are going to develop fully and they’re going to go, “Do I actually believe this?” I want them to do that. The idea that they would just believe what they believe because that’s just what they were doing, that’s counterintuitive to everything we’re talking about here. Now, do I pray that my children, when they go through this process will eventually land on the fact that that Jesus loves them and cares for them and wants them to have abundant life? Yes, I do. I want that, of course. But I don’t want them to have a dead faith at all. That is literally good to no one. So I think it’s just hard work. It’s not sexy work. It’s private work. It’s not really Instagrammable. Which is hard because you want it to be. I wish that there was a way to just easily give someone the handles that they need in order to have a more robust faith that they understood. [DAWN] But it’s so personal. [ERIN] It’s a process. Yes, it’s a personal process. [DAWN] Yes. And I think that’s the thing is, allowing, letting go of the control or the illusion of control we have over other people. I think, especially if you’re like a youth leader or a speaker, like you are used to influencing people you sometimes take too much responsibility for what this other person is going through and just letting them say this is between them and God. Who am I to say, this is what God’s saying to you. [ERIN] And let me be very clear that I have not done that well in the past with other people. I need to be very upfront with that, like learn from my mistakes essentially. [DAWN] I think I heard one of your spiritual directors say this analogy of the water. Can you share that? I thought that was very profound. [ERIN] Yes. My spiritual director was giving, I told her, I just feel like I am drowning or I feel like I’m walking across a frozen over lake and I’m going to fall through. She was like, “Well, let’s keep going with that. What happens when you fall through?” I was like, “Oh, okay, — [DAWN] I don’t want to fall through. [ERIN] “I don’t want to fall through.” She was like, well, here’s the deal? Let’s think about what happens if you fall through. Can you swim? Who’s on the shore? Who’s helping you? Who’s yelling judgmental things at you from the shore? Who’s getting in the water with you?” Playing out that whole scenario was enormously helpful and that’s why she’s a spiritual director. Her job was to help me get there and that was so beneficial to me to realize that like, you may fall through, but you can swim. And there are people with you. You’re not alone and this isn’t going to kill you. [DAWN] Yes, and sometimes you have to ignore the people on the shore and embrace the people who get in the water with you. I love it. I feel like we could, all of us could pick where we are in the scenario. [ERIN] And we’ve all been in different place too. That’s just, and so often I think we want to, we want things to be stagnant. We never want them to change, but that’s not just not the nature of the world. So I love that analogy that she gave me because it has been so helpful as I moved into different spots and as I’ve been different roles to different people. It helps me remember who I want to be. [DAWN] Yes. I love that. And it’s so, and I think one of my favorite things about when I listen to your podcast is again, your ability to be so free, but also anchoring back to truth in the Bible. One of my listeners emailed me, actually, she texted me and you were talking and she said, “Sometimes I hear certain stories about the deconstruction but I never want to let go of Jesus. I never want to lose Jesus us in this, because to Him, that is the anchor of everything for me.” And I’m fine with people’s stories and journeys but to me, that was her anchor. So I feel like that’s where I hear you come back to a lot. [ERIN] Well, yes. And I think a lot, I know when we think of reconstruction deconstruction, we’re putting that under an umbrella of all of Christianity. But honestly, like for me, I was deconstructing reconstructing a lot of church life. Or some of us are reconstructing, deconstructing scripture, like these types of things. It’s not necessarily, it doesn’t have to be an all in thing. It can be for sure, but there are also like, Jesus for me, I stand with Rachel Evans in that He is still the thing I’m willing to be wrong about. If I’m wrong about Jesus, then I was wrong and I’ll accept that. But He is worth that to me. Like his teachings, the way that He asks us to live and the teachings that He modeled for us, that’s worth it for me. But there are people who need to reconstruct Jesus too, and that’s okay. It’s important do that. You may land in different places, but it’s important to at least give it the time and attention that it deserves. [DAWN] Yes. And actually, as you’re saying this, it made me realize, because as I was studying a lot and jumping into my podcast and interviewing people, I noticed myself starting to deconstruct more than I wanted to. And I was like, whoa, I was feeling a heaviness and I was like, I can’t deconstruct everything. I need to like slow down and deconstruct what I’m comfortable with right now. And I’ve already done a ton of deconstruction. So I remember I just needed like a month to kind of recalibrate because I didn’t need to deconstruct everything but I feel like when I was talking people, I was sitting with them so much. It was like, we’re deconstructing everything. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. But I like what you said, I am a big one of deconstructing the church. That’s been where I’ve landed a lot. [ERIN] That’s a lot of people. And I think, some people I think will push back on that and they’re like, wow, why are you being so meaned to the bride of Christ? Well, the bride of Christ has a lot of problems. And while I love the church and I believe that the church is an excellent way that some people can be in Christian community, I also know that it is a tool of enormous trauma and hurt for so many to the point that they can’t walk into a church without having like a traumatic response. I think about Bobby all the time. I know this is weird, but like I literally, they did an episode of Clear Eye where they went and they essentially redid church in Georgia. Bobby had taught, Bobby’s talked this entire time on the show about how he grew up really religious and it was very traumatic for him and he can’t walk into a church. And I think about that every time I see someone with a Christian background be kind to him or be, and that is slowly building up what I hope in my heart, because I do pray for Bobby because I love him. That will bring him back to faith and he will see that not everyone is like that. But that trauma is real to him and it’s valid to him. And it’s important that we remember that criticizing something that we love is the best thing we can do for it. We want it to be as good as it claims to be. [DAWN] Yes, absolutely. And I think yes, letting people have the real experience and just say naming it is so important and allowing them to say like, this is not for me. But also separating, like I usually say big sea church and little sea church. Like the concept of church and what it was created to be the bride of Christ is amazing. But little sea, the humans as we run church, that’s when it gets all convoluted and just allowing there to be layers to that. And yes, I like that. I like differentiating between that. Well, Erin, if people want to get ahold of you, can you just repeat what are your podcasts? Tell us how they can connect with you, give us some of your social handles. [ERIN] Yes. So I’m on the Instagram. I lurk on Twitter, but I am active on Instagram. I love Twitter. I love lurking there. It’s so much fun. But it moves too fast for me. It’s my decompression at night. So I’m on Instagram, Erin H. Moon. I am the resident battle scholar on the Bible Binge podcast. I also have a solo show on that feed called Faith Adjacent. We also have a great, robust, beautiful Patreon community where we kind of go, it’s called the Bible Dinge Seminary. It’s like seminary for adults who never went to seminary, but are like, we got questions. I want to ask some questions. So like last month we had a book club with Dr. Jody Magnus who’s a biblical archeologist. She was fascinating. I’m obsessed with her. She just kind of told us about the Bible from an archeological standpoint. And the next month we’ve been reading, making a biblical womanhood and Dr. Barr is going to join us for that. So we just have these really great enriching type of experiences that are sort of like seminary for people who don’t actually want to go to seminary. [DAWN] And what was that called again? I haven’t heard of that one. [ERIN] That’s Patreon community. We have a ton of resources and stuff on the Bible Binge podcast, just in general. So we’d love for you to come. [DAWN] Yes. I love that. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. This was really fun. [ERIN] This was so much fun. I love talking about this. I think this is such a unique perspective that you have from a counseling background and I really think that’s really cool. [DAWN] Thank you so much, Erin. Thank you for listening today at Faith Fringes Podcast. If you want to explore more of your own faith journey, I offer my free eight-week email course called Spiritual Reflections, where you take a deeper dive into your own story included as a journaling workbook that has guided exercises. So if you want to explore more of what you were brought up to believe, or even look at where you may have been disillusioned or hurt, but yet still deep down you desire to authentically connect with God, then this course is for you. Just go to faithfringes.com to sign up. Also, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email and tell me what’s on your mind. You can reach me at dawn@faithfringes.com. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.