Walk Humble
Walk Humble is a conversation, hosted by Brandon Cox, about life, faith, and relationships among people who admit they don't have all the answers. Humble is a frame of mind, a state of being, and a way of living life. We walk life’s pathway with a sense of humility about who we are in relationship to God, self, and others. We will stumble and stray, but humility and love will restore us and guide us home.
Walk Humble
Three Phases of the Spiritual Life: Construction, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction
The spiritual journey we're all on, whether we asked to be on this journey or not, is anything but simple. I see a life of faith unfolding in at least three movements.
SPIRITUAL LIFE PHASE 1: Construction
From the time we’re born, we’re constructing a life. And this construction uses materials that were around long before we were.
Family history
Community life
Media
Play
Education
Friendships
Religion
Tradition
Most of the people who have been a part of your formation will want to stop you here at this point - the construction phase.
It’s likely you will face a lot of fear and uncertainty if you allow your faith, as it has been received and developed thus far, to be open to questions.
And truthfully, very few people choose to move into deconstruction.
Deconstruction tends to choose you.
SPIRITUAL LIFE PHASE 2: Deconstruction
Sometimes this happens gradually, but this is rare.
Almost always, it is a crisis.
Something happens (an experience in life)
We pull a thread (we start asking questions)
We watch our faith seem to unravel
It is in this season that we are most vulnerable. Most likely to:
Turn very inwardly away from people.
Internalize our struggle.
Act out in rebellious, destructive ways.
Become angry.
Allow resentment to set in.
Develop apathy.
Give up.
And here is the good news…
There is more. You were wired to be spiritual, to seek and to search. You’re smart enough to ask all of these questions because you were made in God’s image.
SPIRITUAL LIFE PHASE 3: Reconstruction
This is the phase where a new (or renewed) faith begins to form.
And this is a faith you get to own.
This time, it’s personal.
Welcome discovery.
Of the universe.
Of people.
Of yourself.
Welcome mystery.
Of God.
Of life.
Of death.
Of eternity.
Go on a new spiritual journey.
A contemplative journey.
A listening journey.
A learning journey.
A journey into becoming love.
From here forward, Eternity is the limit.
Submit feedback and questions at www.walkhumble.com or email brandon@walkhumble.com.
If you believe in this work and want to support it, you can give a one-time or recurring gift at walkhumble.com/support.
Connect, read more, listen in, give feedback, or partner to support this podcast at WalkHumble.com.
Hello and welcome to the Walk Humble podcast. I'm your host, brandon Cox, and this is an ongoing conversation about life, faith and relationships among people who don't claim to have life all figured out. We walk implying that we want to grow and make forward progress and be healthy, holy and happy. But we walk humble, meaning we get to drop the pretense, take off the mask and realize that we have nothing left to prove. Today's episode is all about the spiritual journey, the faith life, if you will that so many people are on. That usually winds up involving three major phases construction, deconstruction and reconstruction.
Brandon Cox:And I've got to say right at the very beginning that deconstruction is a bit of a trending topic. It's a scary word for a lot of people because it's talked about a lot, especially in these last few years on Twitter and Facebook and TikTok and so forth. It's one of those words that refers to someone picking apart, pulling apart, dissecting, taking apart their faith in order to examine it and see what is there that really is worth hanging onto, that which will last, and I think for conservative evangelical Christians in particular, we've taken this word deconstruction and we've imagined a whole movement behind it. There's a deconstruction movement and the leaders of it are out to get your children. They're always trying to go after more kids and more young people and destroy everyone's faith, and for me that feels a lot like just sort of the latest fear fad among Christians. You know, there was a time when we were supposed to be afraid of Harry Potter and any sign of witchcraft, dungeons and dragons and Pokemon and all kinds of other things that were spooky and weird to us. Or we needed to be afraid of the latest political happening, the Supreme Court ruling or the election of a particular politician, whatever it was. It spelled the end of Christendom, the end of the church, the end of Christianity as we know it. There's always something to be afraid of, and the problem with that is that isn't faith, that's fear. That's fear. That's almost paranoia to think that there's an anti-Christ lurking around every corner and every person, that we're constantly having our faith threatened from every direction, and if I just play around a little bit too much in the wrong direction, it's all going to fall apart and my life will be destroyed and I'll spend eternity in hell. So we're going to back away from that. We're going to look at this a little bit differently.
Brandon Cox:Okay, I want to welcome you, who have either walked through the process of deconstruction or you're in the middle of walking through deconstruction. Now, not everybody is mad at you about it. You're not even alone. Okay, I've walked through this. I have close friends who've walked through this. I know lots of people who have walked through that process of deconstruction.
Brandon Cox:And the fact of the matter is this process of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction, that's just the flow of things on planet Earth. It's when we build houses, we construct them and years go by and they need maintenance and we remodel them right. We deconstruct and we reconstruct. Nations are built this way. We write the Constitution and then we start learning where we've gone wrong and we fix things along the way. So we construct and we deconstruct some things and then we reconstruct.
Brandon Cox:Careers are built this way. Sometimes we shift in mid-life into something entirely new. We deconstruct, we reconstruct, we move forward in life. Economies are built this way. You ever notice that economies have a tendency to correct themselves and that's why interest rates fluctuate the way they do. And then the stock market seems to plummet and then a couple years later we don't even remember that because it's growing strong again. That's because this is how things go on planet Earth. We construct, we deconstruct, we pull things apart, we find out where we're wrong, we make corrections and we reconstruct and go forward. In other words, it's not just houses and nations and careers and economies and institutions, it's me and it's you, it's all of us.
Brandon Cox:We all go through this. Our faith will probably go through some kind of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction as we move through life. Life has a flow and a rhythm and you don't have to be afraid of it. You just have to learn how to navigate it. We all go through seasons of building, seasons of correction and seasons of renewed growth and, let's be honest, sometimes this is a really good thing. We would say to someone who grew up in a cultish, toxic, false belief system I hope that you're willing to challenge and question what you've been handed, what you've been given, because a real, true faith is something that's going to stand through the questions and there might be some things you need to consider getting rid of because they're holding you back spiritually. So this is not to be feared, this is not to be shunned. This is not. There's no conspiracy, there's not a deconstruction movement out there, with leaders just hellbent on ruining everybody's faith. Instead, these are seasons of life that we all go through.
Brandon Cox:I want to walk through all three of them today in this podcast episode. I want to talk about construction and what that is and what that means. I want to talk about deconstruction and how to navigate it a little bit more smoothly than some of us do. And I want to talk about reconstruction and why it's so important and vital and some good news toward the end. Let me just jump in to talking about the three phases of spiritual life.
Brandon Cox:The first phase is the phase of construction. From the moment we're born, we're building, we're constructing a life, and it includes our family history. It includes tendencies and traditions and habits and sometimes sins. It includes memories. It's all the things that we remember from childhood. But it even goes back further than that. It's the things that our parents went through before we were born, before we were conceived. It involves things that they went through. There's a great Noah Cahan song that says I'm still mad at my parents for what their parents did to them, and there's a lot of truth in that right.
Brandon Cox:Our lives are built early on out of this raw material of our family history. It's also built out of our community life. We are influenced by our surroundings, and so the community that you grew up in, the community that I grew up in, had something to do with the way that our faith developed. I went to a particular church as a kid. It was a conservative Southern Baptist church in a rural community. A lot of farmers and people that were builders and just wonderful people and there's some good and there's some bad and there's some in between, and all of that was poured into me and became part of the faith that I've built and constructed because I just grew up in that particular community.
Brandon Cox:The media has a lot to do with this what we consume in terms of entertainment and news media. That has a lot to do with the way I construct my life, the way that I play my hobbies, the way I have fun, the experiences that I had early in life. I'm 46 years old, so I lived through 9-11. That was a shaping experience in both history and media Education, where we went to school and who our teachers were and how they treated us and how they spoke into us. Not just the knowledge that they gave us, not just the textbooks that we read, but even the interactions we had with our teachers and principals and fellow students. All of that is part of our construction phase, our friendships. You've probably heard it said show me your five closest friends and I'll show you your life.
Brandon Cox:In five years, we've all been shaped and constructed and we've built our faith, at least in part, by what we've learned from our friendships and, of course, our religious tradition, the religion in which we grew up. So if you grew up in a particular country that's 99.6% Muslim, you most likely have an Islamic faith. If you grew up in a community that was very, very Christian, you most likely had a Christian faith. That became your tradition. And so there's certain songs and rituals, whether it's baptism or the Lord's Supper or a certain kind of preaching or music that you like to listen to. Or maybe you grew up irreligious, non-religious, maybe you grew up without any kind of religious faith, and that's part of your construction, that's part of what has made your faith what it is, or even what it is not.
Brandon Cox:Today, all of us, everyone, lives through this phase of construction. Okay, it's the formational part of us, the foundational part of who we are, and at this point in life, in this construction phase, we're often told and warned by people that do love us and care about us and by people that are looking out for us and want the best for us. We're warned not to go on to phase two, not to allow any kind of deconstruction Once we've been handed our faith, once we've been given sort of the bullet point list of things that we're supposed to believe religiously or politically or convictionally. Once we're handed those things, a lot of the people who gave us those things don't want us to question those things or challenge those things, and that's perfectly understandable. The motive behind that is probably very positive for most people. I don't want to see someone's faith wrecked. I've brought my kids up sharing Jesus with them, sharing the Bible with them, taking them to church. I want them to have that foundation and I don't want them to lose that. That's just a natural part of life.
Brandon Cox:Now, in our particular cultural moment, I will say there's an inordinate amount of fear placed on deconstruction. There is this fear because there's this trend right, the demographics are shifting around us and churches are struggling, denominations are struggling, church attendance is down, and so there's this part of us who are tied into the church, who have a lot of our meaning and worth and value wrapped up in the church, that we're afraid of losing that part of our culture, we're afraid that our way of life is being threatened in some way, and again, that's understandable, but it's not necessarily true or accurate. It's not necessarily something to truly be feared. And the reason why is because I don't know anyone who chose to go through deconstruction. I have yet to meet someone who said you know, I had a strong faith and I followed Jesus from early on and I just loved him. But one day I just decided I really needed to question everything and pick it all apart and see if it was really true. No, I don't know people who choose to walk through deconstruction. Instead, I think deconstruction chooses you.
Brandon Cox:So I'm going to jump into the second phase of the faith life, of a spiritual life deconstruction. I want to talk about how it comes about, how we get into it and why we get into it. And I'm not inviting anyone into a season of deconstruction, but I think life sometimes drags you into its own season of deconstruction. When it happens, I think we should be prepared. We should be ready because rarely do I see deconstruction happening in a very gradual pace.
Brandon Cox:I don't see very many people sitting down and very carefully and intentionally step at a time, a thought at a time, a bullet point at a time, evaluating their faith in a very careful way. Instead, what usually happens is we go through some kind of life experience. Okay, now, that life experience might be rejection by our peers. It may be that the church we attend fell apart. It might be that we listened to the teachings of Jesus for years and years and then we watched as people that represent our particular brand of faith seem to make all kinds of political decisions and statements that were completely inconsistent with what we saw Jesus to be. In one of the worst case scenarios, I've known people who have gone through abuse, and either sexual abuse or spiritual abuse, and it was at the hands of religious leaders. It was under the care of people who should have done better and promised to do better. Because of that, because those representatives of God were broken and acted in very broken ways left a kind of broken faith All kinds of reasons why people walk through deconstruction. It's usually not because somebody just wants to tear their faith apart.
Brandon Cox:What happens next is we pull on a thread, we ask a question, and it's usually an if, then question, if I cannot trust the teachings of my very patriarchal leaders who wound up being abusive. If I can't trust that, then what else can I not trust? If I was brought up believing in character and integrity and I watched as an entire movement endorsed a political candidate who was sort of the strongman figure and just over and over and over demonstrated marks of character that were not at all like what I was brought up to believe in, what else can I not trust? What else must I question? And so the thread begins to trace its way back to the source of our faith. So I begin to go okay, if all of my theology has ultimately been handed down generation after generation from roots that are primarily white, male, western European, capitalistic, so forth and so on, if that has been the pool out of which my theology has been formed and handed down to me, can I really trust any of it? Can I really believe it? Now, maybe the answer is yes, maybe the answer is no. That's beside the point for a second.
Brandon Cox:The point is, we pull a thread, we start asking questions, then we watch our faith unravel, we watch as the house of cards begins to fall. And I purposely say house of cards because and here's my warning to religious leaders, here's my urging to Christian leaders Don't tell people that the Bible is so perfectly impeccable and unquestionable that if you begin to doubt and question one part of it, it will all fall apart and you'll never be able to stop. Because here's what happens we get to some point where we start to question one thing and we've been told it'll all fall apart. So guess what's going on in our minds? Man, I bet this whole thing's going to fall apart and it just lends right to that narrative of my faith is just not going to be able to stand. So we watch it all unravel.
Brandon Cox:Now let me stop here and get personal. It is in this season that we are most vulnerable and when I say vulnerable I mean we're most vulnerable to those forces within us and around us that harm us, that cause us to move in unhealthy directions. For example, it's in this season that we're most likely to turn very inward and turn away from people. We begin to isolate and withdraw because I'm not sure I can trust. It's in this season that we internalize our struggle and we begin to wonder is it just me? Why am I so different? Why can't I just easily believe the things that other people seem to easily believe.
Brandon Cox:It's in this season that we're most apt to act out in rebellious and destructive ways, to just kind of go. Well, forget it all. Then I'll just go do my own thing. It's in this season we get angry. It's in this season we're most susceptible to allowing resentment to set in, and then what follows resentment is apathy, because we don't want to feel the pain anymore. So we just shut off the pain and we start ignoring everything and we develop apathy and then, at the end of that, we give up. Now, I'm not talking about giving up on our faith. I'm talking about giving up on life, giving up on meaning, giving up on purpose. It's at this stage we're most susceptible to that.
Brandon Cox:But here's the good news If you have walked through deconstruction or you're in the middle of it and you feel the very things I'm talking about, you feel the inward struggle, you feel that internalization happening, you feel some anger, some resentment, some apathy. You're tempted to give up. You want to walk away, you want to just kind of chuck it all and go your own direction. If that's where you are, I have some good news for you. Okay, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, here is more, there's more. There is so much more to faith than what you've been told. There's so much more to the mystery of God and the mysteries of the universe than what you have discovered thus far. There's so much more to you. You were wired to be spiritual. You were made to seek and to search. You're smart enough to ask all of these questions because you were made in God's image, because you're intelligent, because you can think and feel and decide and act. And it's because you're an image bearer of God that you've begun to ask the questions.
Brandon Cox:And if people are making you feel guilty about having the questions, if they're making you feel bad about having doubts and struggles and grappling with the faith, stop feeling bad, okay, stop feeling bad, because there's a phase three that's possibly just around the corner. Let me just make a quick caveat and say if you're at a place where you have gone through deconstruction to the point of what we would call deconversion, that is, you have decided to give up on the Christian faith, you've walked away from your belief in God or your belief in Jesus, or your belief in the supernatural or the eternal, whatever lies beyond death, if you're at that point where you've completely given up, I want to make sure you understand that you are just as loved and just as valued and your life has just as much meaning as when you were in the fold, so to speak, as when you were in the club. Okay, and the reason I say that is because I feel like so many people who've decided to go the way of agnosticism or atheism, who've decided to walk away from their faith. What has been communicated to them is that they're bad, that you're now a bad person because you turned your back on God or whatever. You're now morally wrong and unqualified and less valuable. You're now an outsider. And I just want you to know, not what you're part of the human family. You're part of the human family and whether you believe in God anymore or not, I still see you as just as much an image bearer of God as anybody else, meaning that you still have this infinite value and worth and all of that. So just know that you are still just as loved and still just as valued as you've ever been. But I want to move to this third phase real quick so that this podcast doesn't last too long.
Brandon Cox:Okay, phase three of the spiritual life is reconstruction. So in construction, I build a life. I build a faith In deconstruction. I go through some hard things, I pull it some threads and I watch it come unraveled and it's just not easy to believe anymore. Now I've got questions and problems and issues. So what do I do? What do I do when I come to grips with how the Bible fits into my life or how the church fits into my life and it doesn't fit the way it used to? Well, I reconstruct, okay, I reconstruct. And this phase three, this reconstruction phase, is where faith begins to form anew. It's where it becomes fresh. And I want to be really personal about this because I feel like I've walked through all three of these phases, definitely walked through a life of construction and definitely have gone through a very painful, difficult period of deconstruction and have definitely walked through a season of reconstruction and I really have a faith now that I'm grounded and settled in and I'm thankful for. But it's not easy, it took a while to get there.
Brandon Cox:But I want to talk about this for just a minute. When you come to the phase of reconstruction, I want you to know it's different than before. It's not that you get a new set of beliefs to endorse, it's not that now you've come around and you see that the Bible really is not to be questioned. I'm not here for that. Okay, I'm not here for this sort of easy talk of just come back into the fold and we'll pretend that you never had those questions. That's not what reconstruction is. What reconstruction is is that, now that I understand a little bit more about the world and about the universe and about history and about myself and about God, now I'm able to approach faith differently.
Brandon Cox:I want to give you some ways to do that. First of all, I want to challenge you, in this new phase of your faith, to welcome discovery. In other words, you may have gone to seminary, you may have had years and years of training theologically, you may know your stuff when it comes to church history and you can expound the scriptures and all of that, but now you're at this different place where some of the things that you were hanging on to don't seem to hold water. What are you going to do? Welcome discovery. See this as an adventure. What I mean by that is you get to discover the universe. Now, you get to discover the universe and not be afraid of science. You get to discover just how vast it is. You get to discover the wonders of planet Earth, to know that this place, over four billion years, began as a ball of rock and mud and is what it is today by this creative ingenuity of God, and it's amazing. And the scientific processes that maybe you were taught not to believe in because they would threaten your faith. Now you go.
Brandon Cox:I don't really buy that anymore. Instead, I'm able to look at science and what is now settled science and what scientists have discovered and grappled with, and I can be awed by that. I can be amazed by that, by those processes that I see around me. I can be amazed by quantum mechanics. I can be amazed by the vastness of the universe. I can be amazed by how many trillions upon trillions upon trillions of stars there are and how far that part they are and the world in which we live. I get to welcome a new kind of discovery of this universe, not from a position of fear, where I don't want to discover anything that threatens my faith, but instead where I welcome whatever there is out there. Whatever there is to learn, I get to learn it and my faith doesn't have to fall apart.
Brandon Cox:You also get to welcome the discovery of people, to welcome the discovery of people. In other words, you get to see the world from a higher vantage point. You get to understand that there are lots and lots of different cultures, different countries, different ways of life, that people look different and live different and that that's okay. That there are people with different kinds of customs and traditions and even different religions, and that God loves every single one of them and that God has communicated himself to people throughout the ages in different places and in different ways and all kinds of different ways. And that's what the Bible says. Right, god has revealed himself in a diversity of ways. Now we believe as Christians this is the faith I've come back to that most perfectly has revealed himself through Jesus Christ, his Son, but that does not mean that God has not spoken and that God has not made himself known to different people in different ages through different means.
Brandon Cox:Okay, you also get to welcome the discovery of yourself. You know. You get to see who you are again and understand that you're not just a performer, you're not just another number to check off for church growth's sake, and you're not just another tither, you're not just someone to be part of a voting bloc. No, you as an individual are infinitely valuable. You get to discover who you are in the eyes of God, who made you. You get to see how you're made in his likeness. So you get to welcome discovery. You also get to welcome mystery. You get to welcome mystery. You get to welcome the mystery of God, and what I mean by that is you now are at a place having deconstructed a simplified faith, having taken the old outline that was supposed to add up so easily, and having seen that the formulaic, mathematical approach to faith just didn't work. This very rationalized, point by point system of doctrine didn't seem to hold water. That's okay. Now you get to embrace God as mystery. You get to go.
Brandon Cox:Man, I really don't know much of anything about God, even if you've had years of theological training, even if you read through the Bible over and over. You get to go. This is all fresh. There's so much about God and his nature that I don't know, that I don't understand. You get to welcome the mystery of life. How does life happen? How does life continue? I don't know. It's a mystery, but, man, we get to explore it. We get to welcome the mystery of that. We even get to welcome the mystery of death. Remember how easy it used to be to think about death. You either go here or there and Jesus is coming again and there's going to be a rapture and it's all going to be over and there's heaven and there's hell Simple. And now it doesn't feel simple at all and death feels like a mystery. And that's okay. You get to welcome the mystery. You get to go. You know what? I don't have all the answers, I don't know. I don't have this all nailed down yet. I'm trusting and believing, but, man, I don't have it all figured out. You get to welcome the mystery of eternity. You get to go on a new spiritual journey.
Brandon Cox:I want to encourage you at this point in your life to go on a contemplative journey, to pray while listening, not just talking in prayer, not just saying the Lord's prayer and the things you were taught to say our Father in heaven, hallelujah name. Hear my 18 prayer requests for the week. No, set that aside and listen, just contemplate the mysteries of God and the universe and life. You get to go on a listening journey. You get to see God show up in ways and in places that you never imagined before. You get to go on a learning journey. It's all fresh and it's all new. You get to go on a journey into becoming love. You get to decide that from now on, it is not about knowing everything, it is about loving everybody. It's not about having all the answers. It's about being like Jesus, because Jesus is who God is like and Jesus was absolutely love. You get to become love like him. From here forward, eternity is the limit. So I want to urge you, if you're in the construction phase, that's great. That's great.
Brandon Cox:I don't want to urge anybody to purposely try to start deconstructing your faith, and I don't know of anybody else out there that's trying to do that either, at least not from the perspective I'm coming from. If you're in the deconstruction phase, in the middle of it or nearing the end of it, or just after it, I want to encourage you to keep on going, because there is more. There is more beyond the dogmatism, beyond the fundamentalism, beyond the black and white, in or out, binary thinking, beyond all of that, beyond the easy answers, beyond the formulas, there is the mystery of a God who just keeps unfolding before us, who eludes our mastery. You get to welcome discovery and welcome mystery. You get to go on a whole new journey and I want to urge you to not stop. Don't give up, and what I mean by that is not don't give up believing or don't give up on your faith, you know, hold to it. Instead, I'm saying don't give up on the journey, don't stop growing, keep on walking, but keep on walking humble, keep on walking humble. That's it.
Brandon Cox:That's the episode, and I'm super thankful you listened to it. I am happy to take feedback and questions at walkhumblecom or just email me at brandon at walkhumblecom. I'd be really happy and thankful if you would share this with somebody that might need to hear it, especially somebody that might be walking through deconstruction or having gone through deconstruction, and just needs the encouragement that their life still matters as much as it ever did and as much as it ever will. If you believe in this work, if you like walk humble and you appreciate the vision of what we're doing, I would really appreciate you praying about supporting us. You can go to walkhumblecom, slash support or just click on the support link at the top and give a one-time gift or become a monthly supporter. Either way, I'm just glad you're here, Just glad you listened, and I want us to make progress together, but I want us to do it without the pretense. I hope we can walk humble. Thanks so much for listening.