Ep. 29: WHAT FAITHFUL DECONSTRUCTION LOOKS LIKE w/ Matt Johnson

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew Marcus from THE INDOUBT SHOW. We have an absolutely fantastic episode for you today. We have a dear friend of mine, his name is Matt Johnson, he is a local church planter, and we are talking about something very important. This is becoming a buzzword these days in today’s culture. We’re talking about deconstruction. Many people are deconstructing their faith, and we want to ask the question, okay, what is deconstruction? Is there dangers? Are there benefits?

And so Matt’s going to talk about all of that. We’re going to walk through it together. Matt is the most loving, gracious, kind guy, and he loves the word, he loves truth. And so this is a perfect conversation to have to just talk about this conversation with grace and truth. We also have Brendan and Chris in the room with us who are on staff here, and we’re just having a conversation together. And we hope this is a good resource for you. We hope it blesses you and encourages you. God bless. We have Matt Johnson in the house. Matt, how are you, man?

Matt Johnson:

Doing all right. Thank you guys for having me.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, this is so awesome. But you’re doing well?

Matt Johnson:

Doing very well. Yeah. Thank you. In all seriousness, thank you for having me.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, and you’ve recently planted a church, and it’s been going on for…

Matt Johnson:

Yeah, so I got voluntold by our church.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, voluntold.

Matt Johnson:

To plant. But it was really cool, all jokes aside. The model was we planted with our community. So we already knew the people who were there. They were in the area. And so yeah, we’re on the campus of SFU Surrey, and it’s really cool to be… I don’t know, to have church and worship in the marketplace. Because we’re right in the mall. And you have the next generation college students, university students walking by, and you have young families and all generations worshiping together. So couldn’t say no.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, what an opportunity. It’s amazing. And you’re married, and you have children.

Matt Johnson:

I do, yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

And we used to work together.

Matt Johnson:

We did.

Andrew Marcus:

On a side note, we used to work together at the church. He was the youth pastor.

Matt Johnson:

Definitely a highlight.

Andrew Marcus:

That was a highlight. I actually loved it so much. He gave me youth pastor vibes.

Matt Johnson:

The facial hair.

Andrew Marcus:

Is it the goatee?

Matt Johnson:

It’s the goatee. Oh gosh.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh my gosh. That’s terrible.

Matt Johnson:

Real quick. One story. It was a youth night and just feeling that God was there. And so opened it up to the students, which might be a little bit dangerous and said, if God is saying anything to you, I want you to come up front and just tell us what God’s saying. So this girl that we’ve been praying for, grade 10 student walks up and I’m super excited for like, God has told you something. And so she comes up and I said, hey, did God tell you something? She goes, no, but I have a question. I’m like, yeah, what’s your question? She goes right there, can you grow hair or do you shave it on purpose? And I’m like, go sit down.

Andrew Marcus:

We’ll be right back after these messages from Rogaine.

Matt Johnson:

Exactly.

Andrew Marcus:

But we are going to talk about deconstruction. And I think there’s an element of that where a lot of people have just been told, or they used to go to church just because their parents went, or you have to do this, you have to do that. And now there’s this huge season of life where almost everyone is deconstructing because maybe they were just told things and not actually believing it or living it or understanding it, and now they’re questioning everything.

Matt Johnson:

That’s right.

Andrew Marcus:

And so we want to walk through deconstruction because it’s a very, very hot topic right now. Have we talked about this in the past? I think we probably have, right?

Matt Johnson:

We have. A couple of times.

Andrew Marcus:

Okay. So I asked ChatGPT, I was like, hey bro, what do you think of deconstruction? He gave me a definition or she. So this is the definition. When someone deconstructs their faith, it typically means… Because I asked what is deconstruction? It typically means they’re engaging in a process of critically examining and questioning their religious or spiritual beliefs. Deconstruction is an intellectual and emotional process through which individuals analyze and challenge their previously held religious convictions, doctrines or dogmas. Deconstructing faith involves questioning various aspects of one’s belief systems including religious teachings, rituals, interpretations of sacred texts, and the overall framework of their faith. It goes on and on. Actually, I like the ending though. It is important to note that deconstruction is not synonymous with complete abandonment of faith. While some individuals may ultimately reject or significantly modify their religious beliefs. As a result of deconstruction, others may reconstruct their faith by integrating new insights, interpretations, or practices. The process is highly personal and can vary greatly from person to person. So let’s unpack this. I mean, do we all understand and get a hold on what that is, for the most part?

Matt Johnson:

Oh yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

I’m learning about it. And so I’m not seasoned in this at all, but I guess we’re all students. But I wonder, is deconstruction always based and related on faith? So it’s always a faith belief that people are deconstructing?

Matt Johnson:

I wasn’t agreeing. I was just…

Speaker 3:

You’re just active listening.

Andrew Marcus:

Active listening. You’re like, no, I think everything you said is terrible.

Matt Johnson:

No, I think being in the church world, yes, it does look like it only happens with faith, but then again, I don’t think we’re that special. I think everyone has had things that they’ve grown up with that at some point they’ll label it as, wow, this really hurt me so it’s toxic, or this was not good for me, or there’s just a better way. And they do question the things that they were brought up with. I think that’s healthy. I think that’s becoming a human adult. You need to look at what is around to gather a larger understanding of who you are in this world and why the world exists and all those things.

But just because of my culture, I’ve served as a youth pastor for 20 plus years. And so I have seen a lot of it happen with mainly millennials in the church just because like Gen Zed, because they’re still very young. They’re still kind of in this half of their life to where they are under mom and dad or under authorities and stuff like that. But with millennials to where there has been this type of freedom to where, oh, I make the choices now. I live away from home. I live away from the way I was brought up, that kind of thing. So I see it more through that.

So I think deconstruction is just a human thing, but when it comes to faith, it is a very dangerous thing just because we do need to get rid of some things, but we don’t get rid of the thing, God. And that’s what I see sometimes happens is we equivalate, if that’s a word. We say my feelings and my knowledge of God are basically the same. And so we’ll just… Yeah, if there was hurt, if there was pain, I’m going to try to either fix it, solve it, get more information. I’m not going to be limited by those things.

Andrew Marcus:

And it’s not always a pain or a hard pass. It’s also we talked about like, oh, my parents just instilled this in me and it’s like now I’m like, God, just want to make my own decisions.

Matt Johnson:

That’s right. It was theirs, not mine.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, it was theirs, not mine. So I want to find out mine. Okay, so you said that there’s some dangers as far as in the faith world, because we could be throwing away some things that we definitely should not be throwing away. I know I was talking to my wife about it yesterday and she was just saying the majority of people, I don’t have any statistics or numbers, but it seems like a lot of people who do go down the path of deconstruction actually end up walking away from God entirely. So why do we think that’s happening?

Matt Johnson:

That people are walking away?

Andrew Marcus:

Because we talked about this a little bit.

Matt Johnson:

Yeah. You want me to do that now?

Andrew Marcus:

So this is not a…

Matt Johnson:

I was wondering what that was.

Andrew Marcus:

Matt brought this in the car with me and I thought, I’m like, wow, the guy just brought it in case he’s bored.

Matt Johnson:

In case I’m bored I brought it.

Andrew Marcus:

And I’m like, this is a pretty easy game, man. At least bring a Rubik cube or something. But no, we talked about a lot of people who go down the road of deconstruction. A lot of them end up just walking away entirely from God. And is it because they’re kind of coming up with their own truth or… So I know we were talking about an analogy that would be very helpful and it comes from first John.

Matt Johnson:

That’s right.

Andrew Marcus:

So maybe talk about first John a little bit and the premise of what is being written and who it’s being written to you and why it’s being written.

Matt Johnson:

Well, first and foremost, the reason I came on the show today, one, I think I owe you lots of money. So this is paying it off.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s right.

Matt Johnson:

I’m not an expert in this, but being in this for 20 plus years, there’s a lot of people that I care about who are walking away from God, and that is a big deal to me. And so that’s why I’m here. And so what we were talking about is why would people walk away from God? Well, maybe there just wasn’t that relationship to begin with because we have put other things in its place, whether that’s the church or our experiences, those kinds of things. But those things are not God. The church is not God. Even our beliefs is not God. Sometimes we can believe something of God that’s not true.

God is God. And so we were talking about first John. This is one of Jesus’s followers. He’s one of the apostles. And in first John, he just writes about two main things that God is light and that God is love. It’s not that just God does these things. It’s who He is. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. And He’s love. It’s not just… It’s a good… It’s like no, if you do love, you will know God. And if you don’t love, you won’t know God. That’s who He is. And so in chapter one, he’s reminding his readers of what it means to follow Jesus. And he’s saying, there’s some people among you, they’re called false teachers. And what they’re doing is they’re telling you that sin isn’t a real thing. Sin isn’t in their life, and also it just doesn’t exist.

And so he’s writing to say, no, actually this is why God came in flesh and died, because sin really is a big deal. And so then he continues in chapter two to say, well then what do you do? How do you identify what’s true and what’s not? And he says, the one thing that you can do is abide in who God is. You have to believe who He is. If you separate those two things, then you’re in trouble because you are basically taking God apart. And so this cute little illustration, the truths that we learn or that we’re looking for in life such as our identity, who we are, our purpose, what are some other things we’re looking for? Our philosophies, why I exist, all of those things, my dreams, my hopes. And so we take these cute little shapes, but we need to put it in something.

And sometimes we put it in friends or we put it in experiences or we put it in our businesses, all of those things. But we’ll realize that we need something more substantial. We need something more certain. And so we find God. And so we put them in God. And here’s God. You have two things just like John was saying. He’s light, so He’s all knowledge. In Him there’s no darkness. What He says is true. He doesn’t change His mind. This is truth. I’m the way of the truth in life. This is truth. But then also He’s love. He is motivated by something more than anyone else because usually leaders are motivated by power or by gain or by influence. Now He’s motivated by love. So that means if God’s everywhere, you don’t have to be freaked out. It just means He loves you. You’re never alone.

If God has more knowledge than you, you don’t have to be intimidated. It doesn’t mean you’re going to trip up and get the wrong answer. It means He will tell you what you need to know. And if He’s all powerful, that power is not against you, it’s for you. But what ends up happening sometimes is we can pull these two things apart. There we go. It worked. And now all of the things that we were looking for, our identity, our purpose, all of those things, they have nowhere to stand if we pull God apart. And we do this all the time. And so we pull away and say, no, God is truth, and this is where we need to be. But what happens is we pull away from having a conversation with people or showing love, because we just like, I can’t believe you would do that.

And so we pull away with God’s truth. And what happens with that is we become the judge instead of Him. We become the one who says, well, I know better. No, you don’t. You only know because God gave you that, you only know because of who He is in your life. And then with love, we all want love. This is where I see most people running to. We all want love. It’s a good thing. But when the love leads to who God is, there’s going to be some things that God can’t identify with, whether that’s who we think we are, whatever you want to say. The way that we identify ourselves can’t be…

Andrew Marcus:

Like contradictory to His love.

Matt Johnson:

That’s right. God can’t resonate with that. And so what we’ll say is, well, I got in this to be loving and my friend either identifies this way or doesn’t fully agree with God. I don’t want to call them a liar, because John does. John even calls them antichrist. I don’t want to be mean. I just want to be loving. And so God, your truths are a little too hard. I’m just going to love them for who they are, where they’re at. And that is such a good sentiment. That’s such a good desire. But if you’re just loving without a foundation and without truths, what are you leading people towards?

And I just see people who want to be more loving than God. Wow, that’s dangerous. Because if He is love, how in the world could you be more loving than Him? And so this is my biggest fear with deconstruction is you pull apart God and now you’re only stuck with half of God, which means no God, as we see in John, I’m the vine, you are the branches. If you’re connected into me, you’re with me. But apart from me, you can do nothing. You can do nothing. And this is John again. He knows this. And so it’s interesting too with… I feel like I’m preaching, sorry guys.

Andrew Marcus:

No, I love this. This is awesome.

Speaker 3:

John 15 sermon, let’s go.

Matt Johnson:

But with John, it’s funny. In Luke, he’s identified as the son of thunder, and I think this is Him. He’s like, okay, Jesus, the Samaritans won’t let us cross through their place. Do you want me to pray and ask for fire to come down and destroy them? Jesus is like, oh, no, shut up. Get behind me. But now later you see Him riding to a people that He loves. He calls them beloved, my children, and He’s saying, no, guys, I was this son of thunder, but now I’m John the beloved, and these two have to go together. I’m going to love you to truth. And the truth that I have, I’ll show you in love. And I just feel with deconstruction, we get really good at knowing the truth. Like, hey, that’s wrong. You shouldn’t put fear in my life like that. You shouldn’t be doing that.

It’s true. But how do we be loving to that? Or we just go all loving and we don’t have any truth to stand on. And so I’ve seen friends who now their biggest pursuit is just sexual happiness or sexual fulfillment, because that’s the most loving thing for them. Man, that’s just a bad identity because so many things can go wrong with that. Sex was never supposed to be our identity. Success was never supposed to be our identity. It’s love and truth. It’s God. That’s what we were made for. And so that’s my biggest concern is just when you deconstruct, what are you reconstructing on?

Andrew Marcus:

What are you reconstructing on? Oh, that’s so good, man.

Speaker 3:

That’s good.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s so good. And I think even the danger of deconstructing God, pulling Him apart and picking and choosing what you like and what fits with your life and doesn’t, that’s a huge danger.

Matt Johnson:

I think it is.

Andrew Marcus:

And we even talked about light and love, and we talked about the grace and truth, but with light, we talked about Satan masquerades as the angel of light. And so people are looking to other forms of light that they think is light, but it’s artificial light. And then the slogan that we hear over and over again is love is love. And I don’t even know what that means, but we’re deconstructing and just pulling God out of the love equation. And you showed us when you pull that apart…

Matt Johnson:

There’s no foundation.

Andrew Marcus:

No foundation. Your identity just crumbles. And so obviously a lot of millennials and a lot of people, maybe some people who are even listening are in the process right now of deconstruction. So there’s going to be a few people who are listening and not just a few people who are listening.

Matt Johnson:

Just us.

Andrew Marcus:

There’s three people listening right now.

Matt Johnson:

Thanks, mom. Thanks, dad. I didn’t watch Harry Potter. I love Flubber.

Andrew Marcus:

So I really want to watch Flubber now. It’s been a long time. But for the person who’s listening who is currently in a season of deconstruction, what would we want to tell them?

Matt Johnson:

Well, I think one, especially if everyone in this room, if we’ve grown up in church or in that Christian culture, we all have our stories. But I don’t want to just focus on the story. I want to focus on where is my identity? Because the church was never meant to be my identity. It was supposed to be this place that I do practice love and truth. The world is never to be my identity. It is a place I’m to practice love and truth.

But God, He is to be my identity. And so to those who are deconstructed first, man, my heart goes out to you. Whatever your story is, my heart does go out. And what story are you looking for? And can you not find that in God? And I’m not talking about the person who hurt you or that… No, no, no, I’m talking about you with God. Because one of the biggest questions I always received in youth ministry was like, if God is real, how can I not see Him? Or how do I feel Him? How do I have a relationship with Him? And what was happening was they were just taking other people’s testimonies and just saying that that was their relationship. It’s like reading a bunch of movie reviews and saying, yeah, I’m not going to go see that movie. Well, have you seen it? Well, no, but this said this and this said this. Unless you have experienced God, it’s going to be hard to… I don’t know.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s really good. I like what you’re saying, and it reminds me of a story that our pastor just said on Sunday where he talked about two people came up at some event and they both read Psalm 23. First person read Psalm 23 and he read it so well and articulated it so well. He had a huge applause. Everyone was cheering for him, whatever. Second guy comes up reads Psalm 23, and people literally start crying. And it’s like he doesn’t get the massive applause. And someone asks like, hey, why is one person reading it and getting this huge applause? The other person’s reading it and people are just weeping? Well, it’s because one person knows Psalm 23, the other person knows the shepherd. And I feel like what you’re saying is you can know or have a knowledge or hear what people are saying or kind of build your own thing, or you can actually abide and know the person.

Matt Johnson:

Yeah, that’s really good.

Andrew Marcus:

And that changes your life.

Matt Johnson:

Yeah. There’s a really good quote from Charles Spurgeon. He said some good things.

Andrew Marcus:

-We should have his picture.

Speaker 3:

We should have him on sometime.

Andrew Marcus:

Is he available?

Matt Johnson:

Here’s what he says, and it sounds like first John, which I love. He says, let me say to you, beloved. So I just love that phrase, beloved, because he’s like, no, I do love you. I’m not just the speaker. I’m not just the pastor. We’re in this together.

Andrew Marcus:

I love that.

Matt Johnson:

So for those who are deconstructing, we love you. So let me say to you, beloved, the more you know about Christ, the less you are satisfied with superficial views of Him. And it’s just so powerful because the stuff we’re deconstructing was never the stuff that God said anyway, for the most part. One of the biggest things is purity culture that we were talking about a little earlier. And God does have a plan for sex. And it’s supposed to be in a marriage union, a covenant marriage union between a man and a woman. And sex is part of that. And in scripture, whenever you see sex outside of that, it’s for selfish reasons. It’s rape, it’s adultery, it’s worship. It’s all these selfish things.

And so what we did, or what the church did is they built this whole culture probably because of their own anxieties. Like, oh, we can’t have our kids sleeping around and stuff because God said it’s only for marriage. Well, what if we showed them what a good marriage was? What if we showed them what to… Have that conversation of like, hey, yes, you could do this now, but here’s actually the reason for it. And you give them understanding, not just curiosity to why not to do it. Tell me why it’s better over here. And so what happens is we built this culture…

Andrew Marcus:

Huge community culture.

Matt Johnson:

And it hurt a lot of people because if you were not even in the word itself, if you did sleep with someone, you were not pure anymore. Well, newsflash, none of us were ever pure. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all fall short of the glory of God, and we’re not redeemed just because we’re virgins. We need to keep knowing who God is and why these things exist for the reasons that they exist. And so I would say to those who are going through this right now, yeah, what would it be like to meet the real Jesus to start there getting to know Him again.

Andrew Marcus:

Going to the source.

Matt Johnson:

There you go.

Andrew Marcus:

And actually spending time with Him, not just hearing about Him.

Matt Johnson:

That’s right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it’s strange how many of the people I know growing up, they threw out God because they lumped Him together with church. Pastors that hurt them, experiences they had, maybe certain toxic environments that they were part of and stuff like that, which is terrible things that happened to them. But it’s like, man, that’s not God.

Matt Johnson:

That’s right.

Andrew Marcus:

So you have to kind of pull that apart and get back to the root. So is there such thing… I guess there is such thing as a healthy deconstruction.

Matt Johnson:

Oh, for sure.

Andrew Marcus:

As long as you’re not deconstructing God.

Speaker 4:

It’s actually interesting what Mr. ChatGPT said, and then at the end saying that it doesn’t always lead to deconversion. Because actually a few months ago, I don’t know if you know him, David Crowder, headlined, talking about deconstructing. I was like, oh, no.

Matt Johnson:

No, really interesting.

Andrew Marcus:

But was it a positive?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. And he was talking about how he had to go back and reexamine his faith and see what he was believing, what he had grown up with, and see what is true in the Bible. And I recognize that in my own life too, growing up in a Christian family, it’s like, okay, do I believe this just because I was told to believe it? Or is this actually in the Bible? So you’re making your faith your own by deconstructing the things that you were told as you were growing up.

Andrew Marcus:

But I guess going to the Bible, going to the source, going to Christ, going to His word and finding how to reconstruct, I think He said it perfectly is like deconstruct…

Matt Johnson:

Yeah, I think He did too.

Andrew Marcus:

I think He did too. But it’s like the deconstruction is one thing, but it’s like what are you reconstructing on?

Speaker 4:

Yeah. Because you have to reconstruct, even the people who deconvert, they’re reconstructing…

Andrew Marcus:

Something. Their own truth.

Matt Johnson:

Well, you have Jesus in the temple where He flips the tables that is deconstructing.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, because they had to rebuild the tables.

Matt Johnson:

And you have to rebuild those things. You’ve got to screw it back in.

Andrew Marcus:

You know how strong He is?

Matt Johnson:

You call this a table?

Andrew Marcus:

Ikea tables, are you kidding me?

Matt Johnson:

As Jesus did deconstruct things, it was always on the foundation of His father. He always said, this is the will of my father. This is not the worship of my father. You look at Martin Luther who reformed the church. He didn’t just deconstruct Catholicism. He’s pointing back to, here’s the foundation. These things just aren’t in scripture. So let’s go back to that.

Andrew Marcus:

So what are you building on? I just love that. It’s like, what are you reconstructing on? So deconstruction’s okay, but make sure what you’re reconstructing on is, I think that’s Christ and His word. Don’t veer off anywhere else to the light that’s masquerading a false artificial light or a false love. Go to the true light and the true love, which is Christ, only Christ.

Matt Johnson:

Where no darkness is.

Andrew Marcus:

Where no darkness is and all pure love is. And so thank you so much, bro.

Matt Johnson:

Man, I love you guys. Thanks for having me.

Andrew Marcus:

This is awesome.

Matt Johnson:

It’s super fun.

Andrew Marcus:

Guys, I told you, did you have fun?

Matt Johnson:

A lot.

Andrew Marcus:

You going to come next week?

Matt Johnson:

Debatable.

Andrew Marcus:

Okay. We love you guys. We really genuinely love you guys, and we hope this has been helpful for you. God bless you. Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out the Indoubt Show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.