Faith Deconstruction: How Postmodernism Is Reshaping Christian Faith | Tim Barnett

Episode Summary: 

What if deconstruction isn’t a crisis of faith, but a crisis of authority?

This week, we sit down with apologist Tim Barnett from Stand to Reason, Red Pen Logic, and co-author of The Deconstruction of Christianity to unpack the ideas behind the faith deconstruction movement and learn how it's affected every one of us in more ways than we realize. 

We explore how postmodern thinking shifted authority from Scripture to the self, why that change reshapes conversations about truth, justice, and identity, and how social media is actively discipling millions. Make sure to listen to the whole conversation, as Tim also shares incredibly practical ways for Christians to respond with clarity, compassion, and confidence when friends or family begin questioning their faith.

If you’ve watched someone you love drift or are wrestling with these questions yourself, this conversation offers helpful categories, practical tools, and real hope.

Who is Disciple Nations Alliance (DNA)? Since 1997, DNA’s mission has been to equip followers of Jesus around the globe with a biblical worldview, empowering them to build flourishing families, communities, and nations. 👉 https://disciplenations.org/

🎙️Featured Speaker: 

Tim Barnett is an apologist and speaker with Stand to Reason (STR), an apologetics ministry dedicated to training Christians to think more clearly about their faith. Tim travels across the US and Canada, speaking to thousands of people each year. He’s also a frequent guest on podcasts and YouTube channels.

Before starting STR in 2015, Tim worked as a professional teacher, employed in both the private and public sector. He has earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from York University, a Bachelor of Education from Ontario Tech University, and a Master of Arts in Philosophy from Southern Evangelical Seminary. Between 2014 and 2022, Tim served on the pastoral staff at Cedarview Community Church.

In 2020, Tim began Red Pen Logic with Mr. B, an online ministry that assesses bad thinking on social media by using good thinking. Across all social media platforms, Red Pen Logic (RPL) reaches millions of people every month.

Tim resides in the Greater Toronto Area with his wife, Stacey. They have three daughters and a Morkipoo named Polly. Tim enjoys working in the garden and spending time with his family.

📌 Recommended Links

     👉 Tim Barnett and Alisa Childers' book: The Deconstruction of Christianity 

     👉 Red Pen Logic on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook

     👉 Stand to Reason website

     👉 Learn more about our Tim

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Episode Webpage

Transcript

Luke Allen 0:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Ideas Have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. As Christians, we all know that our mission is to spread the gospel around the world to all the nations. However, our mission, the Great Co-Mission, also involves working to transform our cultures so that they increasingly reflect God's truth, God's goodness, and God's beauty. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission, and today many Christians are having little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God. Guys, we just wrapped up a fascinating, fun, energetic, all of those things episode with a new guest here on the show that we'll introduce to you in a minute. But we just want to give you guys a quick idea of what you are getting into. Today I am joined by my dad, Scott Allen, and uh myself, I am Luke Allen. So the Allen's are bringing you today's episode, and we just really enjoyed this episode. Dad, would you mind giving people a quick little uh synopsis on what we talked about today?

Introducing the Episode

Scott Allen 1:04

Yeah, absolutely, Luke. Thanks. And uh the focus of the conversation was on uh Tim's uh book that he published a couple of years ago with Elisa Childers called The Deconstruction of Christianity, What It Is, Why It's Destructive, and How to Respond. And we really uh dove into that topic. It's such a relevant topic, continues to be. I was just reminded of this when I was talking with uh Krista von Traeger recently, Von Trager recently of of the Center for Biblical Unity. She's done a lot of work around uh Biola University, and Biola just is a representative of some of our very best evangelical universities in the country, at least historically. But she brought up the point uh recently to me that was a bit shocking that uh I think it was quite a high percentage of Biola graduates in recent years have gone through this process of deconstructing their faith. They're graduates of Biola University. And um, so this is clearly a problem, an issue, and I'm sure for many of you it's a heartbreaking issue. You know you have people's faces that come to your mind, might be your own children that have deconstructed. So we're gonna get into that. We're gonna look at what it is, what's behind it, um, and what can be done. We're gonna end kind of very practically on that. Uh, what can be done when you are facing that with a loved one? Luke, yeah, what what what are your sense what's your takeaway from the podcast?

Luke Allen 2:22

Yeah, I mean, this was such a good episode. It's such a practical ideas have consequences episode, right? Because there's this idea that's pervasive in our culture, which is deconstruction. Um, and even if you don't think you are deconstructing, I think it's affected all of us. Um, because it's a postmodern idea. It was invented by the the deconstruction term was coined by one of the the founders of postmodernism, and postmodernism is probably the most predominant set of ideas that are influencing uh many Western nations today, uh America included. So the idea here of deconstruction is influencing all of us, and the consequences are influencing all of us in our daily lives and in practices. So we see people who are going through this process of deconstructing, which essentially when you do that, you you take the authority out of a literary text and you replace it with your own authority. So a lot of people when they're deconstructing Christianity will take God's authority out of the Bible, replace it with their authority, and say, What does this Bible mean to me? The Bible means there says I should be seek justice. Okay, what does that mean to me? Not what does that mean to God? So people will start approaching issues that we see around us in our daily lives. Hey, I'm seeing riots right now in Minneapolis. I'm seeing these ice protests. What's the most just uh way to look at this? And instead of going straight to what does God say justice is, they go to what they think justice is, and because of that it's very confusing. You know, so we see that. So we see Christians, you know, separated on an issue of justice. Why are we separated on this? Well, it's because some of us are going to the Bible as a supreme authority, others are going to themselves essentially. Same thing with the arguments over abortion, the arguments over same-sex marriage, the arguments over the whole trans issue today. Like these these things are affecting all of us. Some Christians are looking at it in a very different lens than others. And you know, it's because ideas are having consequences. So, anyways, super practical discussion that gets right to the heart of this podcast. I hope you guys enjoy it, and uh without further ado, let's hop into the discussion.

Scott Allen 4:19

Well, we're so excited today to have with us Tim Barnett. Tim is uh a new guest on Ideas Have Consequences. Tim, thank you so much for taking some of your time to be with us. We're really thrilled.

Tim Barnett 4:30

Hey, I'm looking forward to this conversation.

What Deconstruction Really Means

Scott Allen 4:33

Thanks, Tim. Tim is uh just a little background. Tim's an apologist, and he is a speaker with the well-known uh apologetics organization Stand to Reason, Greg Kokel. Uh that's an apologetics ministry that's dedicated to training Christians to think more clearly about their faith. Uh Tim is Tim, you're Canadian, correct?

Tim Barnett 4:52

That's correct. Uh it'll probably come out in the accent people hear me say, out about, hey, what what foreign country is this guy from? Yeah, that's the Canadian accent coming out.

Scott Allen 5:03

Well, Tim, I I just tell you, I um I was born again in Canada, up in Vancouver, uh, you know, the van off Vancouver Island on a sailboat many, many years ago. And so I claim Canadian citizenship for that reason, even though I live in the United States. Uh but uh that's pretty cool. I have a great heart for Canada. Uh Tim travels across the United States and Canada. He speaks to thousands of people every year. Uh he's also a frequent guest on podcasts. Um about two years ago, he worked with Elisa Childers and wrote a terrific book called The Deconstruction of Christianity, what it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond. And uh that's gonna be uh a bit of the focus of our discussion today, that book and what you guys were working on there. Uh just a little bit more, Tim, uh has earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from New York University. Yes, very logical. Uh you have to be trained in logic there. Uh Bachelor of Education from Ontario Tech University and a MA in philosophy from Southern Evangelical Seminary. In uh 2020, Tim began Red Pen Logic, which is an online ministry that assesses bad thinking on social media by using good thinking. Uh I like that. Red Pen Logic reaches millions of people every month. And uh Tim resides in in Toronto, the greater Toronto area with his wife Stacy and their three daughters. Tim, that's a lot. Anything you want to add to that uh or uh kind of help fill out in terms of who you are, what your heart is?

Tim Barnett 6:33

Yeah, you you covered the bases really well, you know. Um love doing apologetics and um and more recently, Red Pen Logic is kind of where my heart is right now. Um taking a lot of the bad thinking that's out there. I mean, just scroll through social media, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, you name it, and you will see some pretty wild and crazy things, ideas being uh said and promulgated. And uh and so what we do is we just take a couple of minutes really and assess those ideas and hold them up. Um, you know, Proverbs talks about, you know, the first who speaks seems right until he's cross-examined. And so that's that's basically what we're doing. We're taking the red pen. I used to be a full-time high school science and math teacher. Um, and I love that job. And we would often use, you know, the red pen to correct our students' work because we cared about them. We wanted them to get closer to the truth. It wasn't about putting them down. And so what we try to do is model that um in our red pen logic videos. You know, we're trying to do it with grace, but we're also trying to show the truth.

Scott Allen 7:45

That's great. That's great. Well, Tim, we wanted to jump into the topic of your last book with Alisa Childress Deconstruction, the deconstruction movement. It's still um still a movement that's active. I would say a lot of people are still uh in trapped or caught up in that movement. Um and I wanted to to in particular kind of focus on the roots of it. To me, I'd like you to define it just a little bit, but then also um uh we we want to get into the roots of it. The you know, ideas have consequences, and I see deconstruction as a consequence. The ideas at the root of it are postmodernism, postmodern ideas. In fact, I would call deconstruction kind of applied postmodernism in a way. Um talk a little bit about what is deconstruction, and then we want to jump into uh postmodernism and just kind of we don't want to spend a ton of time on this, but I I do want to touch on it. What are the kind of the core assumptions behind that?

Postmodern Roots And Derrida’s Influence

Tim Barnett 8:42

So Yeah. Good question. Um it's a good place to start. By the way, this was what you're asking me was the hardest thing to do for our book. So our book was 65,000 words, and I would say that this sentence, what is deconstruction, that definition, was the hardest sentence to write. Because we knew that uh people were using the word deconstruction to mean all kinds of things. Um, there were some people who were using the word just to mean, hey, I'm asking questions. I'm uh expressing some doubts, uh, maybe about end times or about uh creation or about whatever. Um but then there were other people. Uh probably most notable was Joshua Harris, who wrote I kissed dating goodbye. Um so he sold millions of copies, he was a mega church pastor, and he posted online that he had gone through a process of deconstruction. And he said the biblical phrase is falling away. So for him, it was he was using the word deconstruction as a synonym for deconversion. Okay, so you got this like spectrum, asking questions to leaving the faith. Um and so if you ask 10 different people what's deconstruction, you may get 10 or maybe 11 definitions, you know. So um when we started, we had a particular kind of definition and we actually changed our mind um through the research process. And where we landed was uh it's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring scripture as a standard, okay? Now, there really are three elements, and this will segue nicely to the postmodern conversation, but there are three elements to this. One is it's a process, okay? It's not a destination, it's how you get to a destination. It's interesting. If you were to hop into the deconstruction movement, maybe just type in hashtag deconstruction on Instagram, and you're going to see all these deconstructionists, okay, making videos. And what you'll find is some are an atheist, some are uh maybe maybe a progressive Christian, some are maybe in like a new age or new thought um idea, uh worldview. Well, what we found was what's common to all these people is that they left that what they left, they all left evangelicalism and ended up in different places going through a certain process. Okay. So my point is the the um definition, what deconstruction is, it's a methodology, it's a how, it's not a that, okay? Um, it's not a destination. The other two pieces have to do with truth and authority. Um it's postmodern, it's a postmodern process, which means it's not directed towards capital T truth or objective truth, something outside in reality. It's actually more focused in on um, we can talk about this, your feelings, um, what you believe to be true, what's true for you is kind of how the culture talks about it. And then the second piece is about authority. What we found is almost in every case, people using the word in the movement had totally rejected scripture. Okay. Um, and so it's not that, man, this is just another word for reforming your faith. Some deconstructions were saying that. We're just doing what the reformers did, semper reformanda, always reforming. The problem is if you take that, go to that context, that Latin semper reformanda, it finishes with secundum verbide, which means according to the word of God. So what the reformers were doing was they were always reforming, but according to the aligning themselves with the word of God, that is not what we see in the deconstruction space. And I mean, you just have to go and look for yourself, okay? Very few people are doing that kind of process, using the Bible as their guide. Okay. So that's the definition. And we can get into the postmodern part, the authority part, um, if you like.

Scott Allen 12:47

Yeah, I I would, I would. Because it seems to me, if I I don't want to oversimplify it, but it seems to me that at the heart of that is just a replacement of God or God's word in scripture um as a supreme authority with the self, right? I mean, it's just now I I am the one who kind of determines what is right and wrong, what is true and not true. Um, so it's yeah, it's it's kind of a become an idolatry of the self, right? Right. Yeah. Um that that seems to be just right at the core of it. And like you say, there's nothing wrong with asking really hard questions. In fact, it's important for people that are new to the faith or any one of us to ask hard questions of the Bible. I mean, the Bible, God isn't afraid of that, you know. Um, you know, and that's part of how we grow. But at the foundation of that has to be, are you really seeking a truthful answer? Or are you seeking, are you the person that's sitting there in authority and and and you know, uh kind of issuing judgment on what is true and what is not true? Are you trying to understand the scripture because you've got a question about it or how it under relates to creation or the the world around us? Yeah. Or, you know, are you just deciding what you think is right or wrong based on how you feel or your own sense of things? It seems to me that's right at the heart of it, isn't it, uh Tim?

Tim Barnett 14:09

Yeah, I I would say that, and again, I don't want to assume people's motives, but I think it's a question we all need to ask. What's going on in the heart? Okay. Because oftentimes, you know, you see a deconstructionist post a video, question for Christians, and then they give their question. Or, you know, once I found this out, I I left, I was gone. And it was like, it was like the reason, the evidence wasn't there, or they had a bad, there wasn't a good reason to believe Christianity anymore anymore. And I think that there are questions that do seek answers that are out there seeking answers, but there are also questions that are seeking exits. And that is a heart posture that actually wants out and and it doesn't matter. The question's not a sincere question. Again, I don't want to like pinpoint, okay, you, I don't think you're sincere. I'm gonna say your motives are, you know, bad faith or whatever. I'm just saying that's a reality of this particular situation. And so we have to be, we have to be aware of that for sure.

Luke Allen 15:07

I just I wonder when Christians accidentally use the word not really knowing what they're saying there. They were probably just saying, uh, like you were saying earlier, Tim, they're they're um I'm critically thinking about my faith or I'm questioning an element that's complicated in the Bible theologically or something. But when they use the word deconstruction, I mean it's really helpful just to know where that came from. You know, literary deconstruction, Derrida, like Jacques Derrida, when he invented that, it was about it was about taking a text, a literary text, deconstructing it to mean essentially whatever you want. So I can take Lord of the Rings, and when you do that, you say, What does this mean to me? You're saying I don't care what J.R. Tolkien said this means. I care what I think this means. Yeah.

Scott Allen 15:45

So of course when you're gonna deconstruction, I'm sorry, Luke, to jump in. We can't even know what J.R. Tolkien or any textual author meant by that text. I mean, this is you know, this is the idea. Yeah, yeah. So I've got to bring the meaning to it myself, right?

Luke Allen 15:57

Yeah. Yeah. So if you're gonna do that with the Bible, you're just immediately stripping God out of it. I don't care about the author.

Truth Pushed Upstairs: Power And Oppression

Tim Barnett 16:02

Which by yeah, by the way, that's happening in a lot of Bible studies. People sitting around the table and they're saying, So what what does this verse mean to you? And the real question isn't what it means to me. The real question is what does it mean? What does it mean objectively, right? Yeah. Exactly. What does the author mean? And this is you brought up Derrida and you know, kind of the father of this literary deconstruction, which we think undergirds. It's so fascinating. When we started doing our research, we thought, you know, people are using the word deconstruction and they don't really know, like it's it's not connected to this postmodern deconstruction philosophy. That's what we originally thought. It was like, how could it be connected? But the more you start to investigate what's going on in this movement, the more you see it actually is connected. In fact, one deconstructionist who's a deconstruction coach, okay, online, they go by the name Naked Pastor. Now, don't Google Naked Pastor, that would be a bad idea, okay? Who knows what you're gonna see? Uh while he he actually made a a video um where he talks about going to, I don't know if it was a Bible study or it was part of like Bible college. He was in a classroom setting and they were talking about Derrida and his postmodern philosophy and his method, his hermeneutic for studying scripture. And they were supposed to be critiquing Derrida. And when he left that class, he says that he was more convinced that that was the right approach. So um, some of these guys who are actually in the know, who are like the deconstruction coaches that are out there, look, if you're if you're wanting to deconstruct your faith, there's lots of people out there who want to help you do that. And you can pay them to do it. And uh and he said that it was Derrida that influenced him. And of course, Derrida, his whole um his philosophy was that you can't really, there's no fixed meaning in the text. You, as the reader, bring the meaning to the text. And so and so you could see how people today are doing that with the Bible. They'll take a verse and it doesn't really matter what Moses meant when he wrote those words, or what Paul meant when he wrote those words, or what Paul or what Jesus meant when he said those words. It doesn't matter. What matters is me bringing my experiences and my, you know, all that to the text and making it have this new meaning. In fact, Derrida, he uh uses this analogy of mailing a letter. Okay. So, like you mail a letter, but that letter never arrives at its destination. It's like the meaning never arrives. And uh, and that was that was his idea. Um, and we've taken that and and applied it to this new kind of like I'm leaving my faith or I'm deconstructing my faith and using that same kind of methodology, that same kind of philosophy. By the way, one of the things that really brought this home for us was uh reading a book called What Would Jesus Deconstruct? And it's written by a philosopher named John Caputo. And John Caputo is like a Derrida scholar, like he knows what he's talking about when he's talking, and he applies it's all right there, you know. The stuff that we're seeing out on Instagram and TikTok and all, it was, it's it's all undergirded. The the foundation is right there in Derrida's philosophy.

Scott Allen 19:24

You know, it seems to me that there's another uh aspect of this that's important to talk about as well, and that is um how a lot of it seems to me, a lot of young people that have been caught up in the deconstruction movement. I'm thinking of people I know. Um what got them into it, the kind of the gateway to it was um uh you know, a a sense that uh there is oppression, there, you know, it's people are being harmed, hurt, there's a lot of injustice that's out there. Um and that kind of at the root of it are are kind of Christian ideas. So for example, uh women are being harmed and hurt, and at the root of that, uh part of the root of that is this kind of Christian idea of the patriarchy or male headship in the home, and that's an oppressive idea, or you know, there's um whiteness and black people are being oppressed, and uh Christianity historically is kind of you know been a part of that through slavery or whatever it is. I think a lot of it is just really poor understanding of history, you know. But um but th there's this idea of kind of standing for the oppressed, you know, th this is where it overlaps with the kind of the woke movement, I would say. Yeah um can you talk a little bit about that? You know, they believe that Christianity has really kind of become a harmful thing, and that's what needs to be kind of stripped out, and you know, they they keep thinking if we can strip out these parts of Christianity that are harming people, harming a the LGBTQ community or whatever it is, um, then we'll get down to kind of the essence of it, you know, but of course they never do, you know.

Luke Allen 20:59

And that that partly is what's behind that ex-vangelical hashtag because they're using this this phrase evangelical, which no one really knows what that means as far as I know. But they have an idea of what they think that means, and it essentially means all this trauma and hard things that are happening to me and my society and you know, sexual ethics and whatnot. That's from evangelicals. So I'm gonna X that. I'm gonna leave that. Yeah, right? That's right. Yeah.

Tim Barnett 21:23

Yeah. This is uh this is a big point you're making, a big and a big question. And so let me back up a little bit. So um Schaefer talks about a two-story, the two-story house, right? And it says like in the bottom story is where we, you know, this is where the facts, this is where like truth people put like, you know, science and mathematics and those kind of things.

Scott Allen 21:43

But what we do is publicly acceptable facts and truth, right?

From “Harm” To “Hope”: Atonement Debates

Speaker 4 21:46

That's right. That's right. And then the upper story, you have these other things, right? Like um subjective things, yes. Subjective personal preference. Hey, where do you like to sit in the movie theater? You want to sit up close or do you want to sit far away? You know, that's right. Do you like pineapple on your pizza or not? You know, that kind of stuff. Subjective. No. Um what's interesting is, and this this was like I was reading Schaefer as I was doing the research for the book. And it was like something just dropped in the meter here. It was like it clicked. Okay. The reason we're seeing this stuff happen in the deconstruction movement is because what people have done with religion is it's not in the lower story, it's been pushed up into the upper story. Absolutely. And so if you move religion, and so Christianity and morality, by the way, up into the upper story, it's what you believe. Right. That's right. It's and so there is no capital teacher. It makes no sense to talk about Christianity being true. What does that mean? It's just, it's just, it can be true for you. In other words, it can be your opinion, it can be your belief, but don't, of course, don't force that on anyone else. Don't tell anyone else that it's they have to believe that. That would be silly. That would be like me saying, you know, you know, if you eat, put pineapple on your pizza, you know, you're going to hell, or something like that. You know, like it's the only way, it's the only truth. No, people don't like pineapple. Okay, fair enough. You know, so when it gets pushed up there, now it's not in the realm of truth. Well, what's left? Well, what's left is power plays. So when some pastor reads the Bible and they say, here about women, you just, you know, you brought up women a moment ago, and it says, like, wives submit to your husbands, that's a power play. That's oppressive. That's harmful. That's oppressive. The reason that's in there, again, what could be the only reason? It can't be because that's a good, that's true or something, like objectively. It has to be in there because someone is after power. It's always about oppressed versus oppressor. That's how they that's how you see the world now. And so that's why they go on and they're gonna challenge that, okay? But it it starts with a foundation that is incorrect, that that these claims from religious texts or from uh uh moral claims are outside the realm of the objective and have been pushed into the subjective, okay? So the answer to this is to teach people, show people that when I say Jesus is the only way, I'm not talking about my opinion. I'm talking about an objectively an objective claim. Now it may be false. Let's go investigate it, let's go see what the evidence says. But it is not about ice cream. We're talking about insulin here. We're talking about, like, you know, if I have a nephew who's a type one juvenile diabetic. If he doesn't take his insulin, he will die. That's just the reality of the situation. It doesn't matter if he likes insulin, it doesn't matter if he believes in it, none of that matters. The reality of the situation is he needs that every day or he will die. He can't choose, you know, vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream to control his diabetes. That's that's not going to work. Ideas have consequences, right? And bad ideas have victims. And in this case, that would be a bad idea and it would produce a victim. So this is, and this is why, I mean, again, it just kind of like snapped into focus. I see a Facebook post from a progressive pastor named Chris Kratzer, and he's describing how P uh uh he had a congregant come to him and say, Man, I can't sleep. I'm having this anxiety about penal substitutionary atonement. And uh and and and she comes to this, you know, progressive pastor and he says, Here's how, he's like, she's like, she asks, What do you do with these verses? What do you do with these verses? And his response was, Paul's wrong. That's his response. Paul was wrong. And then she and then he describes how, like, man, it's the pro the problem is when we give a soul.

Scott Allen 25:50

Child abuse, isn't that the way they describe it?

Speaker 4 25:52

You know, well, that's other other authors have described it as cosmic child abuse. And of course, that would be to misunderstand the Trinity and the divine nature of God. I mean, there's so many issues with that kind of response. By the way, there was uh I responded to a red pen, we did a red pen video where this person who went by the handle, deconstruction girl or deconstructing girl. Okay, so that's like that's your identity, by the way. When you put that in your handle, it's like, whoa, this has become a part of you. And and her, she says, here's like the most essential doctrine in Christianity is child sacrifice. You guys all believe in child sacrifice. And I'm thinking, seriously, you say you were a you were a Christian, and that's what you believe? Do you not know? And I actually took that challenge to my daughters, who are, you know, at the time, the my daughter was probably eight or nine. And she's like, Dad, wasn't Jesus like a full-grown man? And was didn't he willingly give his life? And didn't, I mean, wasn't he also God? And I'm just like, how can my nine-year-old get this without my help? And this like young woman, you know, this young adult is posting this nonsense online. Again, this is the kind of thing that, again, I don't want to attribute motives, but it just seems like, really? You thought that was compelling? Either the church has totally dropped the ball, like just totally, but I want to give the church actually some grace on this because she could go and just like look up some of these answers. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is not hard to figure out. Do I think there's honest to goodness challenges out there that are hard to deal with? Absolutely. I do not think Christianity is neat and tidy. There are some things that I'm like, man, I don't get that. I don't understand this, you know? And I and there are some things that are imponderable. Like we will never find an answer unless God like just reveals it to us straight up, you know? Because there are some things He just hasn't revealed. But some stuff is not that hard. And it's and it's often like put online and thousands upon thousands of people like it and share it and rah-rah. And it's like, really? Come on. So going back to the original question here, I think you have people saying things like, yeah, wives submit your husband. That is oppression. But you can't even talk about oppression versus unless you know, unless you assume that it's subjective. What if it's objective? What if that was, what if that came from the creator who made marriage and husbands and wives? And it's like the creator maybe knows the design plan and maybe like the good design plan for how men and women and husbands and wives ought to have relationships with each other. If that's true, if all of a sudden you step out of your deconstruction worldview and your postmodern worldview and you enter into the Christian worldview, and and what I think is just reality, then that changes everything. Because now you have a God who's a designer who can define marriage any way he wants. And what he does is he defines it, he he creates it in a good way. Yeah.

Worldview By Osmosis And Algorithms

Luke Allen 29:01

This is I this is one thing I do not understand. It's like a half-thought um on the deconstructionist part, and I I just I wonder if you've thought about this. Is people will will take God's good design, which God God gave us the perfect design, because he made us and he made the world, and he knows how we should live in it best. He gave us this perfect design, and then we say, No, I don't like that. That's causing trauma and harm, and you know, that that's oppressive. So I'm gonna I'm gonna run away from it. Now, in running away from objective truth, the way the world's supposed to work, you're left with you know, lower T truth that everyone holds. Yeah. And in a society like that, it's obvious that the strong man's gonna win. You know, who defines now what marriage is or who defines what justice is, it's only gonna be the strong man. It's not just everyone can live in harmony with their subjective little worlds. It's no the strong man's gonna rise up and he's gonna tell everyone what justice is and he's gonna enforce his justice on the world. That's the only option. It's survival of the fittest. That is oppressive. That's true oppression. So that's the part I don't get. You're running away from God's good design towards what? Survival of the fittest, essentially. Survival of the fittest ideas or strongest people enforcing their ideas on the world. I that that's it. I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 4 30:17

Well, that's a great observation. I think that you don't escape um true oppression. That's right. Um I mean, this is kind of like akin to the problem of evil, you know, and people, you know, it gets you get rid of God. Some people want to get rid of God, but you're still left with a world, you know, such that it is full of suffering and evil. What you do when you get rid of God is you get rid of hope. Right? Um, ultimate restoration. And so I think there's kind of in a similar way, you don't um, but again, I want to put myself in their shoes. If that's how you see the world, I understand now where they're coming. It's it's gonna be me determining what's just and unjust. It's gonna be me determining what's oppressive and what's not. And of course, if it's a group that's marginalized or the minority or the weaker group, then I want to, they're gonna stand up and fight against them, right? And uh, so in this case, it's gonna be we're gonna fight against the the man because we want to, you know, protect the woman from being oppressed by this thing. So I I want to say, like, I understand that, but I think there's so many assumptions that are built in there that are just totally false. And once you get rid of them, you can you can see you begin to see what's going on.

Luke Allen 31:32

Yeah, and it's so it's so dark where it leads. I mean, Nietzsche was one of the greatest philosophers because he was honest. And he knew that when God is dead, you lose hope, you lose purpose, you lose beauty.

Scott Allen 31:45

Anything is possible then, right? Exactly.

Luke Allen 31:47

And I mean Nietzsche lived it out to its fullest conclusion when he ended his life. That's where it leads, and that's why this gets so dark and sad.

Speaker 4 31:57

And and but by the way, I don't want to leave this point, I just I want to jump this before we get back to you, Scott. Um even doctrines like Jesus died for your sins. Okay, so that right there, we write about this in the book, because we were surprised, like people like you shouldn't even teach your kids that. Why? Because that says you're a sinner. So the idea of even calling someone a sinner is considered harmful and oppressive. You know what I'm saying? And to me, this what to me, this is where it kind of, again, there was another clicking, like there's not this, okay. But what if we talked about like cancer for a second? What if someone was just diagnosed with cancer and they there was a cure for it? You know, like we we have this like ability to for this form of cancer, we have there is a cure out there, but you gotta take the cure. You gotta go see the doctor. And you just have the world saying, no, no, no, you're not really sick, you're not really sick, you're not really sick. See, this is this is the subjective versus the objective, okay? They it if someone had cancer, everyone would be like, yes, go get the go get the cure. But when it comes to sin, they say, no, no, no, you're just not a sinner. Don't go to the cure, which is of course the savior, Jesus. Um, because again, this is like it's it's treated as subjective.

Speaker 5 33:15

Right.

Speaker 4 33:16

And even if you and if you tell someone they have cancer, or they have they have uh sin in their life, that's considered oppressive. So it's again, it's this distinction. And of course, Schaefer was ahead of his time. It was prophetic, you know, talking about the two-story house and the denial, the um rejection of Capital T truth. And we are living in in the fruit uh of that that philosophy, that postmodern and relativistic philosophy.

Forming Resilient Faith In The Home

Scott Allen 33:43

Aaron Powell Well, that's exactly where I want to go because we're talking about deconstruction, we're talking about how it's kind of an applied uh postmodernism. We live in a postmodern culture now. Francis Schaeffer was you know was active in the 1950s and 60s, and he was seeing it kind of in its early days. I mean, the roots of these ideas go back, you know, well beyond that at the turn of the century and late 1800s. Um but we're living in a fully postmodern culture right now. And this is kind of the key question I really wanted to get to today with you, Tim, is that I think there's this great misunderstanding or just lack of understanding about worldviews and assumptions and culture. Um let me explain it a little bit. So the the people that are deconstructing young people, they probably didn't start with some kind of a college course on postmodernism where they really thought deeply about it and understood Derry Daw and all these people and said, Oh, I'm I believe that, and now I'm going to function as a postmodernist. That's not the way it worked. They just absorbed it through the culture, right? Because we live in a postmodern culture. We we our worldviews, I I'm convinced, they're not, you know, we we receive them culturally, right? We from the time we're born, the stories that are read to us and what we see on TV and media and our parents, and you know, all of these assumptions are built into us from the time that we're little. And in our present day, in the in the West, it's largely postmodern. You know, that's what we're that's what we're absorbing. So we're effectively discipled, whether you want to be or not, or you're aware of it or not, you're discipled into postmodernism. Um, you know, deny it or not, but that's kind of I see it in myself, right? I mean, I'm part of the culture. I get, you know, I've been absorbing these ideas, and I'm still kind of like aware, becoming aware that wow, that thought isn't so much biblical as it's rooted in postmodernism. So there's that, right? And and then on the other side of the coin uh from that, you have this understanding of biblical worldview discipleship that I think is faulty, which is it's we just have to kind of teach people core doctrines of the faith, and if they memorize those doctrines, then they have a biblical worldview, right? And we can kind of objectively measure, right? You know, did you pass the test? Well, you have a biblical worldview. And I've always found that to be kind of false because you can actually have the right answers to things, but still be living out of those deeper assumptions that you never hardly even thought about. You just kind of absorb them, which are postmodern. So you have a lot of people that would say, Hey, I'm a Christian, I'm going to church. I maybe even they may even say, I have a biblical worldview, I passed the doctrine test. But they're still functionally postmodern. And there's just this uh if I could bring it to a conclusion here, there's just I think a lack of awareness about that whole thing, about the the the impact of culture and how it shapes us. Yeah. And the way we think about Christianity is divorced from culture almost. It's like it's my own personal belief. It's about salvation and heaven. It doesn't have anything to do with culture. So consequently, what I do in culture, the movies I watch, the schools I attend, uh, social media, people I follow, that has nothing really to do with my faith. You know what I'm saying? That's like kind of in a separate box. So I I think uh I'd love your thoughts on this because I feel like until we can think correctly about just culture and how we and how we absorb these worldviews and what it means to have a worldview and change to a biblical worldview, these assumptions, these rude assumptions, um, we're not gonna be making headway here. So any thoughts? I just love your thoughts on that.

Speaker 4 37:23

Yeah, uh I ca so much I want to say. Uh let's start with this. And I'm not sure who where I got this from, but someone said that we catch a worldview like you catch a cold. Yes. Okay. Like it just you just get it. I don't know, like you know, the last time I got sick, where did that come from? You know, who who gave me that?

Scott Allen 37:42

Um and you don't go out and find the virus and inject it into yourself, right?

Speaker 4 37:46

That's right. It's just living in the world and maybe I don't know what I touch, you know, a doorknob or whatever, and someone was and now I got it. Well, in a similar way, it's like, man, you're watching the movies you watch, the music you listen to, the your algorithm. Um, I think it's the one of the biggest things, especially if you're on, you know, Instagram or TikTok or whatever. Um, those things are shaping and training our minds, whether we realize it or not.

Scott Allen 38:11

That's right.

Speaker 4 38:11

Big time. So I call it digital discipleship. Okay. Like it is wild. Um you know, uh, you know, there's people today who don't believe, say that we um that dinosaurs exist or ever, ever existed. And uh you're like, really? Like, what do you think? What's going on with the museum then? Oh, well, that's like just like there's big pharma, there's big paleontology. This is all part of uh deceptive. You can literally watch these videos. And I watched one. Um, Candace Owens was on, you know, came up on my feed, and she's talking about how dinosaurs are fake. And I watched the video and I just thought to myself, this is wild, you know, this clip. And little did I and then the the I scroll maybe three or four videos, and the next another video comes up now talking about dinosaurs not existing. And now all of a sudden I'm in the funnel, man. I am in that funnel. Start believing them. There are Facebook groups being recommended to me that are like people against dinosaurs, and it has like thousands of people that are part of it. And it's so it's look at there's things that are like literally training our minds and thinking. So I now I understand how someone can like, ha ha, dinosaurs are fake to hardcore look at what they're keeping from us, look at all the conspiracy, look at all the stuff because we're being shaped by this stuff. Um, this is why. So you have this this digital discipleship that's happening. That's why I think parents, and we mean we do student conferences, so we really like are banging this uh this drum. We really want to see young people formed by a uh a Christian worldview, and it has to be intentional. It's not just like um it'll just happen. Um there, you know, maybe it'll be like a hybrid because they see you pray at meals. Okay, so now my kid prays at meals, but they also watch all this other stuff and are on Instagram, and now it's like some kind of like hybrid between Christianity and something else. Okay, and they don't really get the Christianity thing. We have to be intentional. I came to believe in God at first because my parents said there's a God. It was like I accepted a belief, like I accepted my Christmas presents, you know. Here it is. Take it. Um, but you know, my parents also told me that if I swallowed my gum, it would stay in my stomach for how long? Seven years. For some reason, everybody thinks if you swallow your gum, it's staying in you for seven years. That is not true. That's not true. And so, yeah, yeah, believe it or not, what do you know? You're always missed, you know, like cracking your knuckles.

Scott Allen 40:42

It's been worth worth it to have you on the podcast just for that, Tim. Thank you.

Functional Postmodernism In The Church

Speaker 4 40:46

Just for that piece of info, you know. Cracking your knuckles will make the you have to get arthritis. No, there was actually a Harvard, one of the, there was a study, I think maybe it was Harvard, and they found no, it's not true. Uh crossing your eyes will make them stay that way. Not true. Um, there's a whole bunch of things, you know, sitting too close to the TV. Remember that? And now we all stare at our phones like this, you know. Um, it's just you there's there's these bad beliefs we pick up, and there are good beliefs we pick up. And the key is to show young people here's what we think you should believe, absolutely, but here's why we believe it. Like here are our reasons, and are these good reasons or bad reasons? I want my girls, I have three, three girls, uh more than anything, I want them to be able to look at the world and be able to formulate a Christian world, uh, a worldview. And I want them to be able to see, look, if there's something that maybe daddy taught them, doesn't line up, it's a worldview is kind of like a map, and you're looking at the world, and hey, you know, I thought there was supposed to be a road here, but there's no road. I'm looking at the thing. There's no road. Or there's supposed to be a lake here. Hey, there's no lake. And so they're updating their worldview as they go. And um, and I believe that the Christian worldview is the best explanation of reality. There are going to be beliefs that I hold, and I, you know, we talked about reforming your faith versus deconstructing. I there are things I hold today, which 10 years from now I may not hold because I'm constantly trying to align my beliefs with reality and with with uh with God's world and God's word, you know. Um, so there's that formation. I am like right there with you. We need that intentional formation. Um sadly, it's not happening. I mean, in our book, we cite ligoneer study. It was from 2022. Now I think uh now there's one from 2025, but in 2022, they were asking evangelical Christians, okay, these are people who self-identify as evangelical Christians, and they asked them whether Jesus was a good moral teacher or not. Okay. And it was something like 39% said that Jesus was just a good teacher and not God. Like the hold on, hold the phone here. Um what these people who identify as evangelical are not Christians by any orthodox definition.

Scott Allen 43:06

Because George Barne has done some research on that, you know, and has come up with the same basic kind of conclusion. Same idea. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 43:13

So we have failed. We have um, we need to do a better job uh just simply getting people to um understand what Christians actually believe. Because here's the thing going back to deconstruction, you watch people deconstruct online, and some of them at least are deconstructing from something, but it's not Christianity. It's something totally different. Okay. Um and and so we need to start with the right beliefs. Like here's what we actually believe. And if you disagree, fair enough. But a lot of these people don't even understand the basics of Christianity.

Scott Allen 44:00

Those things, you know, the the our understanding of just what is truth, what is reality, have shifted because postmodernism defines those words very differently from the Bible. So it's like we've got to start there. That's the base foundation, and then we can start talking. Yeah.

Speaker 4 44:15

And Scott, even so there's postmodernism, and now there's even so there's some people are gonna be like, no, I believe in truth, I believe in truth. And and but when it comes to certain things, so they're like when they pick up their their medication and it says, take this three times a day. Okay, I I'm gonna do that, you know, like that's true. But when it comes to other things that they don't like, then they and so some have described this as like a post-truth kind of thing. So you're you're you're willing to um you're willing to affirm truth when it agrees with you and state the facts and all the stuff. But as soon as you disagree, all of a sudden it's like, you know, now there is no truth.

Scott Allen 44:58

So um and you put yourself in the seat of authority. You you're the one who decides what is true and what is not now. You you are God.

Speaker 4 45:06

That's what has to happen. It I mean, there's gonna be an authority at some point. And this is why a lot of deconstructionists are like, I'm not gonna listen to the Bible. How dare it tell me what I'm supposed to do? I'm and and what are you saying there by that? You're saying you're God.

Scott Allen 45:22

You decide what is Yeah.

Speaker 4 45:25

There's nothing new under the sun. And this is why in our book we have a chapter, I think we called it rerun. You know, like remember T when you watch TV, you'd have like you'd see a rerun. That's the only way you could watch a show you missed, right? You had to watch the rerun. Well, um there is uh what we describe is this is the same thing that happened in the garden. We are literally living out the rerun. Absolutely, absolutely.

Scott Allen 45:47

That's really clarifying, by the way. Just to go back and show how that is the core deception from the garden that just is really rippled down through history and is big time right now in the culture here. Yes.

Speaker 4 45:59

It's it's nothing new. It's it's in the garden. What does what does Satan do? He deconstructs God in a lot of ways. He says, Look, did God really say that? That's right. And it and the implication there is, you know, God can't be trusted on this. Um, you know, he said you'll die. No, you won't die. So then there's like this like contradiction. Just lie, you know, straight up.

Scott Allen 46:24

This uh so and then you can be God, you know. You yeah, you can become God. You don't need to put yourself under this God, you can be God, knowing good from evil, and that's the temptation.

Luke Allen 46:35

Yeah, um just just for anyone listening who's who's wondering, you know, this deconstruction thing, this sounds familiar. I heard someone, one of my friends, one of my family members was saying they're deconstructing their faith. Um I you know, someone listening, I want to talk to them, but I haven't yet. How do I approach that first conversation? I'm I'm guessing they're gonna be defensive. I'm guessing they're gonna pick and choose what truths they want to listen to. How can I go about that in a way that where they will not fully dismiss me? Because that's often the times unfortunately what happens is they'll just push you off and they can't I won't talk to you anymore. How can they approach that conversation to where they can continue the conversation?

A Practical Playbook For Hard Conversations

How To Speak To Friends/Family Who Are Deconstructing

Speaker 4 47:10

And yeah, it's a really really practical question. Um and we spend in our book the last third of the book is all trying to get practical because that's this isn't just academic. These are these are real families, they're real relationships. I want to say we want to make sure we as best we can maintain the relationship with with people who are going through this, okay? Sometimes that's not gonna be possible because you know, you we disagree, so I am going to, you know, you're a bad person. That's kind of our culture now. It's so polarized, you know. We disagree, we can no longer be friends or family, you know, and you get cut off. Um, I would say that uh so to maintain the relationship as best you can, first thing, stay calm. If someone comes to you, a loved one, a friend, and says, I'm deconstructing, my my in my mind, I'm gonna be asking the question and probably will come to ask you that ask this question, what do you mean by deconstruction? Okay, because I want to know what they're talking about. Because they may just be like, I'm just wondering what this text means here, you know, in the in the Bible. Fair enough, you know, and uh and so let's talk about it. But if they're doing the process that I'm describing, the postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring scripture as a standard, okay. First thing, stay calm. Don't lose it. Don't like um, how could you let how could this happen? Don't you know better? All this stuff. I've I've heard horror horror stories of parents um kind of losing it and actually severing the relationship in that moment. Okay. So stay calm. The next thing is going to be um tell them that you love them. Love unconditionally. It's not I love you, but let me fix your theology now. No, this is this is likely the person who's come to you has been thinking about this for a while and they feel probably a little anxiety coming to like revealing this information. So just affirm the person in that that you still love them. This doesn't change that. If my daughter were to come to me and say, I'm deconstructing, I would want her to know, yeah, oh, I love you, period. This is not gonna change because you don't agree with daddy anymore or something. Okay. Um, next thing is going to be um, I want to set tell them thank you. I want to show gratitude for them coming to me of all the people, knowing that I did I disagree, knowing them that like in my situation that I'm an apologist and you're coming to me and saying I don't believe this anymore. I'm out. Um, that would be heartbreaking to me, I'll be honest. But I want them to know that I appreciate having them coming to me and being open and honest. They feel I'm a safe person to talk to about this. And then I'm just gonna listen, I want to know your story. How did you get here? You know, obviously there's a backstory. I talked to one dad who um had his daughter, who was uh I think first year university at this point, but she had been wrestling for two years, she told him. But she didn't, he didn't know. He was completely unaware that she had been going through this process. And when she finally revealed it, he was like, Whoa, two years? And it was because she saw some atheist YouTubers and some other things. That was her, um, that was part of her story. Um, I'm gonna set boundaries, is another thing. I want to like make sure that I'm not over-aggressive, like because my my tendency is to lean on truth and and not so much grace. Okay, especially in these kinds of things. It's like, well, don't you know this? And haven't you read this? And how could you not believe? And here's this other reason, here's a fact, and here's I want to make sure that they um they don't feel like I'm a steamroller just running them over. And in the other way, I don't want them to run over me either. So there there have been lots of situations where someone's deconstructing and they go tell a Christian, and that Christian ends up deconstructing. Um, just like hurting people hurt people, uh, deconstructing people will deconstruct people. And um, and so just be careful because those questions from your friend or your family member will quickly become your questions too. And if you can't handle it, you're not in a safe place. You're you're um you're likely, you're ripe for deconstruction yourself. Okay. And so it may mean that you need to just like, okay, hold on. I don't know the answer to that. And you're sending me into a spiral. Uh look, let's talk to someone who maybe knows some more about this stuff. Um, I want to model Jesus as best I can. I I know for um there's times I'm gonna fall short, but most deconstructionists have given up on Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but they're watching you. So they're watching Tim, they're watching Scott, you know, they're watching. So we want to make sure, man, I'm showing forgiveness. I'm showing love. I'm showing like we need to do a good job. And I sadly, especially in our polarized world, Christians um aren't showing that. You know, Francis Schaefer, we talked a lot a little bit about him today. He talks about our final apologetic and how we love each other, right? It's like something powerful about that like life well lived according to the gospel, um, that that is even more powerful than certain arguments and evidence. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we we want to make sure that our we're living out what we truly believe. And so model Jesus as best you can. And then maybe the last thing, there's more that could be said, but certainly we need to be praying for those in our lives who are going through deconstruction and just praying that God will use us and other means. You know, there may be situations where I, the person closest to that per individual isn't really going to play the most significant role. It could be someone else. I can, I'm thinking, I'm not gonna get personal, but I'm thinking of situations in my own sphere where I know that like I wanted to play a more significant role, but it that wasn't the God didn't wasn't using me um in the way I wanted him to. He ended up using other people. And and the but the results came. And so it's like, God, just do your thing, whatever means necessary, you know, bring this person back to yourself. Uh get I want their, you know, as best your the answers, if they're there, I hope they find those answers. Um and if they were hurt, and we talked about hurt, there is genuine hurt. There are genuine situations that make me angry when I find out of spiritual abuse, of pastors who really were manipulative and abusive physically, spiritually, sexual, all the stuff. Um, that stuff should, man, that should make us all angry. We want to get those wolves out of the church. Um, and we want to protect those victims. So again, we want to be praying, God, how can you use me in this situation? And if it's not me, someone else. So those would be, and then here's the last thing. Um, I would want to make sure the you know, not the person deconstructing, but the person who maybe has a loved one who's deconstructing knows that there is hope. Like there really is hope out there. It may seem hopeless. You may know someone who's been down the deconstruction road for years, and you may think that person's gone. They are lost. But remember the prodigal son. Remember, man, this is we in the book talk about Peter and how he denied Jesus three times, right, on that Friday night. And then that Saturday was probably just a horrible experience, you know. Um, but Sunday was around the corner, resurrection Sunday, and Sunday brought hope. And now, and Peter being restored, you know, um, and and Jesus saying, on this rock I will build my church. And so there's like this powerful, you know, um message of hope that comes even in the midst of this terrible thing that was going on. And I think a lot of people may be living in that Saturday, not not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. But what I would what I would want to encourage is like just remember there still is hope. As long as God gives us another day, there's hope. Um don't quit. So that might be a good good way to leave a message to leave on.

Scott Allen 55:27

That's so good, Tim. All of those so helpful and practical. Thank you for that. And um uh you can learn more from Tim's book that he wrote with Elisa Childers, The Deconstruction of Christianity, what it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond. Tim, thanks for your time today. You've been super generous. Um, how do people connect with you and your work? What's the best way for them to learn more about you?

Speaker 4 55:50

Sure. I I'm an apologist with uh an organization you mentioned at the beginning, Stand to Reason, and our website is str.org. And we have articles and videos and courses and you name it. It's all on there. Um they can also find me on social media um just typing in Red Pen Logic, basically anywhere. You know, yeah, Red Pen Logic, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, you name it. Uh we're on there. So those are those are the two places you want to look.

Scott Allen 56:18

All right. Well, Tim, thanks so much for your time today and for your ministry. Keep up the great work. This has been really helpful today.

Speaker 4 56:24

My pleasure.

Scott Allen 56:24

Thanks for having me. God bless.