In 2020 the YouTube comedy duo Rhett and Link did a series on their popular podcast, Earbiscuits, about their lost years (working as Christian missionaries) and then told their individual stories of their faith journeys that they titled deconstruction.
Around the same time, Justin Bieber was increasingly public with what you might call his faith reconstruction. He grew up in a church-going childhood, hit massive internet fame, and has zigged and zagged in his spiritual experience and life.
I have appreciated how he has sought to honestly process his own fame and sort through his own journey of faith. Some have inferred that Justin Bieber has reconstructed his faith in Jesus.
What is deconstruction and reconstruction?
Broadly speaking, the terms deconstruction and reconstruction are building metaphors. You construct a new house. You reconstruct a damaged house. You demolish a house with sudden force. You deconstruct by taking apart a house piece by piece, beam by beam.
The terms are relevant because they give language to common experiences of faith. Renegotiating Faith, a study of young adults from Christian faith backgrounds in Canada, asserts that roughly 1 in 3 young adults raised within the Christian faith will claim to be agnostic or atheist in their beliefs by the time they graduate.
Put in terms of deconstruction, 1 in 3 Canadians raised in Christian homes will "deconstruct" or pull apart their faith by the time they graduate from university. Many more people deconstruct after graduation. Maybe you know someone who is in this process. Maybe you are that person.
As these conversations gain popularity, it is easy to dismiss people’s experience in either the deconstruction or reconstruction of faith. People often suspect poor motives of the other person in either case. This is especially common on the internet, and as a result it’s easy to dismiss people’s experience.
I am a follower of Jesus and I desire for others to follow Jesus. I believe Jesus is trustable. However, as I read all of these stories of questioning and struggle, I empathize with their experiences. And I'm learning from them about how to walk with people through the process of deconstruction and reconstruction.
Here's what I've been learning, especially from Rhett, Link, and Justin Bieber.
1. Heroes and villains
It is easy to designate individuals as heroes or villains, and to miss that real people are involved.
In the stories of Rhett, Link, and Justin in particular, their internet fame is of epic proportions. In the history of the world, rarely have any humans ever had the same level of platform that they do, where what they say is immediately consumed by millions of people around the world.
Their fame doesn’t change their humanity. They are still people, and their experiences are their experiences. They are neither heroes or villains.
Someone's particular faith journey shouldn't turn them into just a hero or villain either.
2. Be charitable and kind in listening
Their journey is their journey and not mine. Rhett, Link, and Justin Bieber have their own journeys that are not mine. Regardless of my opinion, I want to be charitable and kind towards them.
We should also major on kindness in listening to each other. Rhett and Link repeat in their podcast episodes that they fear being misrepresented and misunderstood. Now, they have been YouTubers for over a decade, so I am sure that they are very aware of how people can misconstrue them in comments and within the wider land of the internet.
But listening to them reminded me that I desire to be charitable and kind towards other people’s stories. Listening and seeking to understand is part of choosing to treat others as humans.
3. We have limits in understanding
We are limited in our awareness of the fullness of someone’s story. We hear someone at a moment of time as they process who they are at that moment in their awareness.
I am sure there were times when fans of Justin Bieber would be despairing of his choices and faith perspective. And they may be times in the future when they feel that way again.
When we listen, we need to remember that each person is in their own unique process. To be invited into dialogue is one thing. Lobbing criticism from within our limited understanding of a person’s story only adds to the person’s narrative surrounding what they are “leaving.”
4. Deconstruction and reconstruction is normal
I believe that most people within a western mindset of faith go through some form of a deconstruction and reconstruction. Everyone is seeking out their own individual way of making sense of the world. Rhett, Link, and Justin Bieber—and all people—are living in an age of authenticity where they are trying to make sense of life and faith.
It's especially hard for celebrities to be real and honest. So I commend their authentic pursuit of wholeness. Just try and imagine what Justin Bieber’s life is like: his Instagram posts go to 290+ million people instantly. What would that do to your insides— and to your deconstruction and reconstruction?
In this age of authenticity, people are sharing their thoughts and feelings in real time and in public. It’s normal. When someone in my life is deconstructing or reconstructing, it doesn't necessarily need to be treated as something shocking. That's probably not helpful for most people.
5. Jesus engaged with people’s doubts
How does Jesus fit into deconstruction and reconstruction? My own reflection is that Jesus is both self-sufficient and a friend. He became a human and treated people humanely.
But how does Jesus deal with people’s doubts? That is a good question. Jesus’ tough words were for the religious people who used religion and power to their personal advantage. He was tender to those who had questions. Jesus, being all-knowing, knew people’s motives. As humans we can infer motives, but we can’t fully know another’s motive.
Rhett and Link perceived doubt in an interesting way. Their story emphasized their turning points of doubt and included how they perceived others’ feelings, or even their own feelings, towards those doubts. This is interesting to me, because I have observed that the people in the Bible are full of doubts. Even major characters in the Bible express doubt in different ways, including "doubting" Thomas. He longed for physical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection, and Jesus didn’t rebuke him for asking.
Doubt isn’t absent from followers of Jesus. To read the Gospels, including the disciples’ interplay with the ministry of Jesus, is to observe that Jesus patiently works through and with them. I can continue to learn from Jesus about how to respond to those around me.
6. Validating experience vs. agreeing with conclusions
Philosophy has given us many things, like the ability to analyze arguments. This is a wonderful tool that helps us evaluate ideas, precepts, and concepts. However there is a danger in evaluating other people’s ideas without first appreciating that they come from a person. In other words, we can too easily reduce a person’s experience to a paradigm to be dissected, rather than seeing them as a person with an experience.
For example, there are a wide range of Twitter comments breaking down Rhett and Link’s argumentation. While this may be interesting to some, in human interaction, it misses a key step—that of listening and appreciating where a person is coming from.
As I listened to Link’s experience I felt things like, “It sounds hard to live with so much self-hatred.” It’s important to first humanely enter into a person’s story and feel something.
The next step is to interact with a person’s conclusions—in Link’s case, what he concluded his self-hatred flowed from. In my view, one can listen and empathize, without engaging in a discussion of the premises that lead to a conclusion. I can validate someone's experience and still disagree with their conclusions.
To skip the step of appreciating the person’s experience is to see past their human experience and see their paradigm. It may be worth discussing the paradigms and premises embedded in a person’s story, but jumping right there can miss the person.
Listening in the “age of authenticity”
I haven’t discussed Kanye West, Joshua Harris, or many other people who are publicly describing their journeys in the age of authenticity. I would imagine that outside of people with significant internet followings, there are people around you sorting through pain and hurt and hardship, rethinking and reframing questions that they have about faith.
One of the ways to enter into that is to listen, and try to hear and appreciate a person’s experience—to validate it as their experience. Regardless of where they are on their journey, it’s possible to empathize with what they are going through as they deconstruct or reconstruct. It is a vulnerable place for a person to be.
After listening well, see if you are invited to interact with the thought patterns and conclusions. It’s easy to worry too much about their “end result” in their process and to miss the person who feels stuck in the middle. There are people all around sorting through feelings and thought patterns who are trying to make sense of life and faith.
In Western culture, we are used to story arcs in movies and TV shows that have resolution. We like the resolution—even if we don’t always like how a story plays out. We don’t want to leave a movie midway and call it done. But stories of reconstruction and deconstruction are usually in process, and the direction can be difficult to discern. And that's okay.
In my own understanding, as people are sorting through things, listening doesn’t always lead to immediate resolution. But it helps in understanding each other. As Justin Bieber says, “being human is challenging for everyone,” and to listen to people is to humanize a person, to hear and validate their experience.
