Alisa Childers: The Deconstruction Movement is a DEVIATION from TRUTH | Kirk Cameron on TBN

Alisa Childers joins Kirk Cameron to examine the trend toward deconstructing Christianity. A closer look at the movement reveals that absolute truth has been discarded in this social-media driven ideology. Alisa breaks down what Christians need to be aware of regarding this topic and how to guard against this erosion of faith. Don’t miss this informative interview on Takeaways with Kirk Cameron on TBN!

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You’ll see videos of people claiming that the church just invented the doctrine of hell to control people with fear.
It’s like we’re just trying to to keep our power to keep you in the fold.
Drop up this institutional oppression.
Alisa, thanks so much for coming back on takeaways.
It’s always great to be with you.
Last time we talked about questions of the faith, difficult questions of the faith, and the subject of deconstruction.
And that’s a big word. And and you’ve come back for round 2.
I mean, I feel like you won the match with your first bow with deconstruction, and now you’re coming back This is like the comp why are you doing that?
Well, I actually changed my mind on what deconstruction actually is. So in my first book.
I talk about my own faith crisis that I went through, and I used the word deconstruction to describe that process.
But now as I studied the movement and the phenomenon of I realized that I actually didn’t deconstruct.
It was something else because deconstruction is a very specific thing that’s manifesting in culture and it’s very connected to postmodern philosophy.
And so I actually correct myself in this book and say, I didn’t actually deconstruct That was a faith crisis.
It was agonizing. It was years long, but it wasn’t deconstruction.
So then what is deconstruction? I mean, it’s a big word.
You know, Does it did you does it mean you fell apart? You decomposed? You what what what deconstructed?
So instruction. How my co author Tim Barnett and I define it in the book is that it’s a post modern process of rethinking your beliefs, but not regarding scripture as the standard.
And that’s really, I think, what the core idea of the deconstruction movement is is as a shift of authority.
So no longer in deconstruction, are we looking to objective reality, absolute truth, and searching for answers with in absolute truth to know what’s real about god, about the Bible, about religion, about morals, about all these things.
In deconstruction, that locust of authority is shifted to the self.
So now in deconstruction, uh, spiritual beliefs are assessed more on what you personally feel helped or harmed by, what you personally think is toxic or, uh, healthy, oppressive, or liberating, so these are categories that are going to be employed in the deconstruction movement, but they’re not looking to reality in a in an objective sense to find those answers.
Because that’s appealing to kind of a a definition of truth that would be more like relativism.
Like, truth is just relative to each person’s historical context, their, maybe, their ethnic background, their, uh, where where they live, what period of time they exist in, but truth doesn’t work like that because truth is just it reflects reality.
It’s what you say or a statement that reflects what’s real. It corresponds with reality.
And so This is, um, people usually enter into this deconstruction.
Uh, and so, again, to get to a definition, it’s rethinking your faith And then rather than looking to scripture and reality to help me really understand what my faith and spiritual world is about, I’m looking to something else and that’s something else that else is how I feel.
That’s right. Yes. And that’s why I changed my mind because I went through a faith crisis where I basically busted everything down to the studs.
I I took it all apart. I reassessed. Okay. What do I believe? What is true? About the Bible. Exactly.
Do I really think Jesus was, uh, born of a virgin that rose to the dead?
Yes. And so and then I’ve looked to reality evidence that’s really what led me into apologetics.
And it was it was grueling.
And that actually supported the faith that you originally had.
Yeah. I came to the conclusion that the core gospel that my parents had taught me was true.
It’s it stood up under scrutiny, but that’s really not what’s happening construction movement.
Because yours was an honest investigation of your faith and then you used reliable tools to help you termin whether or not it was true.
That’s right.
But what are people doing today?
Well, in deconstruction, they it starts sorta with a presupposition that Christian doctrine or at least those core doctrines, like things like being told you’re a sinner, that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, that he resurrected from the dead that he’s the only way to god that there’s a place called hell.
These are viewed as toxic theology.
And that’s ultimately in the deconstruction movement what people are leaving behind as as toxic theology.
And so any sort of a proposition that would require something of you to say like like Kirk You’re a sinner.
You need a savior. Well, that’s a toxic because they don’t actually believe that these things can be known.
And so when the Christian comes along claiming to know things about reality, about god, and about morals, they just assume you’re trying to control me with fear uh, in fact, very often in that deconstruction hashtag, you’ll see videos of people claiming that the church just invented the doctrine of hell to control people with fear.
It’s like we’re just trying to to keep our power to keep you in the fold.
Drop up this institution of oppression.
Right. Wow. And so people are doing this. Is this common? Is this going on?
Everywhere in youth groups in certain denominations?
I think it’s happening everywhere because it’s largely a phenomenon of social media.
In our book, we quote from TikTok videos, that many of which have millions of views in hundreds of thousands of likes, claiming things like hey, being told your center is abusive or being told that hell exists is psychologically damaging to children.
These videos are getting millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes.
What can we do as, let’s say, parents to detect if our children are going down this path of deconstructing because they know it’s probably not something mom and dad would be happy to hear about that we’re questioning my faith.
I’m not sure I believe the Bible. Uh, I may not wanna be a Christian anymore.
Are there telltale signs or things that we can ask our kids to find out if this is something that we need to deal with?
Well, I think it’s really important for Christian parents.
This is something that I think about all the time because I have a fifteen year old and a twelve year old, And what we try to do in our homes have really open and honest discussions about, uh, the questions our kids have about the reliability of the bible or you know, for reading through scripture.
And one of my kids says, did that really happen? That sounds a little far fetched.
You know, we just discuss those very calmly. We don’t shame them for their questions.
And so I think it’s really important for Christian parents to have those conversations with their kids, but in order to detect an actual deconstruction, which again, as we’re defining, it’s it’s a process of rethinking your faith, but not regarding strict scripture as a standard for a child or a teenager to be going through that I think there would have to be some level of exposure to social media.
And so I think parents who have teenage kids and younger have a lot of power to help stem the tide of deconstruction by limiting their kids’ interaction with social media.
Now that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t expose them to those ideas.
In fact, I Tim, my my co author, Tim Barnett, has the Red Pen Logic, you know, and TikTok, where he literally takes videos and will correct them with a red pen.
And so I think it’s great to pull a TikTok video to show your kids of maybe a deconstructionist saying, hey.
Christians are abusive. And talk it through with your kids in the safety of the home where you are discipling them.
But if they are actually deconstructing, there’s probably a good chance there’s some outside influence that you could you could actually kind of control a little bit more, maybe.
Right. How is deconstruction shaping culture right now?
Interesting question. I’m not sure if deconstruction is shaping culture or if culture has shaped the movement of deconstruction because the movement of deconstruction is very postmodern.
So it’s hallmarked by a rejection of the idea that absolute truth could be known when it comes to religion and morality.
So most pot postmodern people they’re not gonna walk around as if truth is relative in all areas, but in those two areas, religion and morality, they’ve sort of put those in the category of opinion or preference?
Like, what’s your favorite ice cream? It would be weird for me to say, no, Kirk. You shouldn’t like vanilla.
You should like chocolate. I mean, everybody would be like, well, that’s weird because that’s an opinion. Right?
And so our culture at large has put religion and morality in that category of opinion And so I think that is what has caught fire to the deconstruction movement because they’ve sort of adopted that as a presupposition.
And then then it’s like, well, if the church told me x, y, or z is true, and I must believe that, or I will be condemned to a place called hell.
That’s obviously oppressive. That because they couldn’t know these things.
Because it’s just opinion.
It’s yeah. Because it’s just in the opinion category.
And so I think that it’s the postmodern culture that is really probably more influenced the phenomenon of deconstruction rather than the other way around, but that’s kind of a guess.
I don’t Yeah.
The scriptures as an authority and sees Christianity and its tenets as oppressive, that certainly is then going to have a trickle down effect and shape the culture, our idea of family, our idea of government.
What we discovered as we were researching for this book is that very often in that deconstruction space, the leaders of the movement will tell you not to land on anything solid.
In fact, there’s a very popular YouTube channel and Instagram, uh, channel that is telling you don’t form new beliefs because when you deconstruct, if you form new beliefs, then you’ll just have to deconstruct those.
So just always be asking questions.
In fact, the same deconstructionist said, I think questions are the answers, which, of course, is self repute refuting because that’s not a question.
That’s actually a statement that he’s sinking his teeth into and standing on. Right?
And so I think there’s a lot of a self refuting nature in a lot of this that interestingly, you know, for apologists, that’s very frustrating because we’re truth people, And we wanna be like, well, I’ve just shown you your logical fallacy.
Don’t you see? You know?
Yeah.
But in the deconstruction movement, it’s like they they don’t care. They almost feel attacked.
If things like logic and reason are brought into the conversation.
And if it’s brought outside of a of the lens of self, really, and and a self led process of trying to find what works for you or what you feel is liberating for you.
But, again, that’s all self referential. That’s not based on anything on the outside.
So when somebody rejects Christianity and the Bible as their ultimate authority, and they say, here’s my new self, and I don’t believe in anything anymore.
And I’m just questioning everything. Isn’t that their new orthodoxy? It is.
And don’t they have their own sets of priests uh, who are telling them that these things are gospel truth.
Explain that a little bit.
Yeah. This is a very interesting question because uh, we had to cut a lot out of the book because we had written way too many words.
And one of the things that did not make it into the book was this section that I had written on comparing the deconstruction movement to a religion because in the name of getting rid of religion and divesting themselves of organized religion in a way they’ve constructed a new one.
So like you mentioned, they have priests and prophets, the spokesman, and the leaders of the So these would be the Instagram and TikTok, uh, TikTokers and Instagrammers who are putting out no kidding per 22nd videos that challenge something about Christianity that everybody buys into, even though it’s easy to refute these things.
These are demonstrably false, but it doesn’t matter. Because in that hashtag, it’s it’s an echo chamber.
It works a lot like propaganda. So people see, oh, hundreds of thousands of people like this.
It must be true. Now I have a reason to leave this toxic theology.
So you have the p the priest and the prophets. You have the evangelism.
You have it’s very evangelistic, this movement. They want you to leave your toxic theology.
They’re not just content to be like And be converted. That’s exactly right.
They don’t want to just walk away quietly and go, gosh, I just don’t believe anymore.
You know, you do you all do me. It’s very evangelistic. And there’s a a sense of of the testimony.
You know, Christians go around and they tell their testimonies. Yeah.
Well, that’s what the deconstruction story is is it’s a it’s a test emotion.
And instead of the great commission, there’s the great decommission.
So it’s very religious in nature in my view, and which is very interesting because they’re doing all of this in the name of getting rid of the chains of what they would call organized religion.
What are some of the things that are happening to people that is moving them to deconstruct?
Well, I have some theories. I mean, some of it gonna be speculation.
In the book, we really don’t speculate on the question of, you know, if people deconstruct where they’re really a Christian in the first place.
We don’t really go there. But it’s my personal suspicion that because of the rise of the seeker sensitive model, uh, the megachurch model, and I wanna be clear.
I’m not saying there’s anything with having a large church or something like that.
But with, uh, the more seeker sensitive message and maybe the watering down of the goth in many churches.
I think there’s a lot of people who grew up in church. They like Christianity. They speak the language.
They like the community of it.
But maybe they never trusted in Christ for themselves, and they may not even realize that they’re not a Christian.
Yep.
And then a crisis comes. Maybe it’s the moral failing of their pastor or the mishandling of that moral failing by the church leadership.
Yeah.
Or maybe it’s legalism or whatever else it might be, church abuse, And the those two things come together, and then it’s like, well, this whole thing is unsafe.
I don’t and and I have a lot of compassion for that, by the way.
Because I think spiritual abuse is very real.
Yeah.
And it disorients people, and then they don’t really know where the solid ground is.
And that and they can be candidates for deconstruction.
Yeah. What can pastors do to prepare their congregations for this kind of unraveling of the the faith of some.
I I would say there are 3 really, really important things that every pastor can do.
In fact, we have a a whole chapter on questions, and we address pastors a lot in that chapter.
Um, number 1, pastors need to speak clearly and confidently about issues of uh, what’s going on in culture as that would relate to scripture, their congregations need to be biblically literate because what you find in that deconstruction movement is a lot of misunderstandings and characterizations of what the Bible has to say.
Mhmm.
Um, people will say, you’ll you’ll see a deconstructionist say I know the Bible inside and out sideways, backwards, front back.
I know the Bible, but then they’ll make a statement that so displays how they don’t know what the Bible says in the accurate context.
So teaching the Bible, teaching your congregation, the nature of truth, but also providing a space for questions.
We actually encourage pastors to start a Q and A.
If you can’t do it every Sunday after the sermon, maybe do it on a Wednesday night.
So where you’re sending the message, questions are welcome here. We’re not afraid of questions.
And so that provides your people the opportunity to maybe ask some of those questions that they thought, well, maybe I wasn’t supposed to ask this, but now they know that it’s safe to ask those questions.
But as we also point out in the book, sometimes those questions are answered, but the answers are not accepted.
And that’s often when somebody will say, well, I just don’t like the answer.
And they’ll claim the answer the question wasn’t answered, but they really just didn’t like the answer.
But I think biblical literacy, teaching about the nature of truth, speaking with clarity, and maybe opening up a time with Q And A and engaging with the movement of deconstruction, which also means defining it properly.
And this is a huge huge plea that we make in the book is that there are a lot of well meaning evangelical leaders that talk about deconstruction and they’ll say, well, just deconstruct in a healthy way.
You know, use the Bible to deconstruct, but the problem with that is we’re conceding language to what it really is because that is not what is manifesting in the deconstruction hashtag, and that can be very confusing.
So when we allow words to be defined in all these different ways, it just brings in a whole lot of confusion.
So we’d love for pastors to educate their congregations about what deconstruction really is And what a better way is, which would be something like reformation, or I’ve heard people use the word disentangling bad beliefs from from true ones.
Yep.
All of that’s great, but deconstruction means something else. And so let’s keep those categories clear.
That’s so important. Words are truly, truly important. I like the word you used. Reforming. Yeah.
I’m reforming, and I’m I’m trying to get closer to the truth on these issues.
And, uh, I know where I can go to find truth in these in these parts.
And if you’ve gotta go right to the very core, um, knock it down to the studs on whether or not the Bible is that standard, then you gotta go there.
I’ve had to go there myself, and I’ve come to that conclusion.
And, uh, and it’s also interesting that whatever you do land on, for your ultimate standard of truth, you’re gonna have to hold that belief by faith.
Yeah. Faith is a is an inescapable con accept in in the whole world.
Even the atheist has faith that god does not exist. He can’t prove it, but it’s his religion.
Yeah. Yeah. And faith, bibically means active trust. And everybody does that.
We did that when we sat down in these years.
When I got in an airplane, it
flew to California. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think there think the misunderstanding is that people think faith is blind.
It’s like a blind leap or believing something in spite of their not being evidence for it, but, basically, that’s not it.
There’s plenty of evidence. And I think biblically, we’re encouraged to look at the evidence that happens to Clare. Right?
That’s it. We mentioned a friend, Steven Meyer, and and others.
And it seems like the scientific community somehow, uh, uses all these facts and evidence to try to disprove the existence of god But when you look at to the scientists, I believe, who are truly objective and follow the evidence all the way to the end, they All of it terminates on the god of the Bible.
Yeah. In fact, if you’re honest, I don’t think you can explain the most meaningful parts of life apart from the god of the Bible.
Yeah. In fact, some atheists are intellectually honest enough to even admit this.
There’s a guy Richard Lewanton was a Harvard. You probably know this.
The biologist at home.
He he there’s a famous quote where he says, you know, we sometimes tolerate just associated stories in the scientific community because we have this pre commitment to this worldview of materialism, which excludes the supernatural.
And he even said, because We can’t allow a divine foot in the door. I remember that quote.
It’s a great quote.
I cannot we we as scientists cannot allow a divine foot in the door, meaning we can’t even let that come into the discussion because that’s gonna mess all of our thinking and our all of our theories up.
Yeah. Finally, if we do have kids that are walking away from their faith that are saying, you know, I don’t believe this stuff anymore, and they’ve got this online community of friends who are all cheering them on and making them feel supported, What advice would you give just on a on a on a mom level on a dad level?
Yeah. Uh, what what can we do? I mean, maybe we have some responsibility in this.
Maybe there’s things that have happened in the church and in their faith experience that where they’ve not found the support and comfort and the healing that they need, and and that’s part of it.
Yeah. Well, first, let’s address that.
If there have been those things, I we just would urge you as a parent to repent to your kid and and let them know, look, I really blew it in this area.
I wanna ask you to forgive me. Um, I wrestle with this myself, and I’m so sorry about that.
If, you know, if there’s an opportunity to do that, but in many cases, the adult child has cut off their older parents, or maybe even not let them see their grandkids because they think they’re toxic people and harmful people.
And so the advice we give in the book, we have old chapter on this, but the advice we give is counterintuitive for Christians, but it’s basically this.
Is that if there’s tension in the relationship due to this, it’s really okay to back off and just try to maintain the relationship first.
It’s kinda like triage. You know, find the what what is the most urgent need.
That’s right.
And if that’s just maintaining the relationship, do that. Yeah. And then try to build that relationships.
So there can be conversations down the road. Right.
But you’re not gonna probably fix their theology over a coffee date because this didn’t happen over coffee.
This happened over a long period of time with lots of interlocking factors.
So, uh, just try to maintain that relationship. Pray.
Don’t es underestimate the power of prayer and living out the beauty of the gospel in front of them because Kirk, I’ve been to the bottom of this rainbow in the steep instruction hashtag, and there’s no pot of gold there.
And I
think there’s gonna be a time coming when people get to the bottom and they realize that it’s empty and it’s toxic, and they’re gonna look to their parents who have the joy and peace of Jesus, not that they’re perfect.
And they might go, maybe I do want what they have.
That’s exactly right. I know that’s true. I know that’s true.
And and I’ve seen it in in in other areas of culture.
People get to the end of the rainbow of communism, socialism, Marxism, and they say, there’s no pot of gold here.
There’s no free lunch. And they go, where do we go? Where do we go?
And and we can look back to heroes of the faith who embrace the Bible and the pilgrims and and those freedom fighters who embrace the values that actually lead to blessing.