Hebrews: Dealing with Deconstruction

Pastor Fletcher preaches from Hebrews 2:1-4 (read for us in Korean). Discussion points: Being furiously obsessed with the way of Christ is how we stay tethered to God and our faith, emotional and intellectual difficulties can push people to deconstruct or abandon their faith, we can’t drag people back to the faith but we can love and reason with them.

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  Scripture reader: Good morning church. Our scripture reading today is taken from Hebrews chapter 2, verses 1 to 4. I will be reading from the Korean version and then you can follow along in the English version. When I finish reading, I will say this is the word of the Lord, and we will all finish by saying thanks be to God together.

  Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.

  This is the word of our Lord.

  Preacher: Good morning. It's good to see you all this morning. My name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor of the church. this may come as no surprise to many of you, especially those of you I've known for quite a while, but I was not a popular kid in high school. why do you laugh, I, I was, I grew up in the deep South. I, my dad wasn't around. I was not into football. I was not into hunting, and therefore I had no friends. those were the things that everybody was into. And I didn't know how to, relate with people in a lot of ways. I was into like math and Star Wars. I would have been great in Cambridge, Somerville, like, just perfectly fit in here. I would have been very popular. The popular kids in my kids' school, they do Dungeons and Dragons, and I'm like, that's cool. that would have gotten you a wedgie where I'm from, but, you know, here it's cool.

  Until the, the, everything kind of changed though. When I was 14, I started going to church regularly for the first time and I became a youth group kid. Anybody else become, anybody else a youth group kid growing up? youth group was awesome for me. I loved it. We had lots of kids there. Kids there, mainly for the pizza and the Mountain Dew, but there were lots of kids there, and, we would play silly games. you know the games. This is the early 2000s, so Chubby Bunny was still in. that's where you stuff as many large marshmallows into your mouth as possible, and you try to communicate. after children died doing this, they decided that this was no longer something that we should continue. I like to look back on those days in youth group. Those were like the glory days in many ways.

  The Lord called me in ministry during that time. I got a calling for what he wanted me to spend my life doing. And I look at the youth group days and I, I remember we would have like 100 kids on a Wednesday evening come to this youth group. And I just kinda wonder, where are they? You know, like I, I used to have Facebook. I deleted my Facebook and didn't, do not regret that. You know, let's just all do that. Sorry, that's not what this sermon's about. But I used to have Facebook and would follow them and, a few are certainly still leaders and, and congregants in different churches around. But I get the impression that most of them aren't going to church at all anymore, that they've drifted away from the way of Christ, or at worst, they've deconstructed the way of Christ in their life. Surely some of you here can relate with me.

  You know, I feel like by the time you get into your 20s or your 30s, especially if you're living in Cambridge, Somerville, Boston, that you know a lot of people that have drifted away from the faith. And you're one of the few that, that's remained faithful and remnant that here this morning. Contrary to what it might feel like, this deconstruction idea is not a modern invention. It's not a modern invention. It's something that they were dealing with in the early church. And here we have in Hebrews chapter 2, a passage specifically about that, specifically about deconstruction. In fact, it says the very first verse of it says, therefore, we must pay care pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

  You see, the author of Hebrews is not unfamiliar with our experience of seeing people drift away from the Lord. It happens, and Jesus told us to expect it to happen. How can we help those who are drifting away, and how can we stay the course as Christians? That's what today's passage is all about. Now when we think about this verse, this first verse, therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. I think about this word for drift, and really kind of the idea that you get with this word of drifting is like a boat, at sea that is not able to make their port. That is drifting in the current.

  I think about this, this time that the CoaH pastors, sometimes CoaH, City on a Hill, sometimes we call it CoaH. The CoaH pastors, from all four different congregations, sometimes we'll all get together and we'll go up to a, a house in New Hampshire. There's a family that owns a lake house there that has graciously allowed us to use their space many times. And so a few years ago we were up at the boathouse, the lake house in New Hampshire. I don't remember what month it was. I think it was like October though. It was chilly, there and. We were having a good time. This house is really amazing. They have paddle boards. They've got this like air mattress that you can sleep on, like take a nap on out in the water. Anybody ever been on one of that, that was awesome. and at that time, this was like several years ago, we had a guy on our staff, here at City on the Hill named Ben.

  So some of you might know Ben, if you've been around for a little while. Ben is like the most chill dude you've ever met in your entire life. He has long blonde hair, really relaxed guy, enjoys skateboarding. Ben is a free spirit, and, to say the least, and he had decided that he wanted to sleep on that mattress, not for a nap, but overnight. I had worked with Ben for a while. This didn't surprise me at all. I was just like, yeah, you do you, man. I, like, that's not a sin, go for it. But some of the other pastors were quite concerned. I remember Mike Hong, if you know Mike Hong, he's a pastor over in Brookline. He got really, really worked up about this. And then like Mike is like screaming at him like, you can't do that. And Ben's like, I don't know, man. I think I will. and that's, that was kind of how it went back and forth for a little bit. And they eventually reached a compromise where Mike was OK with Ben sleeping on the mattress as long as he tethered it to the dock. Because that's not what Ben wanted. That like was a restriction upon his freedom. Ben wanted to just float on that thing and see where he ended up at the end of the night, but we didn't want him in the middle of the lake and us having to do a rescue mission to go find him, in the morning, or him having to swim in in the cold or something. It'd be terrible. So he tethered it to the dock. I think he made it half the evening before the mosquitoes got to him, but.

  To prevent drifting. You see what I did there, right? We have to tether ourselves to the message of Christ. We have to pay much closer attention to the message of Christ. Tim Keller, former pastor of, of New York City, rest in peace. He said that a better translation of this might be, be furiously obsessed with the message that you have heard. Have you ever been furiously obsessed with something? Now, whether it be planning a vacation. Or a home renovation. Or just a YouTube wormhole. Studying for a test, whatever it might be, I think we all know what it means to be furiously obsessed. And what he's saying is that we must be furiously obsessed to the way of Christ, for this is how we tether ourselves to the truth, to the solid foundation that we have.

  Look, the cultural climate, the cultural currents of Somerville are quite strong, this ain't Texas, OK? In Texas, you can like go there and there's just like Christians everywhere. It's like, if you want to follow through the cultural climate and the currents, you would just end up in a church somewhere. Be like, how did I get here? I don't know. I just live in Texas. And that's not how it is here. If you want to be a Christian in Somerville, You have to be furiously obsessed with the way of Christ, where you will drift, you'll drift into the cultural currents of the day. We must remain tethered to Christ, through the church, through reading his word, through the encouragement of others.

  I love the way that Nancy Guthrie puts this. She says, do you find yourself too sophisticated, too busy with important things to be furiously obsessed with Jesus? If not, what provisions and plans are you willing to make so that you may pay close attention to Jesus?

  Verse 2, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received to just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? All right, so this passage confuses me. That's what I, when we have especially confusing passages, I'm like, let's do a foreign scripture reading that way. That way people aren't listening as closely. But we're still gonna explain it. for, for since the message declared by angels, I got to that and I was like, what is this thing talking about? I've read the Old Testament, OK? I've read the Bible many times over. What is it talking about? I had to like go to the commentaries. And I realized that though it doesn't put it this way in the Old Testament, what was common in that day to believe was that the Mosaic law was something that was proclaimed by angels. I didn't know that.

  But to a first century reader, as they're reading Hebrews for the first time, they would understand immediately that. The author is talking about the Mosaic law. It's nowhere in the Old Testament, but. That was the cultural understanding of the day. And so what he does then, what the author does then, he or she, should I say, in verses 2 or 3 is something that we call an argument from the lesser to the greater.

  And basically what the author is saying is like, look, if you can believe the Mosaic law, which was declared by angels, then you should believe what Jesus has to say even more. And if there was a punishment for not following the reli the, Mosaic law, How much more of a punishment would there be for not following the revealed word of Christ, the Messiah?

  The best illustration I could come up with this was one that I feel like most of us are going to be familiar with, because most of us at some point have made that terrible trek to pick up someone from the Logan Airport. Amen. Logan Airport is an interesting place. It's a unique place. There's no airport quite as terrible as Logan Airport. Now once you get in, it's fine. Once you get in, it's fine. It's great. Once you get in, there's some bad airports, but it is confusing to pick someone up from, because they're like, You have to know exactly like what airline they're with, or you're going to end up 3 miles away from them. And then you're gonna have to make another loop.

  And then there's nothing that quite says Welcome to Boston, like a police officer, a state trooper with Dunkin in one hand and a flashlight in another one, yelling at you, just telling you to move your car. And it's like, sure, OK, I'll drive for 20 minutes to go around this place again and get back to where I am. You know, there's signs on all of the, the places communicating, hey, don't park here. And that you can read the signs. We see the signs, we just don't care, OK? It's, it's telling you clearly, don't park here, there, there might be a consequence. But if a cop is yelling at you, holding a flashlight. Then you might listen to it a bit more. You might be texting your friend saying, hey, I'm at door B101, and while you're being handcuffed and led away by the police officer there, they mean business, guys.

  And that's so similar to what this is saying, is that you had the mosaic law, you could read it, you saw it, but now God Himself has come in the flesh, and he's communicated something more earnestly to you. And that is what we have in Jesus. It's like the cops standing at Logan Airport. Maybe not quite as angry, but probably does love Duncan just as much. We have Jesus telling us the word of the Lord, and we see it in in in several different ways. The message of salvation through Jesus Christ is not something we made up.

  Verse 3, 2nd half of verse 3, it says, it was declared at first by the Lord Jesus himself came and gave us the good news, that through his death and resurrection, and through following him, we might have life and have it in the full. That we might be reborn and made new, that Jesus might change us from the inside out, that we might have relationship with God. And it was attested to us by those who heard. OK, so this is the the author of Hebrews is revealing him or herself a little bit here, and that not probably not a firsthand witness to what happened here because, the author is saying it was attested to us through those who heard directly from Jesus. And so we have this message that was given to the first generation and then passed down. It's been passed down subsequently every through every generation since then.

  Verse 4, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. And so not only have you heard the message, but you have experienced the message. That's what this passage is saying. It's not only do you hear the message that, have you heard the message that Jesus declared when he was here, but you've experienced the message. This is what this is our big picture vision, is that everyone, everywhere might not just hear the message, but might experience the gospel of Jesus Christ. Amen. To experience the the gospel is to have the message sink deep into your hearts, so that you believe what's true about God. So that you can understand what's true about you and you can see the truth about him.

  And not only is it the truth that's made manifest in our hearts, but it comes with power. And we see this revealed throughout the New Testament, that when the gospel comes, it comes with the presence of God and with power. And so we see gifts of the Spirit, we see miracles happen. And we see the Holy Spirit. Come alive in the hearts of believers. I love the NT the way the NT Wright describes the Holy Spirit here. He says that the early believers, they not only had signs and wonders and miracles, but they also had a warm, disturbing, I love that disturbing, a warm, disturbing personal presence of God. Which enabled them to do new things, put new ideas into their heads, which motivated them and energize them to become different people from the inside out. It was the Holy Spirit, the presence of God within them.

  We've heard the message of salvation and experienced it firsthand, so we hold firm. Yet many neglect this message of salvation and drift away or deconstruct. So what do we mean when we say deconstruction? I was really helped by an author named Josh Porter on this, who defines deconstruction like this. He says deconstruction is an umbrella term that describes a process by which someone who was once a Christian embarks on a quest to jettison parts or all of their Christianity.

  Sometimes you hear people talk about good deconstruction. I'm sure that many of you have, heard that term before. Maybe you've gone through a process of what you've deemed good deconstruction. And what we mean by good deconstruction might be, you were looking at the toxic parts of your overly spiritual upbringing, and you've eliminated those things that may have been cultural and you've gotten back to a truer understanding of who Jesus is. And if that is good deconstruction, amen and amen. Let's all do that. But I don't think that that has much to do with deconstruction. That sounds like just Christian maturation. That sounds like just grow.

  Here's the difference. The good deconstruction, not deconstruction all, but the good deconstruction, that's bringing someone closer to Jesus. When the other deconstruction is taking someone farther away from Jesus. Do you see that? That you're coming to a closer understanding of what the truth is and who Jesus is. So while they might look similar, they, they're actually quite different. One is drifting away from Christ and away from helpful theology, and the other one is drifting toward The cult toward Christ and, and more and more helpful understanding. So why might someone deconstruct? I have 3, 3 causes for deconstruction, that we might need to think about. Three causes for drifting away from Christ that we need to think about this morning.

  And the first one is intellectual difficulties. Intellectual difficulties. Intellectual difficulties. So, how many, I've heard this story countless times over the years. As a pastor, I've, you know, talked to a lot of people who have broken down their faith and walked away from the faith. And this is number one on the list is I brought difficult questions to my church leaders, and they could not answer them or would not answer them, or even worse, they demonized me because I had questions. They acted like I was wrong, that I shouldn't question God, that I shouldn't ask hard questions.

  Look, the reality is there are hard questions. Why would a God, a good God allow evil? What happens to people who haven't heard the gospel? And look, after the service today, we're gonna have a Q&A and you can ask Alex Benito all of those questions. And he'll answer them quite well. But seriously, we want to be a type of church where you can ask questions and have intellectual difficulties. And where we can come around you with love, empathy, but also reason. And I, as your leader, I will also delve into those tough questions, and if I don't know the answer, I'll tell you I don't know the answer, but I can find someone who does.

  Second reason why many people deconstruct this one, I'm, this is actually, in my mind, I don't mean the caricature, at all. I think that all of these are reasons that you hear pretty often. In my mind, it's going from, like, The one you hear most often to the one you hear least often, but probably in reverse order for what actually is, is happening. So I think that emotional difficulties might be more often a difficulty with deconstruction than intellectual difficulties because many people grow up in a home or in a church background that is so toxic. And they had these spiritual experiences, where they're being manipulated by leaders or other Christians, or at worst, even worse than that, abused by spiritual leaders. And you see this far too often.

  And so what ends up happening is they start believing all Christians, especially all Christian leaders, must be hypocrites because of what I experienced as a youth there. Or maybe the faith of their childhood suddenly grows politicized. You guys wouldn't know anything about that, I'm sure. And churches become an echo chamber for either the left or the right. And the wag starts, the, the tail starts to wag the dog. do you know what I mean by that? And that Christians, we have theological beliefs, we have, we believe the gospel, and that influences our politics certainly, but how often do we see our politics actually influence our theology? It happens in churches all the time, does it not? That's the tail wagging the dog. And that, friends, is off-putting, OK? I, I hate to put it, I hate to, I don't feel like I should have to say that, but it's not something that it brings people to Christ. It looks like you have a political agenda, like the church is more about politics than it is Christ. And that's not what we're here for.

  The third reason why you see people walk away from Christ often is cognitive dissonance. And look, not only are there hard questions, Christianity, Christianity is just hard. Jesus says that the way is narrow and difficult, and that many people will walk away from him, will leave the faith. Usually, when I've seen people walk away from the faith, they, they cite intellectual difficulties with the faith. But many times, you can see the cognitive dissonance. What do I mean by cognitive dissonance is this, a state of psychological discomfort you experience when you hold on to two or more conflicting beliefs or values, or when your actions contradict those beliefs.

  So if someone is a Christian, but they don't want to hold to the sexual values that you see Jesus described in the Bible, or they don't want to be faithful to their marriage or their spouse. All of a sudden you see them developing more and more intellectual difficulties.

  This is classic rider and the elephant stuff. Jonathan Haidt wrote about the rider and the elephant. I could spend all day on this illustration, but, basically the idea is that the elephant is your intuition. You make decisions with your intuition. What feels right, what do you actually want to do. And then the rider is on top of the elephant. That's your reason, that's your intellect, just explaining what the elephant's doing. So he, the the rider has no actual ability to guide the elephant. The elephant will run through the deconstruction wall, and then the rider is left to say, well, this is why it was rational for me to go through that wall, and I led the elephant there. What the elephant is in charge.

  So how do we help those who have or are deconstructing? And, and first of all, I, I don't want to be as naive to believe that no one here today is in that process of deconstruction that you, many of us have serious questions and so maybe this is just relevant for you personally, but almost all of us have friends or family members who have been through this. I think that the first thing we must remember is that we have to have empathy. We cannot demonize our friends. These are image bearers of God. We love, we care for them, we let them have their questions and their difficulties, we walk through these things, but at the same time, we come with reason.

  Reason is difficult sometimes and it, it's a lot. Reason requires nuance, and nuance is difficult for our day and age, is it not? It's much easier to be extremist, to say it's this way and all this way. But we approach with reason, with empathy, and lastly and most importantly with prayer. Because here's what I've realized after walking with many people who have drifted from the faith or deconstructed, is that I can't drag them back. That the Lord has to do that. And Jesus is actually really clear. That he will do that.

  I tell the story of the prodigal son all the time, but there's actually two stories that lead up to the story of the prodigal son that Jesus tells, two parables in Luke 15. And the first one is of a shepherd who has 100 sheep and loses one. And leaves the 99, so that he might find the one. This is your God. And if you have a friend who is the one. Pray to the shepherd in heaven that he might go after the one. Ask him On the, on the racy chart, OK, if you're a business school person, OK. You are responsible, of course, to go after that person, but God is ultimately accountable. And so he has a greater responsibility in that sense.

  He tells another story of a woman who's lost 10 coins, who has 10 silver coins, she loses one. She's calling all of her friends to help her to find the coin. She's moving all of the furniture and looking everywhere. And this is the way that our God will go after those who wander from Him. And I can't help but think that maybe he's doing that. For some of you here today. That your heart is prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. And that God is once again calling you. To come nearer to him. Notice that it doesn't say that we have to be furiously obsessed with the message of Christ, lest someone turn and run. Or or turn on the engine and and shoot down the lake, but lest they drift, and all drifting starts slow.

  And so many of us here today just need to return back to who God is. I feel that in my heart often. That each day, each week, each, each moment, I have to readjust my eyes to heaven. We want this to be a safe church. We want to be somewhere that you can ask your questions. We will walk with you if you have questions. Seriously, the Q&A is great, and seriously, AB, my, my bud, is, is really good at answering questions. We have other people in our church who are great at answering questions.

  We have a former member of our church named Jonathan McLatchie, shout out Jonathan McLatchie. he started a ministry called TalkAboutDoubts.com. And I messaged with him earlier this week, and it's just an amazing thing. If you have any type of question about the Bible, they will like get you connected with an expert in that field. Like Jonathan has a, a PhD in evolutionary biology. But there's many other people that he can connect you to. Even on his website, you have people like Wesley Huff, who's like a very, famous influencer now on, on with Christianity. So you could get connected with someone who can really answer your questions. The answers are out there. We have to do the work, though.

  I know that some of you, you might be in a pocket of friends or in a cultural moment where you feel like everyone around you is leaving the faith, where it just feels like we're losing as Christians. But Deconstruction is way more prevalent in the Western world right now than it is in the other places in the world. Did you know that there are over 400 million Christians throughout Asia? We like to think that the United States is the center of the Christian world. There aren't, there are more Christians in Asia than there are people in the United States. In Africa, over 700 million Christians. It might feel like you're losing, but friends. Maybe we find ourselves in a Western cultural moment where we are isolated. From what is happening throughout the rest of the world, Christianity is not failing, but it might be moving.

  I love the way that A. J. Swoboda says this. He says, every, for every millennial affluent white college student who is choosing to deconstruct their Christian faith, there are 5 non-white people with less privilege in this world, who are finding the Bible the greatest message one could ever imagine. So I just wanna give us a moment to pray, to draw near to the Lord, to pray for our friends, to pray for ourselves. I'm gonna invite Jared to to come and pray for us and then we'll we'll move into communion after this, but I'm gonna lead us in a prayer for. The Holy Spirit to, to come and fill us, for those of you who are struggling, for our friends around us. So would you pray?

  Holy Spirit, come draw near to those who are drifting, doubting, or deconstructing. For those wrestling with hard questions, give them courage to be honest. And assure them. You are not threatened by their doubts. For those carrying wounds from the church, bring healing, gentleness, safety. Show them Jesus. Not the failures of his people. For those struggling with the narrow way. God, we pray that you would reveal the beauty of following Christ, even when it requires self-denial. For friends and family watching loved ones drift. God, would you give them compassion, patience, and hope. Remind them the good shepherd seeks the wandering. For our church, God, would you make us a place where where questions are welcomed. Where no one has to fake it, and where we can stay tethered to Christ. And Holy Spirit, do what only you can do here this morning. We know that we're not capable of convincing anyone that only the Holy Spirit, that you awaken our hearts and our minds. So God, would you open hearts? Soften resistance, bring wanderers home and make us furiously obsessed with Jesus. Amen.

  Each week we participate in a sacred meal. That's a reminder that we're at home with Christ. And that he longs to have a relationship with us. This is a way that we renew our hearts. It's a way that we come back to God again, saying that I need your grace as much today as I did the first day I trusted it, that I need to be made new again with the gospel. And so this meal, it's, it's a resemblance, it's a symbol of what he's done for us, that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us. And so as we eat these elements, as we consume this, we're reminded that Christ is sufficient for each of us. Let me invite you to stand as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal.

  Father, we pray that you would be blessed with our following you this morning. That you would pursue after us. And that we would see angels celebrating this morning at the returned children of God. For each one of us that whether we're, we're on the other side of the world, or whether we've taken two steps out of the cage. God, would you bring us back into your fold? And would you help us to experience the gospel once again? We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.