Death to Deconstruction

a casual book review

Jan 23, 2024

Death to Deconstruction by Josh S. Porter is a doozy of a book. It’s fantastic, but it packs a punch in more ways than one. It’s been weeks (months?) since I explained my intentions around Casual Book Reviews, so if you haven’t read that or need a refresher, check it out here first. Likewise, if reading this leaves you feeling like you’re missing some general context, the first section of this post explains that in brief. If you are familiar or just a renegade who ain’t got time for context and caveats, read on, maverick.

Hey friend, let me tell you about this great book!

Death to Deconstruction: Reclaiming faithfulness as an act of rebellion is not a gentle book. Intentionally and effectively provocative, it’s a memoir of deconstruction and reconstruction from a punk rock pastor and former teen menace with solid theology, and the most compelling theodicy I’ve run across. Even so, it has some potential downsides.

Stuff you might not like

I say “might” because I didn’t mind any of this, but I can see how it might not be for everyone, and I don’t want to recommend a book to you that’ll bum you out (unless you want to be bummed out I guess) so here are the things you might not like:*

This is a manly book. It is not marketed particularly to men, I don’t think, but the author is a DUDE. Not a negative, obviously, but with the accounts of dissolving gums, the boxing metaphors, the exploration of the most painful area in which to be shot at point blank range by a BB gun, and a parable woven throughout that is beautiful but also very clearly inspired by the ultimate dude book, the Alchemist—it has some serious masculine “energy”.
It’s gut-wrenching at times. It lends to its strength, but I’ve been in seasons of life where the last thing I needed was anything else to hurt about. In a discussion of the problem of evil, there are evocative (but not gratuitous) descriptions of real world evils. When the author tells his story, there are, as with all stories, some ugly bits. He is incredibly effective at conveying emotion, the downside of which is that you may find yourself feeling those uncomfortable emotions. Obviously for most, that's a feature, not a bug, but if you’re not in the market for feelings, do not read. I will not judge you. It was a lot.
It’s a little mean. He does not hold your hand and say “it’s all good, my doves, love conquers all and God is love.” It’s more like “God is good, but scary. You’re probably kind of stupid, and the world is actually pretty evil, but God loves you and you can trust Him even if you’re stupid and the world is evil.” At times I cringed a little, but not because I could find anything to disagree with in his statements, just because at times the delivery was a little harsh. But then, so is reality.
He’s not a Biblical literalist. This is not to say he doesn’t believe the Bible is authoritative, God-breathed, or inerrant, but he does explore non-literal explanations for some passages that you may or may not agree with. More on this later.

*not an exhaustive list

Stuff I liked

I’d call these “pros” but I can’t say for sure you’d think of them that way, so here are the things I liked, loved, and was edified by:

The 90’s nostalgia. If you were a teen in the nineties, you’ll see a familiar world in the early chapters. If you were a “youth group kid” in the nineties, it might give you flashbacks. Porter was in a Christian-ish punk rock band in that time, so he was extremely engaged in the fever dream that was the youth culture of the time for Christian kids who still had a foot planted in the alternative music scene. The era of True Love Waits virginity pledges, secular CD burning as a youth group activity, broadly accepted smoking, and long stretches of time where teens were unreachable by their parents as soon as they left the house set the stage for his story. But it was also a time of revival, of Christian summer camps that helped us fall in love with Jesus, and not for nothing, a lot of genuinely good Christian music. I was so transported I could taste the grape juice in my communion cup and smell the cigarette smoke and body odor of unwashed punk-rockers.
The alchemist-y parable. This side story, woven throughout, at the beginning of each chapter, is a little allegorical tale of an apprentice following a master on a harrowing and narrow road. It’s a transparent metaphor for discipleship, but beautifully rendered to illustrate the intent behind each chapter. It really helped me engage with the “lesson” of the book.
It pulls no punches. I know I said you might not like the fact that it’s “a little mean” but pulling punches tends to feel insulting to my intelligence, and I prefer a writer gives me the benefit of the doubt. Also, I do see the irony of using a boxing metaphor here. I do.
He LOVES Jesus. And he wants you to, too. It is plain that he is “sold out” for Christ, to use some 90’s youth group vernacular.
He warns you when it’s gonna get ugly. He opens Chapter 5: CATS, COSMIC HORROR, AND CHAOS MONSTERS with these words, “I’m about to mention a few horrible things. You can skip ahead to page 94 if you want, but at the end of these horrible things, I want to say something important about God.” I did not heed his warning. I was ok, he didn’t linger, but if you’re sensitive, take the warning seriously. I absolutely love that he offered not only a warning, but how to skip it without missing the best part. And the important thing about God was worth it.

Theodicy, Humility, Biblical Literacy (or Vegetarian Cavemen Riding Dinosaurs)

The “stuff I liked” is also not an exhaustive list. There are a few things that deserve more than a bullet point. When I went back through the ebook to jog my memory (since I actually read this a few months ago), I looked at my highlights and bookmarks. I remembered that it took all my self control not to highlight basically the entire thing. I took screenshots of so many passages, I realized I was better off just buying the book for people.

Early on, I mentioned his “theodicy.”

If you don’t know that word, and you didn’t look it up the first time you read it, it’s essentially a vindication of a good God in an evil world. In other words, it’s a theological construct that attempts to explain how a God who is all knowing and all powerful can allow the evil things of this world to happen and still be entirely benevolent. There are literally countless sermons, books, and articles addressing the problem of evil, and I’ve engaged with a small but not insignificant sampling of them. Some are pretty good, but I’ve never found one satisfying enough that I could fully accept it and not have to fall back on “I don’t know, but I believe he’s good and I am comfortable with the mystery.” Which is fine. But along came Josh.

He paints a picture of a world inhabited by unseen beings with free will that interact with humans and matter, a world where God has given every sentient soul a choice about whether we will follow Him or rebel against him. He uses chaos theory (the whole “someone stepped on a butterfly in 1742 in South Africa which led to someone else getting a ticket today in Northeastern Manitoba” concept) to explain how the very free will that allows us to live as sovereign beings, also sometimes means kids get cancer and people torture cats on Youtube. If God makes the rules, the rules now exist, and for God to violate them would be to violate His very nature. And can we all agree that we want to avoid a paradox? Because that’s how you get really scary sci-fi movies and I’d rather not experience that for myself. If that was an unsatisfying explanation, that’s ok! Read the book. He does it better. I’ll even tell you what pages to read if you only want this part.

I don’t think I mentioned his humility yet-

But it’s important to me. A book that can be harsh at times about the manner in which we deconstruct, and the reasons we do, would be damaged beyond repair if the author was like “and that’s why I’m better than you, because I did this RIGHT or not at all.” There are plenty of people talking about that if that’s what you want. Look for the TheoBros (tm) on Twitter. (X, whatever.) It’s also not “I, a lowly sinner, am but a worm, born evil, totally depraved and wicked to my core and thus of course, I strayed.” His story is relatable and real—a little weird, sure, because reality is weird—but he found the sweet spot on the humility\reality spectrum.

If you’ve read my previous post where I talk about meta-anxiety, you’ll know that I think my feelings ABOUT my feelings are what overwhelm me, more than the feelings themselves. There are Christian books that make me feel things and then make me bad about feeling those things. This is not one of them. In the same vein, it does not make you feel good just to feel good. That sweet spot again.

Vegetarian Cavemen Riding Dinosaurs

This one is good, and it might make you mad, but hear me out. I have a dear friend who is a wise believer, the kind I’ve turned to at my worst moments. Her faith has sustained me when mine wasn’t enough. She’s one of those friends I trust to “speak truth” into my life, and my kids’ lives, and it’s a two-way street. She has a (now) adult son who is on the spectrum like me, and perhaps that’s why he and I always “got” each other. Let’s call him Frank. We like the same kinds of books, and ask the same kinds of questions, so when he was struggling with his faith and looking for answers his parents weren’t able to supply, she came to me. He was a science kid (and now a grown up scientist, go Frank!) and simply could not get past the Young Earth Creation narrative that much of the church considers biblically sound. He didn’t think there was room to be a person who believed in “science” and one who believed in the God of the Bible.

The author of Death to Deconstruction was the same. In the YEC timeline he was taught, taking the account as fully literal, and precisely timed (as in one day=one day and no metaphors or literary devices were involved) all dinosaurs would have to have been vegetarian and alive at the same time as humans, within the last 6-7,000 years. So, because he couldn’t picture humans coexisting with dinosaurs, let alone “mastering” them, his young mind threw the baby out with the bathwater. Frank was contemplating the same thing. My friend had brought him all the evidence and apologetics she could find to convince him about young earth creationism, but it just wasn’t breaking through the cognitive dissonance for him. My suggestion was to talk to him about how else the narrative might be interpreted, and how the scripture could be TRUE and AUTHORITATIVE and INSTRUCTIVE and yes, INERRANT without being strictly literal. I wasn’t suggesting giving answers, so much as suggesting alternate questions. At first, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was concerned for the state of his soul.

But the way I was looking at it, that was putting a specific interpretation of a secondary doctrine issue on the same level as primary stuff—you know, like Jesus being the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, sacrificed for our sins on the cross, resurrected, ascended to the right hand of the Father—all that stuff. And it’s not. I am quick to use a caveat or disclaimer but I won’t equivocate here. They’re not the same type of issues. Not even close. My friend ultimately agreed with me. I don’t actually know precisely where Frank stands with his faith right now, but I know he’s still hanging on. Still following Jesus.

Porter’s angle here isn’t to disprove Young Earth Creationism, and he doesn’t attempt it. That’s not the point. His point is that biblical literacy is more than knowing memory verses by rote. It’s the ability to discern primary doctrines from secondary, to understand the over-arching narrative of the Bible and our place in this epic story, to understand when the Bible is prescriptive vs. descriptive, to interpret it in the context in which it entered the human consciousness, and above all, to see how every word points us to Christ’s atonement.

His point is that deconstruction is often the result of folks conflating biblical knowledge with biblical literacy, and he’s talking about seasoned Christians.

I want to be clear that I am not taking a “side” here. I would love to talk about the ideas I have about how an essentially literal interpretation of the creation narrative might not conflict with science, but that doesn’t belong in a book review. I believe God is responsible for the creation of the earth one way or another, and that he did it through some form of something that we would define as “science.” I believe science is the practice of learning how God does stuff, and I honestly don’t care if He chose to convey it to us in a metaphor or allegory, a literal description, or interpretive dance. It’s true either way. If you’re going to do this Jesus thing, you’re going to have to get comfortable with uncertainty. That’s what the whole faith thing is about.

His point is that people who are walking away for reasons like this are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and that the antidote is still…the Bible. I’ll let him tell you the rest. But whether you’re a seasoned Christian who is struggling with cognitive dissonance over secondary issues, struggling with other people who are struggling with cognitive dissonance over secondary issues, a new Christian, or Jesus Curious, he makes an utterly compelling argument for getting on the path and staying on the path that leads to the eternity we’ve been promised, in the presence of God.

To wrap it up

I made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t start Porter’s next book, With all its teeth: sex, violence, profanity, and the death of Christian art until I finished reviewing this book, so after procrastinating for months, now I’m rushing to hit “post.”

I look forward to seeing what he has to say to make me mad, make me think, and make me want to be closer to God. It feels like you should also know that he wrote a novel called Punk Rock vs. The Lizard People which I might…not…read. But who knows.

A closing prayer

Lord, You are good, and I know it. You are the Creator of the Universe, and I know it. You are the Author of Life, and I know it. Help me to know all of the truths you intend for me to know, exactly when you want me to know them. Give me humility to risk being wrong, and the wisdom to never tarnish your Holy Name with either my rightness or my wrongness. Give me an unquenchable hunger for your Word and your voice. May I never put you to shame.

Bless those who read this, Father. Bless your child Josh Porter and use his works to glorify yours. I beg of you, my Lord and my God, do the same for me. Thank you for creating the rebels and malcontents, as well as the rule-followers and optimists. Give us eyes to see you in each of them.

Bless your holy name. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

ps. Is there another book I should read or review? One you’ve been wondering about, or unsure of, or you just think I HAVE to read it? Tell me!