58. Deconstruction: What is it, and How to help

I do not mean to be mean, I do mean to be mad. You obey your pastor. If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got, hey, you don't have a King James, you don't have a Bible. But you know, there's something about that local Newcastle, that independent from the middle cell, where you separate the King James, I don't believe that you're going to buy a damn basic freedom, I don't have a free tribulation to a man of a Baptist church. I still believe if you have gold a day in hell before I get my talents from a woman, I'm a preacher. The young preachers have too loved God getting pulled off in the Calvinist, and I'll fight it, I'll fight it. I'll fight you in the parking lot over it, I'll get personal with you. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom Podcast. A podcast that is part of the RFP Network. That seeks to bring freedom in Christ. From the spiritual abuse of legalism in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. Now here are your hosts, John Holyfield and James Saifert. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from Scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in Scripture. It is a part of the Scripture. But the defining principle in Scripture is love. Now I'm not saying that all men who sit under that teaching will become abusive. But what I'm saying is the ones who are abusive will be drawn to that sort of teaching. I don't want to give people just a list of things they can start doing differently until they have a heart out of which they're going to be doing those things differently. Bitterness is different from hurt. I would say that hurt or even abuse does not have to result in bitterness. Welcome everybody back to the For Freedom Podcast. This is a For Freedom Podcast where we declare freedom from the spiritual abuse of legalism. I'm back in the chair. James is in the chair in North Carolina. My co-host James Saifert. What's going on, James? Man, I'm doing good. Glad to be here. Glad to be in North Carolina. And next week at this time, John, I will be in Texas. And John's going to be in the great state of North Carolina. I'll be there. I'll be in North Carolina. He's going to be here. We're going to flip the script a little bit. I'm going to be gone. John's 58 episodes in. Who would have thought after 58, almost touching 60 year, that we'd still be talking in a microphone and people would still be listening? Yeah, who would have thought that our microphones would even work? Yeah, we've had a little bit of technical difficulties this morning. Yeah, if I feel like I'm on edge or I'm a little, if I get a little tense this morning, it's because I'm already like my blood pressure is up because of this stinking microphone. For no reason, would not work for at least 20 minutes. And then, it just started working. It worked. And we have no idea why. Do not know why. This is the magic of podcasting, everybody. If somebody thinks that they know what they're doing, they're full of it. You don't. They don't. Yeah. A couple of announcements, John, we've got coming up. Starting in January, The Power of the Story will be coming out. A new RFP Network podcast. And you can find that information on the RFPNetwork.org. And you can go to that website. And you'll be able to submit your story, submit your audio recording, and they'll put it on there. Yeah, I think this is going to be a good addition to the network, and I think people are going to enjoy it. I think it'll be helpful and also powerful, I think, to hear different people's perspectives, different people's journeys. And also, I think it's going to be digestible, too. I don't think it's going to be, like, incredibly long form. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Yeah. Next one is an announcement about an announcement. That's right. Because there's a big announcement coming. B-b-b-b-black Friday. Yes, next Friday. Next Friday, you're going to get the big announcement from the RFP guys. And me and John, we're trying to figure out how we're going to do that. Because we're not going to be recording next week. This will be our last episode for the year. Episode 58. And we're going to take our holiday break, as we've done in the past. And so, we're going to take November and December. I'm sorry, the rest of December. And spend with our families. We'll be traveling. We'll be going back and forth from different places. And so, we're going to take that time to rethink through some things. And be able to reprocess, reset our brains a little bit. And be able to process some things going forward. And so, we're excited about that. Excited about being able to spend time with our families. And with our loved ones. Yeah, the holidays are always a busy time for me. And it's a time where I like to just sort of unplug in some things. Take a step back and think about the next year coming up. Do some planning. So, that normally starts for me at Thanksgiving. We get to go home. Spend some time with my family for a week at Thanksgiving. And I like to plan for the next year. Do some church planning and that kind of thing. And then when we get back for December, you say, Well, I know episodes in December. Well, December is just a crazy month for me. I don't know about James. But it's a crazy month for me. Because there's about up 1,100 Christmas parties. And again, it's something to sort of take a breather before January kicks in. Because I like to hit January. You know, just hit it running. Hit it hard. Yeah. With new goals and new things. And so, you know. And plus, you know, focus more time. Like any extra time. If I can get work done earlier, you know. Spend some extra time with family instead of, you know. Other projects got going on. So, yeah. We're going to take a break. And starting next week, this will be the last episode of the year. And then so, we'll have Thanksgiving. And then for the month of December, we're going to be off. And then January, we'll be coming back. We actually are going to be recording two episodes in December. That'll start us off and kick us off in January. That we're extremely looking forward to. These are going to be really good topics and good guests. So, we're looking forward to what we're going to be doing next year. And so, look for us then. But, you know. We'll be around. And so, this, I guess, James, what do you do for. What's your plan? You said you're going to Texas for Thanksgiving? Yeah. I'm leaving for Texas Monday. So, when this comes out on Thursday, I'll be heading to Texas. My sister's out there. And my in-laws will be doing something out there as well in the town beside where my sister lives. And so, we're flying out Monday. We'll be back on Friday back to North Carolina. And then, I mean, in Christmas, like you said, December. For almost every weekend, we have something going on. Every Sunday in December, we have something going on. And then, we're bringing our young people, our teenagers, to Gatlinburg for our winter retreat. And it's going to be an exciting time for that. And so, we will be, you know, spending the week there over the new year in Gatlinburg. We've got a cabin. And it'll be a wonderful, wonderful time. Well, this brings us to our subject for today. And we wanted to cover this subject because we think that it's probably something we should have covered a long time ago. Yeah. We just never dove into it. And it sort of seems to be something that's come up in the forefront of the RFP family and the community page. And just some conversations about it, some different things going on. And we figured we wanted to take it. You know, we sort of have been shifting our focus on our podcast to more of a counseling-based avenue type of things and giving help in that way. And so, we're going to talk about deconstruction today. Deconstruction. And particularly more specific, what should a Christian's view of deconstruction be? And maybe how can we help with that? And that kind of thing. So, James, do you have any thoughts as we jump into this subject today? Well, you know, I think everyone, if you want to use the term deconstruction, I don't think we really like the term deconstruction. I think the better term would be reconstruction and refiguring out how things fit together. But I think we all go through this at some point in our life when we begin to be adults. You know, when you begin to make decisions for yourself, when you begin to make a family, you begin to reevaluate everything. And this is an ongoing process, I think, in your life as you begin to develop what you believe, why you believe it. I think what the RFP guy said this last week is we said something a month ago we may not agree with today because Scripture is always helping us have a better understanding of our life. And so, it's always good to reevaluate and look at things. And so, that is what we're going to be talking about today, deconstruction or a Christian's view of deconstruction. Yeah, and I think to get it going that we first need to define the term deconstruction. So, deconstruction is the taking apart of an idea, practice, tradition, belief, or system into smaller components in order to examine their foundation, truthfulness, usefulness, and impact. All right, so this was taken from a website that I found. And they then quote Rachel Held Evans, who sort of looked at it like this when she said in her book, Searching for Sunday, it is taking a massive inventory of your faith, tearing every doctrine from the cupboard, and turning each one over in your hand. Now, I don't think James and I would particularly agree with Rachel Held Evans. Now, I'm not saying that we wouldn't agree with her definition of what deconstruction is as far as defining it. I don't think we would necessarily agree with her conclusions on things at all. Elisa Childers is one that I don't think would agree with it as well. Well, and she goes on to define it as deconstruction is the process of systematically dissecting and often rejecting the beliefs you grew up with. Now, is there a difference between the way Elisa Childers defined deconstruction and the way that Rachel Held Evans defined deconstruction? Well, just by their word definitions, yes, there is. I mean, let's look at that definition again by Rachel Held Evans, James. It is a massive inventory of your faith, tearing every doctrine from the cupboard and turning each one over in your hand. Now, on its surface, without any exposition of that, just looking at that definition, James, do you think we would come to any disagreement with that? Well, do you think that we would have a problem with someone doing that? Like taking the doctrines and the things that they believe, pulling apart one by one, and then mulling over it and going back over it and seeing if it stands up to Scripture? Would we agree with that? I don't think I have a problem with that at all because I think that that's what we've done in our past. We've talked about it in depth. If you've listened to our history of even coming out of the independent fundamental Baptist world, and specifically for myself, the King James only issue, taking that issue, spending three years really mulling it over, looking it over, listening to other arguments and debates, and officially coming to a decision for myself. That's basically, if you take that at face value, that's what she's saying. Yeah, take every doctrine, every standard, every legalism, everything that's said, and let's mull it over. Okay, so here's the issue, and I think Elisa Childers gets at it when she writes about this and the way she defines it. The way that they define deconstruction and the way that they go about practicing deconstruction aren't necessarily the same thing. And so whenever you see people that are promoting this deconstruction movement and helping people through their deconstruction, it actually doesn't hold up to the definition that Rachel Held Evans is. It comes down to actually the way Elisa Childers has defined it, and that is deconstruction is the process of systematically dissecting and often rejecting the beliefs you grew up with. Mm-hmm. All right? Throwing everything out. Start with it. Think of it. I think of my kids like Legos, and if I'm honest, I enjoy playing with Legos as well. Whenever I'm like, hey, you got a new Lego set? All right, let Daddy build it for you. Okay? But I think of it like, imagine you have a massive Lego tower built, right? And you've built this tower. It's sitting there. And so deconstruction is sort of like this. You're taking one block, one block, one block, one block, and you're tearing down. And instead of like, you know, just kicking the Lego tower over, you're taking it one block at a time and pulling the Lego tower apart until there is no Lego tower back there anymore. And then the idea is to try to build it back up. Now, here is the problem. Most deconstruction, coaches, movement, whatever it is, they pull the Lego tower apart, and then they pull the base out, and then they're saying, now you figure out what you want to do. There's really no putting it back together. Mm-hmm. It's just taking it apart. There is no putting it back together. But here's the problem for Christians. Here's the problem for us. And especially, James has already talked about it. We went through our own sort of taking apart this idea of where we believe and reexamining those types of things. And we're going to present sort of a different way of looking at this and a different term to use because we don't believe deconstruction is, number one, the best term to use. We also don't think it's how it's viewed and it's defined is actually accurate to what believers do. Okay? 1 Thessalonians 5.21 says, Test everything. Hold fast to that which is good. Does that mean tear down everything? No. No. No. We're supposed to test everything and hold fast to what is good. So we test it all. That which is bad, we discard. That which is good, we hold fast to. But this idea of tearing it down is not necessarily the accurate view of what we're talking about here. All right? James, go ahead with the next thing. Yeah. The purpose is to tear down everything and then rebuild it back. And what should be kept and disregarded is that which is wrong or harmful. The problem is many times those who do this, the way of movement is viewed is that the foundation or God's word must also be completely taken down, tore down, and torn apart as well. And saying, okay, is God's word even correct? And we need to ask ourselves that question. We need to be very dogmatic with what we believe about God's word. But when you begin to rip apart God's word and then you begin to get to the point, I'm not going to mention the pastor's name, but you may know it, when you begin to throw out the Old Testament and say we've got to unhitch ourself from it, all of a sudden now you've completely taken what, well, if this one thing is wrong, I've got to get everything out. I've got to, you know, they don't understand the validity of scripture and what it's written to or who it's written about during those different times. And so they just say, well, we just got to get rid of the whole thing. Yeah, I'm all about going back and studying bibliology and studying why you believe the Bible is the Bible and why it's the word of God, studying the canonicity of scripture and getting into those aspects of it. But when we tear down even the foundation, you can't build back. I mean, right? I mean, you got a house. Try building a house without setting a foundation. It ain't going to work well. It ain't going to work. There was people that did it down the road from us. They built this house. It's like this quick build for a rental house. And they threw it up as quick as they could and didn't really pull all the permits they needed to. And then they even got it completed and got a person in there. The person started, the renters started complaining about some things and the renter did not do anything about it. So they actually called the county. County inspector came over there and examined it and said, we never examined this house. And he said, I think I see why. He said, they were already having structural problems with the house. And then he went over there and examined the foundation and noticed that the foundation was completely wrong. So you know what the county made them do? Tear the whole thing down. They had to take the house down and repair the foundation and then they could build it back. And that's what they did. You know, because you have to have the foundation. So here's what, and this is going to be controversial. This may be, there's going to be some people who won't like this at all. But to deconstruct something without an established foundation, such as God's word, is the height of folly. Yeah. You've got to have something to build on. Yeah. You've got to have something to build on. Tom Sujimura. Tom Sujimura is a biblical counselor and ACBC fellow. And he wrote an article sort of about this that James and I read in preparation for this. And he said this in quote. He says, biblical truth should remain our standard for discernment. And he quotes Psalms 19, 7 through 9. And I'm going to go back and quote that after I finish this quote. He said, biblical truth should remain our standard for discernment. You cannot rebuild if you tear down the foundation along with the house. So look at what Psalms 19, 7 through 9 says. The law of the Lord is perfect. Reviving the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure. Making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure. Enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean. Enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together. God's word is complete and perfect and suitable for that foundation. It does all these things. It is perfect. It is true. It's sure. It's righteous. We eliminate that from your deconstruction. Your end result is not going to be done well. Yeah. And I think he lays out some great principles to help us out with this. He lays out how and what we can do to help. And then he really, I think the best part of this whole article is what we're going to talk about at the end. Is some of the answers for those who are experiencing church hurt. And I think that's where we can help out today. You know, I guess the question, the thing, the question to ask of this whole thing, like if you're starting to re-examine your faith, that's fine. If you're re-examining what you've believed, that kind of thing, remember 1 Thessalonians 5, 21. Test. Test it. Hold fast to what is good. Test those things. We're not discouraging that. We're discouraging tearing apart down even the foundation and then trying to go back. You know, James, I just finished this past Sunday. This year I've preached through the book of Judges at our church. And you know what the theme in the book of Judges is? It's actually recorded in the final verse, but it's recorded many other times in the book. It's recorded in the final verse of the book of Judges. It says, in those days there was no king in Israel. And everyone did that which was right in their own eyes. All right. So check this out. When it says that there was no king in Israel, it was establishing a fact that they were supposed to be judging themselves. And there wasn't a king. But it also carried with it this idea. Who was actually supposed to be their king during that time period? It was supposed to be Yahweh. It was supposed to be God. And whenever it made the claim that there was no king in Israel, it meant that they had left regarding God as their king. So therefore they were doing that which was right in their own eyes. The book of Judges is one of the hardest books to read because the book of Judges has some of the most atrocious stories in it. And that is the result of people doing what's right in your own eyes. Why do I say this? Because when you do this deconstruction thing and you leave out the foundation of God's word, the best you're leaving yourself with is doing what's right in your own eyes. And that will never get you anywhere good. It will never get you anywhere healthy. All right. So going back to what James was saying, Tom Sujimura in this article asked the question, what lies at the heart for those who are going through deconstruction? So we want to be kind. Listen, we want to be. We're not trying to be as attacking. We're not trying to be. I know I'm worked up. It's probably mainly because of this microphone issue. But but we actually want to come at this with a very huge concern and care and heart for those who are asking, feeling like this statement right here. They learn something new and they feel like. I feel like I've been lied to my entire life about what I believe. Yeah, we were there. I was at that point. James has been at that point. So that's what we're speaking. And we care for that. And we have a concern for you. But we also want to try to warn you and help you from this trap. Yeah. And even when I was going through this article and studying for this this talk today, man, there was so much in just this first part, these five points that he lays out that as I read it, my mind went to, oh, man, I was there. Oh, man, I did that because of that reason. Like, that's one of the reasons I was doing what I was doing. And I was saying what I was saying. And I was acting the way I was acting because of that specific reason. And I think it's it's good to identify those things. It's good for us to understand what those are so that we can not because, guys, it's so it's so hard. Because when we have been in the world of one of these specific situations, we begin to fall in those same pitfalls later on, whether it's people pleasing, whether it's whatever. We begin to want to please another person. And all of a sudden, we're in the same trap that we were in 10 years ago. We wanted to leave legalism. Well, now we're back in that same trap. You know, I've said this in private, and I don't know if I should even say it in public. But all of a sudden, we can attack the IFB all we want. But when we attack someone or something that we like, all of a sudden, everyone gets mad. Well, it's not even attacking. It's pointing out. It wouldn't. Yeah. And we point out something that is wrong or it is not biblical. And it's like, wait a second. You can't do that. Yeah. But they tend to neglect that just about every letter of the New Testament that Paul wrote was actually to correct some major error of teaching that had worked its way into the church. Yeah. Exactly. Anyways. Anyways. So let's jump to these five. I'll go through the first one, and we'll just sort of go back and forth. The first one that says here is, and sorry if my mic is popping again. The first one is personal suffering. A way that you would deconstruct or reconstruct your faith would be a suffering that has happened personally to you or to your family, something that triggered or a type of abuse. This could be from physical abuse, verbal abuse, even emotional abuse from the pulpit, from the pastor himself in the context of the church. Okay. Let's look at the church because that's what we're looking at. And all of a sudden, when those things were done or an idol that you looked at or someone that you held to a higher standard, and all of a sudden they fall, well, now your faith is falling with that person because you have lifted this person up above what they should have done. And that suffering happens. And you begin to say, if they could fall and they're my hero, what is my faith even about? Yeah. So this personal, so this is like, why are you in this point? This is what we're talking about. Why are you in this position? Why are you even considering deconstruction? We're talking to you now. We're talking to that person who is, who is thinking, all right, I'm deconstructing or something like that. All right. Why do you get in, why do people get in these, these situations because of personal suffering? You know, like James talked about, you've been spiritually abused and now you're looking at you've been hurt. All you've seen in the church is nothing but bad stuff. Yeah. And so you're looking at this like, should I use it? But, and we're not getting to the solution, but I think this needs to be said, especially in light of conversations that have been going around recently. Be careful to make grand statements about things such as the church as a whole based on your personal limited experience. Yeah. It's very easy to categorize something when you have not experienced or been around the entire body of Christ. We're talking about a body of Christ that's been around for 2000 years that has existed across several countries. And because you've experienced hurt and suffering in just a few churches in your limited years of lifetime, you think that the whole thing should be written off. I'm not, listen, I'm not trying to be unkind. I'm not trying to be cruel. But I'm saying, I, I, I get it. I get it. But we have to be careful of not thinking too much of our own situations. Listen, I highly recommend this book. If you're watching on YouTube, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by Dave Johnson and Van Fonderen. And he says, they say this in chapter 18, that it's pretty hard to take, but you got to listen to it. We're trying to offer help to those who have been abused in the church. We're recognizing that problem exists, but it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with faith or God. It means there's something wrong with people. Yeah. Because we're sinners. And man, you look at this and I just got back from our North Carolina convention and the, the whole pastor's conference they did was on the disciples and each pastor that got up, there were seven of them talked about seven different disciples. And one of them got the honor of talking about Judas Iscariot. And the first message I've ever heard in my entire life, a complete message about Judas Iscariot. And you're talking about a guy who turned in the savior who all, you know, you know the story. But then all of a sudden the guy said, I fully believe if Judas would have turned and went to the cross and said, Jesus, I'm sorry. He would have been forgiven. But he chose to live in the mistakes that he made. He said, Peter, they died. Jesus did everything outside of turning men. He denied him and sinned and everything, but still turned and went to Jesus and Jesus forgave him. We've got to get this point where we began to look to Jesus and we're going to talk about it in a minute and turn to him in everything we go through. There's going to be pot. There's going to be pain. There's going to be suffering. There's going to be trials. We go through. Where's our focus at? If our focus is on a man, a man's going to fall. If our focus is on a church, a church is going to fall. If our focus is on a group of people, if your focus is on your family, your family is going to fail you. I've been listening through some of our counseling stuff. And Jim Neuheiser, who we had on a couple of weeks ago, had mentioned how some of his biggest trials were when his adult children began to turn away from the faith and destroyed him. Because as a man who loves God and who tries to raise children right, they turned away from their faith. He said that was hard for him, but he had to turn to Jesus. He had to turn to where he was supposed to look at. And I think that's where we get our eyes off of Jesus when the suffering happens. And it's very, very hard for us to go back. We totally just like jumped ahead on the first point of the thing. But I think that that aspect of the personal suffering needed to be talked about. But James, why don't you go ahead? We're talking about why do those, what lies at the heart of those who are going through deconstruction. There were five things. Yeah. James, we hit the first one, personal suffering. James, why don't you just go ahead and run through the two through five, and then we'll get into things that can help them. Okay. People pleasing in their desire for approval of others. They fall away from the church and embrace the culture's values. So they began to, they were people pleasing at one point. And now that person that's fallen or something has happened and they've, they've walked away. Pride is number three. They began to say that their pride gets in the way. And so they just abandoned everything. Popularity, social media celebrates those who take extreme positions. More than those who uphold traditional beliefs. And this is huge in our day and age right now with popularity. It's, it's popular to leave loud. It's popular to when you leave an organization or when you leave something, you make this big grand statement that you're leaving. Um, it can be helpful. It can be hurtful in a lot of ways. And then pleasure those who abandon their faith in order to excuse moral wrongdoings. Yeah. So, so these are just some five practical ways that he lays out. So we're, yeah. Why people would do that. So we're talking about this article called The Heart of Deconstruction by Tom Suchimura. He's a, he's a pastor and a biblical counselor. And so he answers back. So those are the problems. He answers back with three things. And so James are going to, James and I are going to take his three points and we're going to talk about these and then we'll be done. Because I think that these, I think he hits it right here with these three things because I think he's, I think this is, this is it. This is what's, uh, we have to have going forward. And so James already actually sort of hit the first one, which is we must fix our eyes on Jesus. Hebrews 12, two, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. I guess the question needs to, should you need to ask yourself, you need to search your heart and ask yourself, who is the beginner of your faith? Is it the church? Is it the pastor? Is it somebody within the churches as a family member? Or is it Jesus? Who is the author and finisher of your faith? Fix your eyes on Christ. And that's some of the things that I feel like people, this, this, this discussion of someone leaving the faith, you know what I didn't get at all. I didn't hear anything at all is problems with Jesus. Yeah. Problems with Jesus. You know, James, I asked myself one time, if I was the last believer on planet Earth, if everybody fell away, or if everybody just abandoned the faith, or if everybody was, like, is my faith, you know, in Christ so much that I could maintain following Christ if it was just me? Yeah. That's a big question, John. I know. But I think that you need to ask, you need to search your heart for that, because if you're not, I think, ready to answer that, I think you then need to ask this question. So what are you putting your faith in if not Christ? Yeah. And if you're putting your faith in the legitimacy of other people and the way you think they should be behaving, you may have something out of balance. I know that's difficult, but we have to, have to, have to, have to, have to fix our eyes on Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. And that's so, it's so important to think about that and to reevaluate really where we're at and say, what am I focusing on? What am I allowing my eyes to be fixed on? And, you know, we've, we, unfortunately, John, we've been a, we've been a part of several people in our lives that we've looked up to that have fallen in sin and had messed up and screwed up. Your brother, my best friend, he was the best man in my wedding. He was the best man in your wedding. I mean, we, we, we've got people that I worked with, pastors that are very influential in our life. They've, they've fallen. Men outside of the ministry who have fallen. Men who were lay people in our church growing up have fallen. Women who have fallen and, and made mistakes and caused crimes and, and not just sexual immorality, but other things as well. And we've got to understand when we get back to the point where we are completely depraved, we are sinners. We're going to make mistakes, but there is someone that is sinless. There is someone who, when we fix our eyes on them, they're not going to fail us. They're not going to, they're not going to fall away. They're not going to, uh, recuse their faith and go somewhere else, but they're seated at the right hand of God. They're making intercession for us daily. This man named Jesus who we can focus our eyes on. And when we do that, man, we are able to do what he says because he endured the cross, despising the same and is now seated there. And we can get our eyes on Jesus and get our eyes off of the world that we know is wicked. We know is full of sin that is going to fail us. Get our eyes back on Jesus. Allow that to be our foundation and grow from there. Yeah. And that must be, you know, I like how this is ordered because you can't get to number two if you haven't gotten number one. Exactly. Number two, he writes, we must find a place to belong in our local church. So, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The church is where I was hurt. No, no, no, no. That's number two. Number one is fix your eyes on Jesus. Listen, if that's an issue, we're not telling you to do this yet. We got to get you, we got to get you to get your eyes fixed on Jesus. You get your eyes fixed on Jesus, then we need you. You need to be, listen, I think for a lot of people, James, I think they've never experienced what a healthy church is like. Yeah. They have no frame of reference for what a healthy church is like. And can I just tell you this? If you're listening today, I know it's hard to believe, and I know you've struggled because you've visited some even after leaving your legalistic church and you're trying to find one and it just doesn't seem to be. There are healthy churches out there. There are churches where pastors and elders do not try to take as much power as they can. There are churches out there where the pastors and the elders recognize that their responsibility is to serve as a shepherd the congregation and not lord over them. There are churches where people recognize that as the pastor and the elders are serving them, they serve each other and practice the one another's of the New Testament. And so you get in there and they're not looking to use you for anything. They just want to see you be able to use your gift for Christ. Listen, I'm telling you, there are congregations out there like that. And so it is essential for you to get plugged in and belong to a local church. Yeah. Because I do believe, yes, we have messed things up as men. We have messed things up as sinners. But I do believe that what was recorded in Acts chapter 2, 42 through 47, can be experienced today in a local church. You want me to read that, John? Yeah, read that. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and of prayers. And all came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belonging and distributing the proceeds to all as many as had need. And day by day, attending to the temple together and breaking bread in their homes and receiving food with gladness and generous of heart, praising God and having favor with all people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. It's so powerful, John. It's so... Yes, I've been a part of unhealthy churches. Yes, I've been a part of abusive churches. Churches that you can go back in whatever episode it was where I shared my story, and you can hear where leadership abused and abused their power and abused even work life and the time-wise, and we invested more than what we should have, and you can hear all those things. But when you get to the place where you are grounded in a gospel-centered, gospel-believing church who practices what that just read, all things in common, the gospel, living a more holy, sanctified life, growing closer and closer with one another, breaking bread daily together, enjoying each other's company, enjoying each other's fellowship, ultimately, John, keeping each other accountable. Yep. We go through hard times as pastors. We don't have a lot of people to talk to, and situations are going on in our churches, and, man, I'm able to talk to John. Even yesterday, talked to him, and some things were going on here at the church, and this was John's question to me, and it really, I stopped the vehicle when he asked me this. He said, James, are you all right? Everything okay with you? And that, for me, was so beneficial because someone else cared about how I was taking and processing what was going on at the church. And so many times that gets overlooked, but that's what healthy churches are. That's what healthy people are about, is making sure that each other is taken care of, and each other is not forsaken. Yeah, I know we need to move on, but I'm going to toss something out. Here's a scenario, and I'm not bragging on myself or anything like that. I just want to show you something because this took years for us to get to. I'm going to throw a scenario out there that might blow some of your minds. And some of you that's experienced a healthy church, you're like, yes, yes, yes. So we had a small group at our house Sunday night, and we're doing a small group curriculum on the church. And the lesson that night was actually on church discipline. So here we are afterwards having a small group discussion. I am the pastor leading the small group discussion with church members. Okay? So adults here talking about this. And we're ironing out some questions about church discipline, and we had agreement on just about everything there. And I was like, okay, we're done. Our time is up. I said, but I got one sort of angle that we could throw out here about church discipline that may be debated and something that we could have some disagreement on if you guys want to do that. And they were like, yes, let's do it. So I threw out this idea, and here I am as the senior pastor listening to church members disagree, and I'm disagreeing with them. And you know what? We're laughing and having a good time, and nobody's upset. Yeah. And they have this comfort that they're okay disagreeing with me about an aspect of where we draw the line on something or where we, you know, just sort of cut the angle, and they're okay with it. And you know, one of the things, the last things I said to them is like, if you guys are okay to have a little bit of grace with me that I'm not there where you're at with that thing, and we could just go on. Because we probably, it was like a hypothetical scenario. It was like, we're probably never going to see this. Yeah. But listen, that's what we're talking about. Now, we talked about fixing your eyes on Jesus, getting plugged in and belonging to a local church. Number three, we must affirm Scripture as God's living and active word. I think, I'm so grateful that Tom wrote this in his article, because Hebrews 4.12, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of the soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. I know a lot of people hear that verse and are like, it's a two-edged sword, and they go back to their Scripture memory and all this, but I want you to lean in on the end of that verse. It discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Listen, if you're going through a deconstruction, if you're experiencing those things, the word of God is precisely what you need, because there's nothing else that can discern the thoughts and intentions of your sinful heart like God's word can. Yeah, John, even as part of the things that we went through, one of the things that, maybe I'm the only one that did this, when there was an issue that was difficult to process or difficult to even think about, I went and I studied Scripture to see what Scripture said about that issue. Women wearing pants, music I should listen to. It wasn't, let me go see what Dr. Holyfield has to say about it. It was, because he's a doctor now, he's got his honorary doctor from the RFP. It was, what does the word of God say about it? Okay, it was, it was, what did, what does God's word say and how does he command me? What did Jesus say about these issues? Those are the things that are going to help us when we go through this discovery, reconstruction, deconstruction process because we're going back to God's word and saying, God, what is it? I don't, forget what your Bible college said, forget what your childhood pastor said, forget all those things. What does God's word say about it? That's the foundation and that is where we're going to get the answers that we need. Yeah, no, I totally agree. You know, I think what you need, if you're experiencing this, I think what you need is what Romans 12, one and two explains. Exactly. You need the renewing of your mind. Yeah. You need the renewing of your mind because your mind is in a thousand different places. You're feeling like you've been lied to and you need the renewing of your mind. What is the instrument that is able to renew your mind? It's God's word. Yeah. It's God's word. You need to go to that. You know, and I think that there's a lot of scripture that's been distorted so maybe having someone hold your hand and walk you through some of these things. Bringing some of these questions up. You know, I know this is a delicate subject because a lot of times the word of God was the weapon that was used against you to abuse you. But, understanding that it's the only tool that can also correct those things of accurately understanding it, of looking back at some of those passages and just, listen, you go through, if you read this book, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, you know what they do all through the book? They go back and correct misused passages and use Jesus' teaching from the Gospels for basic, that's how they help you. They're leaning into God's word for that help. And that's what you need. You need somebody to take God's word. So when we look at this, this is our sum up, James, our sum up for how we view this concept. We don't call it deconstruction. This is how we view it. You want me to? Yeah, go ahead. Oh, sorry. Setting you up. That was a good setup. Hey, I didn't know. Okay. We view it as a spiritual reformation over deconstruction because many will demolish the true faith instead of stopping at human traditions. Jesus warned that shuts tearing down will actually result in our physical, our spiritual deconstruction. John, if I've been studying through Colossians and being able to preach through that, Colossians 2 talks about how we should get away from the traditions of man. The traditions of man and the things that man teach are going to hold us back. We've got to realign ourselves with what God has for us. If you want to read through Colossians 2, 1 and 2 will both give you some great things there. But those are the things that he's saying here is get rid of the demolition of the human traditions, but really getting back to the moment where what is spiritual reformation? what is this goal of our entire life is to glorify God and to draw all men to him. And so that is that's sort of where we're at. Matthew 7, 26. John, why don't you read that? Matthew 7, 26 says, And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. Verse 27, And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it. What is this? This is the result of what happens when you are trying to rebuild without the foundation of God's word. Yeah. The rains come, the storms come, the wind blows, and great was the fall of it. I asked Nathan Cravat a couple weeks ago. I said, Is the RFP movement a deconstruction movement? You know what his response was? Heck no, with many exclamation points. He said no. And his reply was, It's a reformation movement. And I am 100% in agreement. We are talking about reformation, not deconstruction. Reformation. Reformation. And I just want to give a thanks to Tom Tsujimura, who, and I hope I'm saying your name right. I don't know if Tom will ever listen to this. I hope that we, you know, gave you credit enough for this material. We thank you for the article. We're going to link the article in the show notes because I think it's very helpful. But, yeah, I hope this was beneficial. And if we just triggered many of you and made you upset, then come at us. We got a couple weeks off, so we'll just take it. Yeah. We don't care. That's right. And John is our content curator, so anything you put on social media, he's going to see, so he can be the one that you can go after. Yes, yes, yes, yes. James, you got any closing comments? John, I'm going to miss these next couple of weeks from not getting together and putting some things out, but I am looking forward to some vacation time, some time to get away from my family. Get away from your family or get away with your family? Both. Both. From some family getting to some family, you know what I'm saying. Okay. But I'm excited, and guys, I hope this has been a help to you. I hope if we said anything that wasn't biblical and that hurts your feelings and we're in the wrong, but if it was biblical and it hurts your feelings or if you're upset right now, don't come at us. Go at the Bible because a lot of what we told you was from God's word, but we want to hear your comments if you're upset at what we said, if you're upset at how we said it, maybe our tone. We tried being very gracious with our tone because we know this is a hard process. This is not something, listen, this is not something that you go through in a week, two, three, four weeks. Like I said, it took me three years to go through the King James only mindset. There are some issues that we're going to go through that's going to take a longer period of time. This is not something that happens overnight. It is a process and being, understanding that process. You may have been just out of the IFB for six, eight months. There's still a lot you're going to go through. There's still a lot you're going to hear that's going to trigger and it's going to make you upset. And so I hope these things don't trigger or upset you, but God's word is going to be able to help us and heal us. And so yeah, Don, I'm done rambling. No, that was good stuff. I like that. I like that you clarified that too because I'm in total agreement, total agreement with you. And, you know, we're excited about the future of the RFP movement. You know, guys, Black Friday, be looking for Black Friday from the RFP family, from the RFP network. And no, it is not a new Spider-Man trailer. Maybe. Don't think it's that. But I really enjoyed that new trailer that came out anyways. But please like, share, and subscribe to the podcast if you enjoyed this. Leave us, leave us a review on it if you want to just blast us. You know, you can leave a review too. We'll both read it. And we may share it on social media. Who knows? Never know. Anyways, thanks everybody. We hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas. And we will see you in 2022. Until next time. Until 2022. To God, not the pastor, be the glory. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom podcast. To find more content like this, please visit RFPnetwork.org to find more podcasts like this one, resources, and meetups to encourage you on your journey. Thank you. to find moretlekom

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