Questioning what we’ve been taught and digging deeper into what we believe is necessary to form a healthy spiritual life. What questions should you be asking? Join me in this video as I explore the questions we ask about faith as we deconstruct dogma and reconstruct a better-integrated spirituality.
The following is a text version of this blog posting.
People who were raised in a religious context often reach a point when they ask, “But is it true?” Some decide that they aren’t sure and it doesn’t seem to bother them either way. Others lean into the question and begin to read more and critically think about what they were taught. As they do, they may find more and more things about their religion to be puzzling or contradictory. That leads to more confusion, frustration, and perhaps even anger. I think it’s important to consider the experience of questioning familiar beliefs, where it leads, and some things to do that can be helpful.
I suppose I was lucky. Though I grew up in a very traditional Catholic setting and attended Catholic schools, by the time I was in high school, I was told to not believe everything about religion as a fact. There probably wasn’t an Adam and Eve, Noah and his ark, and lots of other things. Instead, I was taught to look beyond the story to the message behind the story. In college, when I began to study the Bible, I was taught much the same thing. The process is called demythologizing. It’s a process of stripping away the surface events in Bible stories for something deeper. It’s that “something deeper” that’s often a truth about life or living well.
A similar process takes place with dogma and religious practice. It’s called deconstructing. In the process of deconstruction, a person examines articles of faith, dogma, and practice to gain an understanding of the hidden assumptions. That can result in finding various contradictions. Deconstruction often results in discovering that there’s something very faulty at work in the text, or the related set of beliefs, or stories of history.
Sometimes, when people demythologize and deconstruct aspects of their faith or religion, they become very angry. They may feel like they were lied to. Perhaps they were. Perhaps they were sold a lot of nonsense. Perhaps there are things to be angry about. But this process is critical for many people. That’s because unless we deconstruct our assumptions and deeply held beliefs, we are never able to grow into an adult spiritual life.
Demythologizing and deconstruction can lead to a couple of outcomes. There are people like me who have gone through this process and have found value in the religious metaphors, images, stories of faith, or rituals that were part of our religious upbringing. We don’t accept them at face value. But we find something deeper. Not everyone does this in the same way. For instance, I find richness in some aspects of Christian monastic practice and spiritual writers. But I’m also fine setting aside dogma and Sunday services. On the other hand, I have a colleague who regularly attends Sunday services because she appreciates the singing and social time afterward. But one time when I asked her about it, she said, “I don’t listen to much of what’s going on. I’m glad I learned Buddhist meditation because I just do that during the sermon.” Other people who work through a process of demythologizing or deconstruction decide that it’s simply time to move on. Sometimes when people move on, they describe themselves as spiritual but not religious because deconstructing their religious background led them to value the spiritual dimension of life but not the religious practice.
Of course, some people contend that asking any questions about their faith is a bad thing. Many of them become very rigid about their beliefs. We know from studies in psychology that rigid adherence to religious beliefs can lead to an increase in both health and mental health concerns. Being rigid about religious beliefs simply isn’t healthy for us. But asking questions leads us to healthier growth.
Growing more fully in one’s spiritual life requires asking questions about faith. Those questions can lead us to examine things we assumed were true as we deconstruct our faith and religious practice. For those of us who grew up in a religious context, this is an incredibly important process. That’s not because we’ll conclude that the religion was wrong but because it will lead up to reconstruct beliefs and spiritual practices that are right for us. That’s incredibly important for our growth and development.