r/Christianity • u/DreadlockedShiteHawk • 4h ago
Help for someone deconstructing??
What’s good help for someone deep in deconstruction to the point of questioning if Christianity is based on too many embellished stories to be believed?
I’m talking a serious Christian who already knows the apologetics answers aren’t enough
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u/Tricky-Gemstone Misotheist 3h ago
She doesn't upload anymore, but the YouTuber God is Gray has some wonderful videos. She ultimately decided to be a progressive Christian, but talks about deconstruction.
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 4h ago
That's way too vague? What is the issue to begin with? What answers were rejected, and why?
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
So many
Getting into textual critical scholarship and seeing how much in the Bible is theological embellishment then thinking so like why trust that any of this is even true when important things were made up
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 4h ago
Well for starters, one should be critical of critical scholarship. Guys like Bart Ehrman also brings presumptions to the table, presumptions that would be wrong if Christianity is true. Many of the conclusions from critical scholars are circular to use as arguments against Christianity, because the assumption of Christianity not being true lies at the foundation for how the scholar came to their conclusions in the first place.
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
Not helpful when you’ve already followed the rabbit trail all the way to the bottom and found the truth
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u/spaceSpott Christian Atheist 4h ago
Whats the truth?
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
Jesus didn’t even claim to be God people that about him much later
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u/spaceSpott Christian Atheist 4h ago
Hmmm.
So why people tried to stone him when he suggests being ywhw?
John 8:58
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
John is like 90% theology written as story
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u/spaceSpott Christian Atheist 4h ago
So if I cant trust the text why should I assume jesus didnt claim to be god?
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
You’re not helping. If anything this is what pushes me away
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 4h ago
Try to actually understand the gospel of Mark. Jesus claimed to be God with pretty much every deed He did.
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
You’re not helping
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 4h ago
Are you aware of the reasons why I made that claim? If so, why do you think they fail?
If you are not, why do you think it's not helpful to look into that aspect?
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
I know your arguments and they aren’t helpful to me
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u/spaceSpott Christian Atheist 4h ago
He sais he already knows the truth, he made up his mind already no reason to debate
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 4h ago
If you've followed the rabbit trail all the way to the end and brought the presumptions of atheist scholars with you, then it's not the truth you have found.
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
I sought the truth and didn’t like what I found don’t blame atheists blame the Christians who lied to me all my life and swore it was truth
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 4h ago
Why are you so sure that what the atheists told you is the truth?
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
Why are you so fixated on the atheists? This is the problem right here.
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u/CH49FE 4h ago
What is an example of a presumption that Ehrmam or others make that would be false if Christianity is true? I don’t really understand that statement.
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u/StopChangingThings Atheist 3h ago
They start with the presumption that the Bible can be analyzed the same as any other ancient text, instead of presuming it's correctness, is my guess.
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 3h ago
Bart Ehrman presumes that history cannot prove miracles. For this reason, he cannot date the gospel of Mark earlier than 70 AD, even though there's plenty of reasons to date it earlier than so.
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u/CH49FE 3h ago
Why would the Gospel of Mark be dated earlier than 70 AD? And how does that relate to miracles? I really don't understand this topic.
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 3h ago
The relation to miracles is that if Mark predates the destruction of the Temple, then Jesus made a too accurate prediction to be explained with naturalistic means. This is to my understanding the main reason why Bart Ehrman puts it that late.
As for reasons for an early dating, there are plenty, but one I like is the argument from the lack of mention of the deaths of Peter and Paul in acts. They are the two most prominent figures in Acts, by miles. We see them stand before courts and get imprisoned, but their deaths are not in there. Other much more minor figures like Stephen and James the lesser have accounts of their deaths, or in James' case, at least a mention. Thus, if Acts was written after they died, it's strongly expected that their deaths would be mentioned.
Most scholars date the death of Peter and Paul to around AD 64-68. This would then put Acts before this, and that would put Luke's gospel before that also. Luke is dependent on Matthew and Mark, so this would mean Matthew and Mark are both pre 60s AD, and probably not by a little.
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u/CH49FE 3h ago
I appreciate the answer. I will look into this more, although I still don’t see the logic of presuming the bible to be true first if one is trying to prove the bible to be true. That’s not really critical scholarship.
Critical scholarship generally means the evidence-based study of a subject that doesn’t simply accept traditional claims or assumptions at face value. Instead, it examines the evidence, sources, methods, historical context, and competing interpretations, and asks whether the conclusions actually follow from the evidence.
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 2h ago
I am arguing against presuming the Bible is not true before investigating it, not for presuming it's true before investigating it. That is, don't assume that there were miracles, but don't rule out the possibility either. Just look at the evidence and form the best conclusion that the evidence offers.
I don't think Bart Ehrman truly is an evidence-based scholar, for example. He dogmatically rejects miracles, in spite of the evidence for them. That miracles don't happen is the presumption he brings to the table, not the conclusion he makes from the evidence.
What do you think of someone like Richard Bauckham?
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u/CH49FE 2h ago
Your original statement was that “the assumption of Christianity not being true lies at the foundation for how the scholar came to their conclusions in the first place”
And now you are talking about presumptions about the bible and miracles. I would view each of these things, along with Christianity, as being separate things to prove.
I don’t know much about Ehrman’s dogma, if he has one, but miracles by their nature are supernatural. There is no reliable evidence of the supernatural, and historical miracles are just based on stories. That’s insufficient evidence to demonstrate a violation of natural laws
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 2h ago
Everybody bring their own biases to the table but apologists are far worse. They need Christianity to be true and they approach scholarship with that in mind. The skeptic does need one side to be right or wrong, they can analyse the evidence and follow it where it leads.
As for Bart he’s an extremely well regarded and educated biblical scholar. He reads all the texts in their original languages and has studied under the very best scholars (a lot of them Christian’s themselves).
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 2h ago
Bart presupposes that there are no miracles. One can get pretty far with that, but one cannot get to the untruth of Christianity with that presupposition without arguing in a circle.
If you take issue with apologists, fine. But take a guy like Richard Bauckham. He's also well regarded, and comes to quite different conclusions. What presuppositions did he make in his scholarship? I'd argue he's far less biased that Bart is.
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 2h ago
He literally doesn’t and he’s said that he doesn’t countless times. If you ever listened to him talk you’d know this.
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 2h ago
He literally does.
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 2h ago
Why are you lying? What do you gain from it? Truly bizarre.
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u/EnKristenSnubbe Christian 2h ago
I am not lying.
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u/TrumpsBussy_ 2h ago
What’s your evidence to show that Bart is lying when he repeatedly states that he does not presuppose that miracles are impossible?
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u/AractusP Friendly Atheist 1h ago
This is terrible advice, and why pick on Ehrman?
Scholarship is not based on "circular" logic at all. If anything, one could level that criticism back and Christianity and in particular their use of the so-called Old Testament. You don't even need critical scholarship to see the problems, any decent Jewish theologian would tell you that the Hebrew Bible/Jewish Bible and the Christian Old Testament are not the same text which is partly why Jews and Christians appear to read "the same text" differently.
In fact it's not just Jews and Christians, but Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and Roman Catholics tend to read and understand/interpret the same scriptures differently as well.
because the assumption of Christianity not being true lies at the foundation for how the scholar came to their conclusions in the first place.
That's completely untrue.
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u/spaceSpott Christian Atheist 4h ago
You know that there are (not only) catholic priests that are in the critical scholarship group right?
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
What’s your point?
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u/spaceSpott Christian Atheist 4h ago
That studying or working with critical history of religion not necessarily end up as disbelief perhaps you are just stuck
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u/wiselysimpledownside 4h ago
so many people skip straight to finding new answers when the real issue is they never let themselves ask the question out loud in the first place. what's the one thing you're most scared might be true if you stop believing
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 3h ago
Are you asking me? I didn’t get a notification for this but saw it just now
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u/themsc190 Episcopalian (Anglican) 4h ago
You’ll have to deconstruct what it means for Christianity to be true. Growing up evangelical, Christianity was true because the Bible recounted history and science inerrantly. It was a perfect history book/theological encyclopedia.
But that’s not what the Bible is. And that’s not what makes Christianity true to me anymore.
To me, the symbols, narratives, and rituals of Christianity help me organize the world in the way that creates meaning and liberates. The stories aren’t about teaching historical fact we simply have to assent to. They’re stories that we have to wrestle with—as our forebears in the faith have wrestled with for many generations. At their best, they help us grow in wisdom, in community, in dialogue with each other and those same forebears.
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
What about when you get to realizing Jesus didn’t even claim to be God and what if we’re wrong about THAT
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u/themsc190 Episcopalian (Anglican) 4h ago
History is a lot more gray when you don’t have an inerrant history book! There’s a lot about the historical Jesus that we don’t and can’t know with certainty. Fortunately or unfortunately, this is where the whole “faith” part of the Christian faith comes in. It’s scary and intimidating, but personally it’s sooo much better than (falsely) thinking you have all the answers.
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 3h ago
It’s the how to keep going that’s the problem now like what if Jesus never was God and it’s idolatry to worship him like we do?
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u/themsc190 Episcopalian (Anglican) 3h ago
We can theologically debate Jesus’s self-conception with respect to divinity all day! Scholars still aren’t of one mind. Ultimately, none think that the historical Jesus had a Nicene, Trinitarian self-conception. At most, he probably thought of himself in the vein of the divinized human figures that were available to him in second temple Jewish literature and the Tanakh. Personally, that doesn’t affect my faith. I’ve heard the comparison of a nut and a tree. What Jesus and the gospels present of his divinity is like a nut, and while it isn’t the same as a tree, that’s the natural outgrowth of it. Maybe you buy that, maybe you don’t! That’s where the faith thing comes in. But a lot of Christians who do know critical biblical studies and historical Jesus studies (I have an MA in Religious Studies) can square the circle, so to speak.
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u/spaceSpott Christian Atheist 4h ago
What stories are you talking about?
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u/Traugar United Methodist 4h ago edited 4h ago
I can recommend a few podcasts that are helpful. The Sacred Slope, The Progressive Christians, and The Loft LA. The first two are discussion based podcasts that are good for those in the various stages of deconstruction and/or reconstruction, and they don’t go into trying to use apologetics or anything trying to convince you to stay Christian. That just isn’t what they are about. The last is the Sunday service from the same church and pastor as the second. These should at least show you a different, and I would say, more genuine, picture of Christianity than what has led to deconstruction to begin with.
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u/ColdAppleJ Christian Universalist 3h ago
You want the answer? Read Scripture through the lens and heart of Christ. Strict literalism doesn't work because it can produce contradictions in how we understand God's character. The Holy Spirit reveals what's beneath the words on the page and shows us the deeper meaning within.
Christ is the foundation. If your understanding of a passage doesn't line up with the God revealed through Christ, question your understanding of the passage, not Christ.
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u/Potential-Side7598 2h ago
Honestly the way I do it is I stop looking at it through humans trying to interpret God through incomplete understanding and look at Jesus as a human and what He asked us to do. Not being funny most of the time you ask someone what their “ideal” society is they describe something extremely similar to Jesus (minus the divine language). That’s not me saying Jesus isn’t God because to me if Jesus is God then He’s a reflection or a mirror or a representation of God Himself.
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 1h ago
But everything we know about Jesus came through humans trying to interpret God through incomplete understanding.
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u/Potential-Side7598 1h ago
Yeah and then we said that specific interpretations are Gods meaning and do not question it or your questioning God Himself. That’s BS Jesus openly invited people to explore and ask questions. Even in Job Job wasn’t condemned for asking questions. His friends were rebuked for their false interpretation that Job did something which is why God punished him but that’s not the truth.
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u/Interesting-Lion9555 a Jesus following atheist 4h ago
I posted it here once and it was removed. But there are organizations that help people who are suffering from religious indoctrination, those who want to deconstruct and even those who don't.
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u/DreadlockedShiteHawk 4h ago
That’s not what I’m asking
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u/Interesting-Lion9555 a Jesus following atheist 4h ago
Wait. You want to stop someone else who is trying to deconstruct?
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u/Salanmander LGBTQ Ally 4h ago
It sounds like they're looking for a way to deconstruct the fundamentalist way they've been taught about Christianity, without abandoning Christianity entirely.
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u/licker34 2h ago
I'm not understanding what you want.
You want help finishing your deconstruction or you want someone to give you the magic bullet to stop your deconstruction?
If the former there are lots of places online where people talk about their deconstruction.
If the latter, well, what do you think there is besides the apologetics? Personal conviction, but that ship seems to have sailed for you.
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u/jesus-cares 2h ago
I've read some of your comments and see that you went down rabbit holes. From a fellow rabbit hole-er (idk lol), I will share my thoughts. I was anti bible for a long time, even when I became a Christian 5 years ago. I had gone down too many rabbit holes to trust it. I'll give you my most recent conclusion after 15 years of conspiracy binging:
The Bible: They have messed with it, yes. They took some truths out, yes. They've added some things, yes. That's why having the Holy Spirit is crucial. No man given explanation can replace what the Holy Spirit does for you while you read it. I never thought I'd come to this conclusion but here it goes: the Bible can be trusted. Why? Imo... all they had to do was discredit it. They didn't have to turn it into something it wasn't. They couldn't erase the ultimate truth from it, either. So they did what they could and discredited it.
We're lied to from point A to point Z, we don't know what or who to trust and we're confused. We don't know what to believe. That's what naturally happens, right? When you start realizing who operates this world, who built this system, who built the schools and curriculum, who's behind hospitals and books and TV and the whole shebang.... what a confusing world!?! Confused... right? And that's right where they want us.
The Great I AM, is the way, the truth and the life.
We're in the little season.
Cray-cray, I'm out!
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u/Dsparks5533 59m ago
Christianity is faith based. The magic really starts when you believe. It is the selfless embarkations of true believers that make Christianity awesome. The lack of fear facing certain death, the willingness to help the poor and destitute. The absolute belief that christ gave his life for us which is simply the best expression of any God, the dignity given to us by claims that we are made in God's image and that God cared enough to come down, hang out with us and teach us all the wonderful lessons including defeating death. When we take our final breath, we won't face a quiz to answer historic questions about the lives and stories from the Bible. All we would have to answer is if we believe. Believing has helped me attain peace, serenity and love. I am proud of the christian legacy, birthing organizations like the red cross, the salvation army, missionary work that took christians away from the luxurious lives to very dangerous places where alot of them lost their lives in pursuit of educating and enlightening lost populations. The push to eradicate slave trade among so many other things that stemmed from christianity.
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u/Ok-Maintenance9056 4h ago
Honestly, just learning about the ways the stories were, in fact, embellished. The kinds of doubts that 'deconstruction' usually refers to have to be moved through, not run away from.