Without Theological Triage, You Drive a Car of Glass: A Review of Before You Lose Your Faith
Back in April we took our church staff to The Gospel Coalition’s national conference. For three days we listened to sermons, attended break-out seminars, walked the city streets of Indianapolis, laughed, prayed, and saw friends we hadn’t seen in years.
Each day of the conference The Gospel Coalition provided attendees with free books, including the recently released Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church edited by Ivan Mesa.
“Deconstruction is the term often used to describe how evangelical Christians end up as atheists—or something in between.”
I have a huge stack of books to read, so I don’t even know why I moved Before You Lose Your Faith to the top of the pile. But I did. And I am glad I did read it sooner than later, for all the book’s excellent and challenging yet compassionate entries from some of my favorite writers, for example, Samuel James and Jared C. Wilson.
What Is “Deconstructing”?
For those unfamiliar with the term deconstructing, it involves “systematically dissecting and often rejecting all the beliefs you grew up with” (2). Deconstruction is the term often used to describe how evangelical Christians end up as atheists—or something in between.
Deconstruction is happening all around you, not just to some Christian celebrity out there on the Internet or the young men and women on the university campus in your city but also among those in the church you attend. For some of you, although you might not want to admit it, deconstruction might even be happening in your heart and mind as you wrestle with doubts about the Christian faith so personal and so intense you worry you cannot bring them up in a conversation with your pastor.
This is why I appreciated the tone each contributing author uses throughout the book, speaking to readers with the assumption that they are in some stage of deconstruction. Too often Christians talk past the very people we are ostensibly talking with to score points with our tribe, the tribe we imagine listening over our shoulder and cheering us on as we “own” our opponents. Before You Lose Your Faith is not out to own anyone. The book speaks with consistent compassion to the real issues of those losing their faith and overwhelmed with doubt.
Speaking of the real issues, Part Two of the book has eight chapters devoted to reconstructing views that many in our secular age consider disagreeable or even deplorable about Christianity, at least as they understand Christianity. Issues such as sexuality, science, and social justice receive warranted attention. Claude Atcho wrote a chapter in this section called “Race: Is Christianity a White Man’s Religion?” that explores how our faith would be less syncretistic if we untangled aspects of the true Christian faith from certain aspects of culture and church traditions. Although the Christian church might participate in racial injustice, is racism what true Christianity endorses? This kind of disentangling, he writes, could save people from deconstructing.
Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead has a line I thought about often as I read Before You Lose Your Faith. The main character, Pastor Ames, writes to his son about doubt, saying, “The Lord gave you a mind so that you can make honest use of it. . . . you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment” (Gilead, 179). Before You Lose Your Faith helps disentangle our doubts, especially when we might not have realized our doubts are influenced by the particular fashions of our moment in time and place in culture.
The Need for Theological Triage
A favorite paragraph from the book highlights the importance of what people refer to as theological triage. The triage metaphor comes from war hospitals, specifically the decision process of prioritizing which injured soldiers to treat first. Many years ago, doctors treated wounded soldiers on a first-come, first-served basis, which is nice if you’re first to the field hospital but becomes a bummer when you’re at the back of the line with a sucking chest wound.
In a similar way, theological triage helps rank doctrines in terms of their importance. Gavin Ortlund wrote a whole book on the topic called Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage. In that book, Ortlund suggests as a starting point a four-fold way to rank doctrines: first-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel itself; second-rank doctrines are urgent to church health at the local and denominational level; third-rank doctrines are important but not important enough to justify separation among Christians in the same church; and fourth-rank doctrines are those that are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry collaboration.
“Like a car made of glass that has no shock absorbers, such a faith shatters upon hitting any bump in the road.”
Coming back to Before You Lose Your Faith and my favorite paragraph, Karen Swallow Prior quotes an author who noted that without theological triage, we tend to have “glass theology.” By this she means when we regard each aspect of our theology as equally important—that is, when all doctrines are “first-rank” doctrines—our theology turns brittle. Prior writes, “Like a car made of glass that has no shock absorbers, such a faith shatters upon hitting any bump in the road” (96). I might add that you don’t have to drive your glass car over bumpy roads for it to shatter; people also throw rocks.
When Parishioners Leave Church Pews Unnecessarily
As a pastor of a local church, there is nothing theoretical about deconstruction and theological triage. I believe if pastor-elders can model prioritizing doctrines well, triage might save a lot of pain among our parishioners. But sometimes, whether pastors model triage well or not, people who we do not want to leave, leave anyway.
This winter I know a pastor who received an eight-page letter from a longtime parishioner, a friend even, who outlined the struggles he had with the evangelical world, the ways the church had failed during the previous year, and why he was leaving my friend’s church. The letter mentioned the disappointments you might expect: error too far in one direction with mask protocols (re: not enough enforcement); error in politics (re: not enough rebuking); error in issues of race (re: not enough engagement); and others. The pastor likely wouldn’t even quibble much about most of the issues, and on a few, the pastor’s personal convictions align precisely with the one who wrote the letter.
The main reason for leaving the church, however, had to do with a specific theological point that the pastor held, even though the church and denomination had stated clearly that it is a position Christians should not separate over. (To use Gavin Ortlund’s framework, the specific doctrine in question should be considered a “third-rank doctrine.”) Except the man did separate from the church. Now the pastor worries about the letter writer’s faith, what church he’ll now attend, and whether a friend was lost. The whole situation is sad, especially because, as the pastor sees it, the departure was unnecessary.
That’s just one story from the trenches. I have many others.
A Book for Evangelists and Preachers
In the last entry, Derek Rishmawy writes, “If you’ve come to the end of this book, you’re either thinking about deconstructing your faith or you’re worrying about how to talk to folks who are” (131). To be candid, I was doing neither. My faith was not deconstructing nor was I seeking to help those who are.
But reading the book made me realize that I should be in the latter category; I should care about those deconstructing their faith more than I currently do. In fact, I suspect the main benefit to me from the book will be in my preaching. I typically do a poor job engaging contemporary struggles that people have with the Christian faith. Ivan Mesa’s book helped me see that, and the book also stoked my desire to improve while showing me fifteen examples of how to do this well.
Pastors need the reminder that part of contending for the faith once for all delivered, as Jude puts it, must also involve having “mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 3, 22). And part of having mercy on those who doubt involves understanding those doubts. Reading Before You Lose Your Faith will help you understand. It did for me, and I trust it will do the same for you.