Why are Christians de-constructing their faith?
Christians are decontructing their faith because they are poorly taught in church and highly indoctrinated by society. They don't know much about apologetics, Christian writers, Christian heroes, polemics, Christian history, or Christian heritage. Simultaneously they are submersed in schools and media that undermine the family, mock morality, and spite faith. Christian leaders stopped teaching their youth and members all the vital information necessary for intellectual survival except scripture itself. I recently talked to a young girl raised in an intellectual Christian church who left the faith. She had read the Bible ten times. However, she did not know one proof for God. She did not know one reason why we can trust that Jesus rose from the dead. She did not know the difference between Christianity and any other religion. She did not know one contribution to society by Christianity. She did not know any harm posed by homosexuality, Islam, or Marxism to Western culture.
CS Lewis first exposed the problem...
CS Lewis, in his epic 1943 book The Abolition of Man, explained how western culture (and faith) was being assaulted by our intellectual elite. At the beginning of the 20th century, the elite started their long-term project to suck faith, humanity, meaning, emotion, and history out of our educational system. Lewis remembered that the 19th century high school graduate left school with a deep attachment to his humanity, faith, history, family, and nation. The 20th century graduate was vaccuous in comparison. Lewis immediately understood this removal of culture from education was intentional, so that a new ideology could be installed which would be hostile to faith, family, and nation. The church did not heed the warning of Lewis. Today, generations of Christians have been raised without cultural or spiritual depth. Christians have become increasingly detached from apologetics, polemics, Christian accomplishments, and Christian heritage. They suffer from shallow roots and decreasing confidence in their faith. Christians and churches must take ownership of this problem. We must do better to raise our children with a complete Christian worldview so that they can live with pride and confidence in their faith.
Franscis Schaefer provided the solution...
Francis Schaeffer wrote another classic book called How Should We Then Live in 1976. Schaeffer witnessed the accelerated gutting of Western culture and faith through strategies employed by people like John Dewy ( author of The Humanist Manifesto). By this time, our educational system already had already begun to rewrite and revise every aspect of Western education. Historical facts and heroes known for centuries were now erased. New narratives replaced reality. Students raised in Western cultures lost all respect for their religious and historical roots. This is why meaningful statues, revered for centuries, could be torn down by angry mobs taught to despise them. This effected all the citizens in Europe and America. However, it effected the church at an even deeper level. Morals were inverted by design. The leaders of national morality transitioned from the clergy to educators and the media. Francis Schaeffer realized that the damge was complete. For Christians to survive, we would have to educate our Children what had been done. We would have to rediscover our Christian heritage and the proofs of our faith. We would also need to send our children out into society to re-influence the other major institutions of society. Christians would need to produce skillful clergy but also leaders to reinfluence science, education, government, the arts, and media.
What Must the Church Do Now?
Most modern Christians have no knowlege or attachment to their past history, accomplishments, or heritage. They have no pride in being Christians. They are often ashamed for holding moral views that now oppose the cultural majority. This cognitive dissonance is what causes deconstruction. They need to rediscover that there is no other religion that compares to Christianity in morality, virtue, contributions to mankind, or proveability. Much of what Christians need is extra-biblical. They need pride to be a part of the greatest movement in human history. We need a new type of catechism. They need to know why God is real, why we know Jesus is God, why the scriptures are reliable, why other faiths are erroneous, and how the enemies of faith have tried to destroy us. This education can take place over time or in boot camp type of environments. This will equip a new generation of Christians to lead the church more skillfully and to influence society. Additionally, we need to reform our Christian colleges and seminaries for the tasks of the next century. Our Christian college need to produce graduates with global vision for our faith. Seminaries must continue to produce good theologians while also providing more practical tools like Christian MBAs for the leaders who will be leading the church in a complex age of technology and ideological competition. This is not just an ambitious goal. Leaders from other religions and worldviews are structuring institutions of higher learning to produce graduates to exert their ideologies.