Deconstructing the Constructed

                About a year and a half ago I stood in the inspirational section at Borders bookstore with a pile of books in my hand: Churched, Velvet Elvis, Adventures in Missing the Point, The Shack, How [not] to Speak of God, and Everything much Change. My cousin had just finished reading my memoir and called an emergency meeting to search for publishers of controversial Christian literature—one where she believed I should send my memoir to.

                “I stayed up ‘til three in the morning reading your book and it’s not because the book’s about you,” she had said about my memoir. “This is a really important book. I’m convinced that if you don’t publish a book like this, no one ever will.”

                At this point, I was getting a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know how good my writing was; I thought maybe she was putting me on because she’s my cousin and biased. My first drafts of my book had been crap. I knew I had improved as a writer, I just didn’t know how much.

                She pulled one more book off the shelf and stacked it on top of the pile of books I held. “Just be warned, I’m not going to let this go. You need to pursue publishing. A book like yours can’t sit unpublished in your sock drawer.”

                I took the top book and turned it over in my hand to check the copyright. “It says here that this book was published by Thomas Nelson Inc. That’s a big-name publishing house. Besides that, this book is a New York Times Bestseller. I’d be fooling myself to think that they’d actually want a book like mine.” I set the book back atop the pile and searched for a place to sit. “Publishing houses like this can afford publishing a controversial book. The smaller houses like the ones that would publish an unknown author would never take a chance on my book.”

                She pointed to the literature section. “There’re two chairs together over there if they’re not taken,” she said, but before I could go to where she pointed, she grabbed my arm, willing me to look at her. “I think you’re selling yourself too short. How could you know if a big publisher won’t take your book?”

                I sighed. “I’ve got a pretty good idea, okay? And if I go for a small publishing house and only sell 10 books, the ramifications for publishing my book would greatly outweigh the benefits.”

                The only action that came from that meeting with my cousin was not my vow to publish my memoir, but to make a $16.99 purchase of the book at the top of the pile: Blue Like Jazz.

                I read Blue Like Jazz in two days, after which I read The Shack. I loved both of the books and am now reading the other more weighty titles, and though they are overtly Christian, they hold the hint of controversy I was looking for at the time, something I had yet to find in Christian literature, thus beginning my exposure to what I now know is called the emerging conversation.

So on March 3^rd Jeremy and I decided to try a new church, a church more apt to entertain the emerging conversation, swearing that if this one didn’t work out, we would be finished with church, not finished with the pursuit of spirituality, mind you, but finished with institutionalized spirituality, one where the community of faith equaled more or less the commonality of beliefs. It’s not that Jeremy and I necessarily had bad experiences with church in recent years, but there always seemed to be this disconnect from our experiences and thoughts of God to what were others’ experiences and thoughts of God, which were of course the more widely accepted ways to go about Christian spirituality. We found that though we seemed to be accepted as a family into churches, our views were a little off, especially Jeremy’s, as Jeremy is by nature a more abstract thinker, which is one of the reasons why I love him so much. He is the catalyst for why I myself embarked on this journey to a different kind of spirituality—a more alluring an honest approach to what thoughts on God could be, one where every question or thought is given voice, and one where learning to sit with ambiguity is a strength and not a weakness.

                We walked into this church without knowing exactly what we were getting ourselves into. The message that day (Via Negativa) was one about apophatic theology (meaning negative theology, which is atheism at its core), or what is referred to as one of the four Christian mystic pathways to God, that is, the idea that one will be closer to knowing the nature of God by focusing on what God is not rather than what God is. If all we as believers do is sit around and name what God is, we end up limiting and putting boundaries on a being who we say is infinite, and in turn make that being finite. There’s this ancient rabbinic tradition which would say that to even speak the name of God would be to limit God. And so there’s this idea within this tradition that to name God by focusing on what God is, actually pulls one further away from the truth. Perhaps genuine faith is more likely to be constructed by the destruction of one’s presuppositions.  

                I think it’s highly possible that some readers of my blog get irritated with my writing, thinking I’m totally lost (which I am, I promise you). Some try to assure me that I’m on the right track and that I should simply drop the whole thing because I’m already there or that it really doesn’t matter. But there is something more important that I’m trying to accomplish. You see, I am not the type of person (like my husband) who becomes enthralled with books on philosophy or theology or whatever. It’s not that I don’t understand them, but it’s more accurate to say that I gain more from the discussions of theology and philosophy than by reading. Moreover, having a fan base (or perhaps an anti-fan base) through a blog forces me to ponder, and perhaps deconstruct, my presuppositions in order to become closer to the truth. I’m engaging in what is called the emerging conversation, and I’m inviting you to join in with me.