Utopian Reconstructionist
Things are getting better. Life is progressing towards a state of goodness. Forgotten people, abandoned places, and broken systems are being shot through with renewal. Restoration is bursting forth and breaking through the ground. Humanity is good. The Divine is in everyone and everything, more and more inhabiting reality. There is an abundance that wants to be everywhere. The universe and our world are being happened to by Love. The most responsible thing I can do in my lifetime is to fall into the flow of that Love and allow it to direct my thoughts and actions. And after this lifetime I’ll keep doing the things I love and am good at, except better. I’ll visit the places I didn’t get to see and build innovative creations I can only dream of now. There is no rush and no loss because there is no end. All shall be well, and all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well. I believe this. This is my world view and it pops me out of bed in the morning. This is my formula:
Humanity is God-imaged
The world is sacred
God is Love
Christ is coming (constantly)
Choose awareness or striving
Be with God now
I used to believe that things were getting worse. I used to try to convince other people that things were getting worse and that they were running out of time to make a cognitive decision about their post-mortem existence. I was pretending to change my behavior. I was shoving my trauma deeper into exile. I was trying to be motivated by guilt, shame, and scarcity. And I was trying to motivate others in the same way. I was not good at any of this. Because deep down, something in me just didn’t believe it. This was my formula:
Humanity sucks
The world is evil
God is pissed at a distance
We are leaving
Choose Heaven or Hell
Be with God one day..
Threshold Concepts
A threshold concept can be thought of as a key that opens a doorway to a complete shift in the understanding of any subject: mathematics, psychology, physics, philosophy, humanities, or spirituality – “in any discipline, there are certain concepts – the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ – whose acquisition is akin to passing through a portal.”
Let’s look at some examples:
Science
- The Conservation of Energy: Understanding that energy changes forms but never disappears.
Physics
- Symmetry in Nature: Fundamental symmetries (e.g., in charge, time, and parity) govern the laws of physics and reveal deeper truths about the universe.
Literature
- The Hero’s Journey: Learning Joseph Campbell’s framework for universal storytelling.
Philosophy
- The Allegory of the Cave (Plato): Understanding that perceived reality may not reflect ultimate truth.
History
- History as narrative – a constructed story, influenced by the storyteller’s perspective, values, and biases.
Economics
- Opportunity Cost: Realizing every choice comes with a trade-off.
Psychology
- Cognitive Dissonance: Understanding the discomfort of holding conflicting beliefs.
Religious Studies
- Imago Dei: The belief that humans are created in the image of God.
- Kenosis: Understanding self-emptying love as a transformative force.
Art
- The Rule of Thirds: Understanding balance and composition in visual art.
Technology
- Moore’s Law: Recognizing the exponential growth of technology.
Education
- Constructivism: Learning is an active, personal process of meaning-making.
That last one on education is important. These concepts can not be taught through a transfer of information, they have to be discovered. An instructor can set the environment for me to discover these concepts but the ideas break conditioned understanding and have to be wrestled with. I may be able to repeat the information I learned, but it does not take me through the portal of enlightenment until I experience it at a discovery level. This is why self-discovery is so important in any form of pedagogy. If it is truly a threshold concept, the shift is irreversible, and the previous understanding of the subject can never be retrofitted.
Many of these concepts are theoretical and have to be experienced through actively trying to prove or disprove the theory. The experiment you set up is less about right or wrong and more about the true understanding that is taking place in the experimentation. In his Tedx Talk on threshold concepts, Robert Coven calls this ‘Modeling’.
Spiritual Modeling
I’ve conducted quite a bit of modeling with my spirituality over the years. I’ve always been a spiritual seeker but in my twenties I deeply needed my beliefs to be experientially true, not just psychological programming in the form of inherited obligations. I started questioning everything and that led me to some really beautiful theological, eschatological, and ontological breakthroughs.
Restoration of All Things
The ultimate goal of creation is the restoration and renewal of all that is broken, culminating in God dwelling with humanity in all the Earth. This vision emphasizes God’s transformative work in partnership with humanity.
Kingdom Theology
The Bible reveals a metanarrative where God invites humanity to co-create and extend Eden into the world. This restorative process transforms creation and people into reflections of divine love, culminating in God fully dwelling with His people.
Epistemology of Love
Love is the fundamental fabric of the universe, and the highest form of knowing arises from choosing love in any moment. Love is the guiding principle for understanding and action.
Dispensationalism
The belief that the world is getting progressively worse and heading toward destruction stems from dispensationalist theology, which rose in popularity after the world wars. Historically, Christian theology emphasized renewal and restoration rather than destruction.
Atonement: Solidarity Through Suffering
In ‘The Universal Christ’, Richard Rohr critiques penal substitutionary atonement and highlights the Solidarity Atonement Theory (from Moral Influence Theory), which views Jesus’ death as an act of divine solidarity with human suffering. It reframes atonement as transformative love rather than a transactional payment for sin.
Spiritual Formation
Finally, these threshold concepts found personal grounding for me through spiritual practices that cultivate a direct, experiential awareness of God’s presence. This awareness transformed these theories into knowing through encountering Love. This present awareness is available in every moment and is the portal to the Kingdom of God now.
Reconstructionists
One final word on threshold concepts. While the other side of the wandering is deeply fulfilling, the time in the liminal desert – when you become aware of the deconstructing knowledge but haven’t yet integrated it – can be painful and confusing. For many, including myself, this can lead to anger, bitterness, and rejection of all previously inherited beliefs regarding the subject. I believe this is what is happening with the hyper move of exvangelicals toward deconstruction. Deconstruction isn’t bad. It’s necessary. Now we need some reconstructionists to point the way forward towards hope.
Bibliography
- “Julian of Norwich.” Paraclete Press. Accessed January 23, 2025. https://paracletepress.com/products/julian-of-norwich.
- “Threshold Concepts in Practice.” Accessed January 20, 2025.
- Meyer, Jan, and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding. 0 ed. Routledge, 2006. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203966273.
- Coven, Robert. Breaking Through: Threshold Concepts as a Key to Understanding. TEDxCaryAcademy, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCPYSKSFky4.
- Eldredge, John. All Things New: Heaven, Earth, and the Restoration of Everything You Love. Thomas Nelson, 2017.
- Mackey, Tim. Various Works. The Bible Project, n.d..
- Wright, N.T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. HarperOne, 2008.
- Fujimura, Makoto. Art and Faith: A Theology of Making. Yale University Press, 2021.
- Wright, N.T. History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology. SPCK, 2019.
- Scofield, C.I. Scofield Reference Bible. Oxford University Press, 1909.
- Weber, Timothy P. Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875-1982. University of Chicago Press, 1987.
- Rohr, Richard. The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe. Convergent Books, 2019.
- Varillon, François. Joie de croire, joie de vivre. Les Editions du Cerf, 1978.
- Willard, Dallas. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. HarperOne, 1988.
- Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World. WaterBrook, 2019.
- Benner, David G. The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery. IVP Books, 2004.
8 responses to “Utopian Reconstructionist”
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Christian,
I’m grateful not only for how you articulate these concepts but also that you do so with authenticity and vulnerability. I especially appreciate how you start this conversation by focusing on love and beauty, then invite us into the place of processing what is broken. Thank you!
I am struck by how essential the liminal spaces–with their opportunities for adventure and the disorientation and challenges that exist there–are essential (or inherent in) transformation. One of the things I’ve experienced in those deconstructive liminal spaces is the sense of personal dis-integration; though walking through these thresholds is an individual experience, I don’t know how living into integration happens outside of community.
Using your personal journey and experience in spiritual direction, what are some of the ways we can offer supportive community even as we experience the isolation of liminality?
Jeremiah, I’m grateful for the feedback and your beautiful insight about the role of community in the desert.
Can I be honest and say that for me, most the liminal wandering was cold and lonely?
I agree with you that the disorientation is essential and I would also say that the time in the disorienting space is unnecessarily prolonged by wandering alone. And spending too long in those spaces causes trauma.
It makes me think about triabal, wisdom traditions where boys coming of age go out into the wilderness to encounter the spiritual world alone as initiation, and then return to the community for welcoming and integration. There is a process, a roadmap, a cultural norm.
I was still wandering around in the desert a little over a year ago until I found a spiritual community that accepted me, and gave me responsibility as a leader. It grounded me. It gave me pride. It balanced my gypsy tendencies. It allowed me to space to question safely.
To your question regarding offering supportive community to the experience of (or from) liminality, through the lens of spiritual direction I would say this: people have to have a place (conversation, relationship, home, etc) where they can explore their thoughts and feelings without repercussion. Complete and total acceptance. The stuff that is down in there, really in there, will not come out without complete safety and freedom. And until it comes out, it’s in exile and leaking out in unhealthy ways elsewhere.
Doing this in more than a one on one setting would probably look something like Curt Thompson’s Confessional Communities. But I am sure there are other methods of normalizing a culture of belonging. I know Adam Harris in DLGP03 is working on this specifically on a congregational scale. It would be great to see what he is working on.
Many people just don’t know how to hold space for others that is non-judgemental, vulnerable, and brave. That is a learned skill and very much a threshold concept.
https://curtthompsonmd.com/the-way-of-the-confessional-community/
Christian and Jeremiah, I want to jump into this conversation with you both.
There’s something about how we culturally experience formation at work in this paradigm. I’m not sure that we, as an American Western culture, ever taught spiritual formation well. Yet, in the last 100(?) years, there has been a culture of teaching happiness and success instead of formation and becoming.
Then, we don’t have the communal space to experience every step as an arrival or to see the process of deconstruction and reconstruction as necessary in our formation.
Then, our confessional spaces are grounded in failures to achieve, i.e., I didn’t meet this or that goal. Instead of failures to be, I want to live this way, but I’m not living up to the faith I’ve already obtained (Phil 3:16)
What are your thoughts on that?
Thanks, both of you!
First, Christian, I’m sorry for how lonely the wandering was, and am grateful you found community that values and sees you. Thank you for the resource on confessional community–there’s much of it that sounds like necessary pain toward integration (“rupture and repair” looks especially challenging, and an element where the commitment to keep journeying together seems foundational but hard).
Robert, I think you hit on so much that is part of this conversation, highlighting how layered and multifaceted it is. Much of our view of success is that success is achieved on our own–the mythos of the “self-made man” or woman is a real thing, and it seems we’ve tried to incorporate that into our spiritual formation. But every “self-made” person I’ve had the joy of knowing would tell you they needed other people all along their way.
Your comment reminded me of a quote a friend shared when he was working at Fuller Youth Institute: “Doubt isn’t toxic to faith. Silence is.” I think that speaks to your observation that we lack communion with others and the inherent nature of de/reconstruction in formation; the only way to have a place where silence isn’t response, but caring curiosity and communication are, is in a space where we have community.
It’s there, too, that we are to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Heb 10:24), which I imagine provides the kind of confessional space you’re referencing. If we all had spaces to confess and confront our failures with others who were committed to cheering us on and seeing us thrive together, I think much would be different.
Robert, this is wonderful and concise. I appreciate the contrast of happiness and success vs formation and becoming. I wonder if this has something to do with the obsession with metrics and control? Not that it’s super easy to measure happiness but success metrics are heavily ingrained into the DNA of our culture. I use OKRs (Objectives & key results) in just about everything I do. If, on the other hand, formation and becoming are defined by love, tracking and measuring become a bit more challenging. Even watching sports in America seems like and education in statistics.
To your point about deconstruction and reconstruction as necessary parts of the journey. That is a tough one. This means we have to build something incorrectly as a prerequisite, tear it down, see it differently with experience, and rebuild. This does not compute on any Western values I know of.
These are hard things to accept.
Thanks Christian for such an insightful piece. I must confess that I tend to see the world on both ends on the spectrum. One being acknowledging the fall and the consequencies of the fall but also the eschatological hope of a new heaven and new earth offered to us by the work of Christ. And there in between are the writings of Daniel and Paul that point to the treachorous times that we are living in. Your blog is challenging my views and I begun to think about the Lords prayer and specifically this stanza, “your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” It refers to the now and how we see the world at present. Will this change how I relate to others? Pursue my vocation? A lot to process and a mental barrier for me to cross. Thanks again.
Thanks Alex. I appreciate your balanced view. I will admit that I tend to lean toward the optimistic side (hence the Utopian title as a small jab at myself). I’m sure if I understood the depths of Truth (whatever that means) I’d find a bit more balancing of the scales to wrestle with. Your two questions are precisely why I choose this worldview. How does interpreting life and scripture this way affect the way I relate to others and pursue purpose? I can tell you that I like who I am becoming and I am more like love with this worldview. For now, that is good enough.
To the points you make about Daniel and Paul I would say this: Hasn’t every generation believed they were living in those treacherous times?
Yes, I am reminded by the words of the wise King Solomon who said, “there is nothing new under the Sun.” What we see as treacherous or difficult has been there before; maybe manifesting a different form.