There’s a chapter from a book by Justo Gonzalez that I often come back to called, “Let the Dead Gods Bury Their Dead.” Here’s an excerpt from one of the early paragraphs:
Some gods are better dead than alive. Humankind did not lose a great deal when Huitzilopochtli and his cohorts lost their power to require human sacrifices, or when the crocodiles of the Nile lost their divinity. The death of many gods has meant life for countless human beings. Therefore, let us not be too hasty in our condemnation of those who say that the “God” worshiped by much of our civilization is dead. Perhaps that “God” too is an idol whose day has passed. And perhaps biblical believers ought to rejoice at the funeral of such a god.
From: “Let the Dead Gods Bury Their Dead.” by Justo Gonzalez
I have often employed this quote when I was wrestling with my own faith questions. Being steadfast in faith has not always been easy. On the whole, I am grateful for the faith that was passed on to me. When I think back to my early faith formation, I’m grateful for aunties and uncles who modeled faithfulness and generosity. I’m grateful for Sunday School songs that continue to live in my head rent-free. I’m grateful for “sword drills” (though in hindsight, not so fond of that name), and bible memory verses. I’m grateful for years of VBS and regular altar calls to “give my life to the Lord.” These things weren’t perfect, but the Holy Spirit was at work forming me before I even knew who he was.
I was grateful and proud of the faith I had received, but I was also taught that I would experience “persecution” in the world. So as I was growing in my faith, I prepared for such challenges. I read all the apologetic resources I could find. I found “Christian” and “faithful” responses to many of the challenges that came at me. I wanted to make sure that the faith I had received from my church would be safe from the world’s attacks. I learned that if I’m ashamed of Jesus, he’ll be ashamed of me! I wanted to be unashamed of this faith that had done so much good! However, just because something has done good, does not excuse it from critique. As I grew in faith and maturity, I started to see that some of the challenges from “the world” had merit.
And these challenges did not come from enemies with an agenda, they came from honest people that had a hard time with the anti-science, anti-women, anti-diversity, anti-choice, anti-[there are just so many] positions of the church. If I were honest with myself, I would have admitted that I agreed with these critiques. But in my early faith, I was resolute and I fought hard against these critiques because I had thought that my faith had to be taken wholesale; I thought that rejecting one part would be rejecting all of it. Earnestly desiring for my faith to stay intact, I doubled-down. There was so much to lose if I gave in (or so I thought). For me this resulted in a stronger and more rigid faith, but this rigidity also resulted in a more fragile faith. If one of these pillars (conservatism, patriarchy, literalism, etc.) fell, the whole thing would fall apart. God was gentle with me.
I’m grateful that everything didn’t fall apart at once — not everyone was so fortunate. I was able to deal with various parts of my faith at a pace I could handle. I learned that there were other perspectives that were also faithful and honoring to God that were not as narrow as the perspective that I was brought up with. Slowly I learned that rejecting biblical literalism was not rejecting God. Rejecting patriarchy was not rejecting the gospel. And so on. I learned that I did not need to keep defending a false god (the wholesale faith I was given). The true and living God did not need my defense. I was free to discover more of God and the way that he was living and active today. I discovered a God that was not tied to power, tribalism, politics. I was free to keep the good parts (faithfulness, love for neighbor, humility, patience and perseverance, honesty and integrity) and seek to detach them from the bad parts (misogyny, racism, selfishness, greed, pride). Deconstruction for me is the humble and challenging task of separating the baby from the bathwater. It is seeking a faith that is not comfortable with keeping dirty bathwater around when you know it is hurting the baby.
Justo Gonzalez’s words helped me to see that I did not need to defend gods that were not God: the god who seemed to support unjust power structures, the god who seemed to support unsafe structures for victims, the god who seemed to oppose scientific inquiry and curiosity in favor of rigid “biblical” certainty. The death of such gods “has meant life for countless human beings,” including me.