Jesus Taught Deconstruction and the Religious Hated Him for It

Pursuing Truth is Life's Greatest Journey

Hi Thinkers!

Welcome to the Deconstruction.Zone newsletter! Thank you for reading.

Today we’ll discuss Jesus’ perspective on deconstruction. For a deeper dive into what deconstruction is, check out the post “What is Deconstruction and Why It Matters”.

Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next post. And check out the last post: “The 3 Bs of Religion”.

Now let’s get started!

Let’s take a moment to look at the way Jesus is portrayed in the Bible.

Jesus came at a time when the religious valued tradition over truth; and comfort over compassion. Religion was about maintaining the status quo rather than seeking new knowledge.

Jesus preached against the religious norms of the day, declaring “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

But people then, just as they do now, resorted to denial, anger, and violence when asked to honestly evaluate their superstitious routines and traditions.

Just read this storyline in Matthew 12:9-14:

⁹ Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, ¹⁰ and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

¹¹ He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

¹³ Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. ¹⁴ But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Jesus’ very existence offended the religious leaders of the day. Why?

Jesus' existence offended the pharisees

What is it about Jesus that offended the religious leaders of his time?

As with many authoritarian Christian leaders in the US today, the religious leaders of Jesus’ time had a significant amount of power over their local community. These leaders sought more power and authority, and the belief in a Messiah who would conquer Rome further stroked their ego — as this would only enhance their power.

But Jesus didn’t preach building Israel into a global superpower with the religious elite ruling the world.

Instead, he preached submission to the current secular government: “give onto Caesar what is Caesars” (Mark 12:17).

Jesus didn’t congratulate these men for memorizing scripture and being able to speak eloquently on the prophecies and theology of old.

Instead, he scolded them for caring more about their theology than the people around them. Jesus taught humility and love. And you cannot gain power with humility and love. You cannot use humility and love as a way to elevate yourself above others.

Jesus taught humility and love. You cannot use humility and love as a way to elevate yourself above others.

These religious leaders were interested in power over others.

They loved bragging about how far ahead of everyone else they were on the climb to the top of the mountain. But they never stopped to ask if they were climbing up the right mountain.

They were able to provide eloquent answers to many theological questions, but they never stopped to ponder if they were asking the right questions.

They had memorized how to wear the right clothes, how to wash their hands the right way, and how to interpret the teachings of Moses — but they cared nothing about the people around them.

Jesus always reframed conversations from knowing the truth about theology, to loving others.

Are you playing a game where the points don’t matter?

In the show Parks and Recreation, there’s an episode where the Parks and Recreation employees help facilitate a Model UN session for high school students. During the session, the goofy Andy Dwyer (played by Chris Pratt) reveals his strategy for winning:

“These kids are idiots. I've just traded all of Finland's boring stuff for every other country’s lions. I definitely have more lions than any other country in the whole world right now. I have no idea what’s going on, but if that ends up meaning something in this game, I’d say I’m set.”

This is how many people approach their religion! They set up their own scoring method, and then start comparing their success to the success of those around them. People who do worse than them on this system are lost souls, people who do better are overly zealous fundamentalists (who somehow still have it wrong).

If you tell these people they’re tracking the wrong metric, playing the game with the wrong scoring system, or perhaps even in a game where the points don’t matter (like in Who’s Line Is It Anyway?) — they get offended!

If all of these rules I’m following don’t matter, then I’ve wasted my life!

If I don’t have a deeper understanding of truth than everyone else, then I can’t lord it over them as a moral superior!

This is what the Pharisees and other religious leaders hated about Jesus.

Jesus spent his ministry deconstructing these scoring systems and replacing them with the one truth we all know: love others (Matthew 22:39).

Jesus Was Okay with Not Knowing

Jesus created very little theology. In fact, much of the theology of modern Christians is based on the teachings of Paul rather than those of Christ (which we’ll discuss in the future).

Anytime people claimed or asked for absolutes, Jesus responded in a way that left more questions than answers.

Why?

Jesus was okay with not knowing.

Even the night before his crucifixion, as he prayed in the garden, he didn’t know whether or not God would resurrect him! But he knew that loving others was the right thing — regardless of the long-term consequences for himself.

But most humans cannot handle not knowing.

We need to know the beginning of the story and the end of the story. We need to know what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. To leave something unknown breaks our brain!

Unfortunately, there are some things we cannot know for sure (at least, not yet). None of us know, from personal experience, what happens when we die. None of us know, from personal experience, how the universe started. None of us know, from personal experience, if life exists on the far edges of our universe.

When we don’t know, we’re left with two choices:

1. Ask questions, explore, and seek truth — being okay with not knowing in the interim (and perhaps never knowing).

2. Find an “easy” answer and accept it as truth (whether it’s true or not) so we don’t have to live in the unknown.

Jesus preached #1. Many Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and other leaders (religious and secular) are more than happy to give you an answer that works for choice #2 — and often one that conveniently benefits their agenda.

And people are drawn to these authoritarian leaders. It’s hard to live our lives not knowing 100% what’s going to happen next. Many of us would rather follow someone confident and be wrong later than to admit we don’t have an answer today.

Just as in Jesus’ day, many religious leaders fear deconstruction and questioning the status quo

While there are some Christians who accept and validate deconstruction to an extent, most Christians are afraid of admitting there are questions that have hard answers, or no answers at all.

For believers, admitting that they are playing a game without actually knowing what points matter just doesn’t work — you cannot evangelize that you “might” have the truth.

While Jesus spent his life tearing down overconfident responses to unanswerable questions, his self-proclaimed followers have forgotten that message and now speak about him with the same authoritarian confidence he spent his entire life fighting against.

So today we end up in the same environment Jesus would have experienced 2000 years ago. Religious leaders (today in the form of Christian Nationalists, Jewish Zionists, and Islamic Extremists) declaring anyone who disagrees with them a tool of the devil.

In Matthew 12 we read about Jesus:

²² Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. ²³ All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

²⁴ But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”

When their worldview was threatened with new information, these religious zealots refused to evaluate their understanding of the world.

They could have evaluated this information, reflected on their current beliefs, and either embraced these new ideas or proven them wrong — gaining a deeper understanding of truth along the way. But instead, they doubled-down on their authoritarian answers and declared anyone who disagreed (including Jesus) a prince of demons.

This same defense for indefensible arguments is made by religious people to this day.

When something is discovered that cannot fit into their worldview, rather than evaluating whether that worldview needs modification, it is declared the work of the devil — allowing for the believer to avoid any real intellectual evaluation of the topic.

So the next time someone says your questions, lifestyle, or very existence is a tool of the devil, know you’re in good hands if the Christian worldview is true — as the same was said of Jesus.

We would all be better off accepting Jesus’ teaching on love

Gandhi’s famous quote rings just as true now as it did when he was fighting for Indian independence:

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

In graduate level business courses you’re taught there are three categories of information you need to keep in mind when developing a successful business strategy:

• What you know

• What you know you don’t know

• What you don’t know you don’t know

Jesus accepted each of these areas openly and honestly. Meanwhile, most religious people today force everything into the first category.

This disingenuous way of looking at information results in harm to self, others, and society at large. When you require an answer to every question, you allow yourself to deceive others and be deceived by others.

And all we can know for sure is that you are here, I am here, and any good God worthy of worship will celebrate those who choose to love their fellow humans.

In Conclusion…

From the new testament we can see that Jesus:

• Was okay with not knowing.

• Understood that loving others was always the right decision.

Because of these views, the religious of the day:

• Recognized Jesus’ teachings would allow people to think for themselves — removing their need for these religious elites, and eliminating their power.

• Chose to call Jesus a tool of demons in order to maintain their power — allowing them to brush him off without having to address the challenging statements he brought into discourse.

Today, people fall into the same trap:

• Wanting to have absolute answers to everything, even things they cannot know for sure. This is comfortable, while not knowing is uncomfortable.

• Desiring power over others and being more than comfortable using religion to acquire it.

• Being willing to call things they don’t understand or cannot explain “demonic”.

Personally, I desire to pursue truth down whatever path it takes me — regardless of my upbringing, what society expects of me, or what makes me feel comfortable.

Hopefully, you’ll join me on this journey to honestly seek truth wherever it leads us, even if the answer is sometimes": “I don’t know”.

Thoughts? I’m certainly not a biblical scholar (although I’ve taken the equivalent of a religion minor in Bible classes) and appreciate feedback on these topics.

Do you believe today’s Christians would follow Jesus if he came today?

As you reflect on your own worldview, are you willing to live like Jesus and say “I don’t know”, or do you prefer to ignore hard questions as the tools of demons?

Until next time, stay inspired!