How I Navigated the Dark Forest of Deconstruction

A Deconstruction Observed, Pt. 21

Why I Call Deconstruction a Dark Forest

Navigating the dark forest of deconstruction is like walking in a dense fog through territory you thought you knew but that now seems totally unfamiliar.

In January of this year I was offered a role in a local production of Fiddler on the Roof. Rehearsals were in the evening, three or four days a week so I did a lot of driving in the dark. As we moved through February and the daylight hours began to lengthen, there were a couple of evenings when I drove to rehearsal through dense fog.

It was a surreal experience.

I was on a road that I’ve driven for over thirty years. I knew every turn, every landmark. Yet as I drove through the fog I found myself disoriented. I saw only the road ahead of me, winding into nothingness. Familiar landscape features–visuals I relied on to gauge my location–faded away like phantoms.

Although I knew that road like the back of my hand, in the fog I lost all perspective. It was as if I’d never driven it before and had no idea where I was going. (Thank God for GPS!)

That’s how I felt when I entered the dark forest of deconstruction.

I’d been studying, thinking, and rethinking doctrines, teachings, and beliefs off and on since leaving pastoral ministry in May of 2000. It had almost become a hobby. I enjoyed exploring thoughts and ideas I had blocked off as I remained in a largely dispensational/premillennial and evangelical cocoon. Some ideas I changed, others I didn’t.

But when I became convinced that the science of evolution was true everything changed.

It was as if all my categories for understanding life had vanished.

Now I wasn’t considering obscure doctrinal issues such as when the rapture would happen (or whether it would happen at all). I wasn’t thinking about free will versus divine sovereignty or esoteric topics such as the merits of infralapsarianism over sub- or supralapsarianism. My questions were going to the very nature of reality itself.

If evolution were true, it would impact my understanding of the Bible, the world, of humans, of life itself, and especially of God and how he worked in the world. In another post I compared the onrush of questions like a flood that comes after a dike breaks. In the aftermath of that flood, I felt like I was walking through a fog-saturated forest. I was numb.

I don’t remember a lot of specifics and I’m not sure how long I was even in this virtual fog. But thanks to someone else’s post on deconstruction (sorry, I don’t remember whose it was) I do know how to describe it.

It was grief.

Deconstruction and the Stages of Grief

In 1969, Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross published her groundbreaking book On Death and Dying. Based on her work with terminally ill patients, Dr. Kubler-Ross identified five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Although the stages are based on anecdotal evidence rather than scientific studies and it’s overly simplistic to say that every person goes through these stages in the same order or even experiences all of them, Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief still provide a good bird’s-eye view of the emotions connected with the grief experience.

As I look back on my deconstruction experience I can identify most of these emotions. I didn’t go through them sequentially. Sometimes I experienced them in alternating waves. Sometimes not at all. Sometimes all at once. And quite frankly I felt some emotions (e.g. fear, anxiety, loneliness) that aren’t typically associated with grief.

All that to say that as I worked through my deconstruction I experienced a jumble of emotions, most of which I kept inside.

Why?

Partly because that’s just my personality. I’ve never been one to talk about my feelings.

Partly it was because I didn’t feel safe. Even after I had passed through the forest and began to reconstruct, I didn’t feel safe.

In August of 2019, after I was through the forest and reconstructing, I wrote to a friend I trusted:

“I’ve been in this process for almost 10 years now. Most of that time I’ve been in the closet but I’m sensing that the time is drawing near for me to step out of that closet. That’s frightening because it’s a massive risk. I’ve seen what has happened to . . . others, when they dared to take a position unpopular with the evangelical establishment. I’m going to the Evolving Faith Conference in Denver this October, which is my first feeble attempt at peeking out.”

Laurel was one of the only people I shared anything with, and she was there with me through it all. In the same message I quoted above I wrote:

Laurel has been very gracious, too. I wasn’t very open at first, but over the years I’ve shared more and more of my heart, and my questions, with her. I don’t know that she’s on the same journey, but she has supported me, and that has helped–a lot.

But in the early years it was mostly just me, trying desperately to figure life out all over again. But even though I felt alone at times, as I look back I realize I was never alone. Also from that 2019 message:

In the midst of all this, God has been good. My constant prayer (which I borrowed from someone else) is “God, please don’t let go of me; and don’t let me let go of you.” He has faithfully answered that prayer.

That’s not to say that there weren’t some very dark times, times when I wasn’t even sure God existed. There were. But God brought me through those, too. (And I’ll write about those next time.)

Takeaway:

If you’re in the forest, don’t give in to despair. Tell God about it. He’s walking with you, even if he seems to be a million miles away. And take life one step at a time. That’s what I’ve told many people who are experiencing grief. It applies here, too.

And if you need to talk with someone who has gone through the forest, feel free to contact me.

You can find all of the posts in this series at: jamespence.com/a-deconstruction-observed