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James Pence

How God is Faithful Through Loss and Adversity

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How I Navigated the Dark Forest of Deconstruction

April 2, 2024

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 …

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Reading Can Be Hazardous to Your Confirmation Bias

March 20, 2024

What caused me to examine and dismantle my fortress of certainty? You might call it a sea change in my thinking. If you're not familiar with the term, a sea change is usually defined as a marked change or transformation. How did it happen? I'm not entirely sure, but here's my best guess.

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Fortress of Certainty

March 11, 2024

A Deconstruction Observed Pt 19 I didn’t choose to go through a faith deconstruction, but I certainly set myself up for it. In fact, I laid the foundation years before my crash even started. The irony is that one (but by no means the only) cause of my deconstruction was the fortress of certainty I built around my faith to “strengthen” it. I was a self-taught Christian for the early portion of my faith journey. I came to faith in Christ through a Billy Graham telecast and my education was through cassette tapes, mostly from Walter Martin (cults) and Hal Lindsey (end …

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Seeds of Deconstruction II: The Rapture Wars

March 4, 2024

Seeds of Deconstruction II – The Rapture Wars A Deconstruction Observed — Pt. 17   After my last post you might be thinking, So, one book on evolutionary creation caused your worldview to collapse No.   I didn’t wake up one day and say, “I think I’ll reexamine everything I’ve believed since I was a child and toss out things I don’t agree with anymore.” For me, deconstruction was something like the story of the little Dutch boy who saved his village by putting his finger in the hole of a leaky dike. As the story goes he stayed there …

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How I Entered the Dark Forest of Deconstruction

March 4, 2024

How I Entered the Dark Forest of Deconstruction (A Deconstruction Observed, Pt. 17) I had a problem. As I wrote previously, I had concluded that the universe and the earth were not only old; they were ancient. It went against everything I’d been taught, everything I’d believed, indeed everything I’d taught others. But it was the only thing that made sense. The problem was: how could I reconcile an ancient universe with what I had previously believed: that the universe had been created in six twenty-four-hour days and was less than 10,000 years old? I began searching for a solution, …

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