My Favorite Things to Say

Some of the Language of My Deconstruction

I grew to despise how religion uses catch phrases and platitudes to bypass big questions, and I also realize that mantras can also lead us to avoid facing reality or faking it until we make it. Even so, we also have to realize that catchy phrases help us remember the complex and deep understandings we accumulate along the journey.

As I was deconstructing my faith and challenging religion, I often came to a moment of clarity. When this happened, everything seemed to stop, and I reveled in the new ideas and understanding, which tempted me to begin marketing or to think about how I could quickly communicate them to followers.

But truths, truisms, and the truly helpful mantras require more rigor than that. For me, the most helpful process began with writing down what I discovered, which first tested my understanding and subjected it to my scrutiny. Then, once it was more clearly organized and somewhat tested, I would share it with my peers, hoping for spirited debate and conversation.

After receiving both positive and negative responses, I sought further confirmation in the literature and from experts. I tried to hold my new assumptions loosely, realizing that none of us knows everything, and that the primary deciding factor in an idea is not belief; it’s rigorous testing, experimentation, and sound logic and reason rightly applied.

“All theology is assumptions.”

Since my new ideas and understandings will ultimately be scrutinized as long as people consider them, I choose now to call all of my theology and understanding of the universe assumptions, especially when they can’t yet be proven scientifically or confirmed through verified experience. I can’t be 100% sure of anything, but there are reasonable ways to test our theories.

When we claim something as a belief, we halt all examination and refinement of that assumption. White-knuckling any beliefs may feel like strength, but it relies on untested, weak assumptions because we use our certainty to claim them as truths and ignore most of the flaws in our logic.

The following are some of my current assumptions, or at least the phrases that point to what I am discovering. They have undergone rigorous scrutiny, but I invite you to test them for value using your own reasonable and logical judgment, along with other expert opinion, quality studies, and your own experience. At some point, you have to develop confidence and trust in yourself and your intuition.

“Be where you are, Be who you are.”

I guess you could say this is our tagline when we sign off from our podcast, The Desert Sanctuary. It summarizes two of the most important things to me, presence and authenticity. I wasn’t very familiar with these concepts for most of my life. I was officially introduced to them when I visited a man in a tea house in Taiwan while visiting my son.

At some point, I read Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward and decided I wanted to be more authentic in the second half of my life. Then I met a guy in Taiwan who showed a clear example of authenticity and presence. That made me want to pursue these qualities.

For me, presence is about being “where I am” and paying attention to the things around me and the situations I am in, rather than future-tripping or focusing on past mistakes. We do have to do some level of planning, and it is sometimes helpful to visit the past for healing, but most of the time, we have to be present where we are.

Authenticity is about being “who we are.” This phrase invites sassy comments like, “Who else would you be?” But many of us are too heavily identified with what we do and with the egoic version of who we think we are, and we get lost in corporations and organizations, such as religion, that want us to all fall in line and conform.

We can lose ourselves in marriage, a friendship, and especially in religion or community. Most people who go through deconstruction and step outside of organized religion experience a bit of PTSD because they have to reconsider who they are, what they like, what they choose to do, and who they are going to become.

Finding our authentic self and being present with it and the situations we are in is one of the biggest keys to finding success on our journeys. Maybe you could find a phrase that expresses this idea. I wish you well on that journey.

“All Behavior is Communication.”

Since I discussed this at length earlier in this manuscript, I will be brief here. When we began investigating trauma-informed practices and understanding how the brain works, we discovered the concept of attachment. Attachment develops naturally between young children and their caregivers unless problems arise, such as abuse and neglect.

From the moment a newborn emerges into the world, they are constantly sending signals to have their needs addressed. As I discussed above, this is essential for survival, and if needs are not communicated and addressed, the young child may not survive. When needs are only partially met, the child may suffer now and later in life.

But this communication and behavior continued throughout the rest of our lives. Most of our behavior is still communication, even when we are older. Sometimes I want to communicate when I’m happy and at peace, and other times I want to signal that I’m uncomfortable, afraid, hungry, tired, or sad.

My biggest takeaway from this phrase is that we often ask a question when someone is misbehaving that sounds like “What’s wrong with you?” when we should be asking “What happened to you?” It helps greatly to consider what might be behind the behavior and what the person might be trying to communicate, even if it’s subconscious, rather than just labeling it as bad behavior or, even worse, as sin or a defect.

Especially when we are not taught well how to communicate our feelings, we may express them more often through our behavior, which is much less productive. I hope that as we understand these things better, we will become better communicators, learn to listen without judgment, and help people find the thing they’re trying to communicate that’s causing them to behave the way they are.

“Religion is mostly about Culture.”

My friend Larry Jordan suggests that religious practices and beliefs are inherently shaped by the culture in which they exist. My assumption is that it is natural to develop beliefs and practices based on our surroundings and the local understanding of who God is, and even sometimes on what the afterlife might be like.

When we have community and a shared understanding of the assumptions we are making, some of this is helpful. It helps us have less anxiety, up to the point that we log our theology and our practices into a permanent system that cannot be questioned. In culture, we seldom say we are trying to discover the truth, and we often say we already know it.

This misuse of community and culture is important to celebrate and remember, but choosing it as a roadmap for all future endeavors and all future societies is a mistake. The cultures that birthed Christianity had no understanding of mental health issues and limited access to information. Dogmatically accepting an ancient culture’s understanding as a roadmap for the society we live in is foolish. I absolutely see the benefit in drawing wisdom from other cultures, both past and present, but cherry-picking ones to live and die for causes wars and traumatizes people because their questions don’t get answered, and they don’t find real peace.

I advocate finding peace on the journey because I tried to learn from the past, ask big questions, and experience all parts of the journey, not just my limited worldview or my immediate community and their assumptions.

“The organization always comes first.”

Because I was a pastor when I began my deconstruction, I thought it was very important to seriously analyze, study, and examine the elements of the church in the United States. I studied where the money goes and what constitutes a worship service, and I looked closely at what most religions actually do. Most religious organizations start by serving a group of people, yet over time, they move away from that goal to pursue their primary goal: survival.

With this understanding and 20 years of ministry experience, I began saying this about religious organizations: “The organization always comes first.” Many practicing religious people discover that their personal quests and journeys of discovery are absorbed into the organization’s goals and objectives. In the churches I grew up in, we were told we had a plan and purpose, but when we failed to discover them, our plans and purposes became the pastor’s and the organization’s.

Even if we found our own plan and purpose, it had to align with the group’s objectives and couldn’t do anything that slowed the institution’s operational cycle. Sometimes this is subtle, and sometimes it’s very obvious, but it’s exceptionally hard to see when you’re involved in the day-to-day of organized religion. There’s always something “noble” that parishioners can do, such as free labor, donating money, or just attending sanctioned events.

“Patriarchy leads to toddlers in charge.”

I know the most about Christianity, so I’ll address this point based on my experience in evangelical Christianity and later in a more progressive context. In the early days of Christianity, there was a lot of equality in how they met together in homes. There wasn’t just one speaker or leader, even though by the end of the 1st century, the apostle Paul was already lobbying for leadership and submission, which evolved into complementarianism in some churches to this day.

As more people joined Christianity, after several hundred years, the Emperor Constantine brought the church into the empire, and Christians began meeting in cathedrals rather than in homes or the desert. Christianity became more about fear and control than about equality, community, and loving our neighbor.

Modern churches usually have one person at the top of the pyramid, often called the senior pastor or the head priest. Above these people are layers of hierarchy, especially if they are part of a larger denomination such as Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, or Catholic. Most organizations have their favorite “other” experts, but there is a targeted focus on specific people with specific knowledge who are seen as especially special.

I would never categorize a human being as infallible, especially since I don’t see Jesus, Buddha, or any of your key figures as perfect. This is an assumption on my part, but one born of years of study, contemplation, and a journey of discovery.

When we elevate the leader in our organization, we open the process to a host of pitfalls. First, it attracts narcissists who love the stage and being the center of attention. The general understanding of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is that it can be managed, but it usually persists for life. Most narcissists do not submit to even behavioral therapy because they believe strongly that they are right and that God is on their side.

In my opinion, this creates toddler-like behavior in which these people always expect to be believed, expect people to follow them without question, and believe that anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault. We might see this in star athletes who have always received special treatment, or sometimes in movie stars, but certainly most pastors, priests, etc., who have any amount of success and are reinforced by their followers, will cause collateral damage and leave a trail of bodies behind their bus.

“You can’t disagree with something you don’t understand”

A few years ago, there was a major debate in the United States about Critical Race Theory (CRT). This theory views racism as a systemic issue deeply ingrained in our legal systems and societal institutions. It is not just about individual feelings or prejudices. It is usually discussed only at the collegiate level, even though opponents feared it in public schools.

To me, the most interesting thing about the whole debate wasn’t just what I was learning about systemic racism, but how unfamiliar people were with the actual topic they were arguing against. Just as with religion, when we fail to address the root issues, the problem only gets worse, sprouting new branches everywhere. But how can people argue about something they don’t understand?

I can talk about the Pythagorean Theorem because I understand it, have used it, and studied it in the past. It has practical applications in squaring structures and others, and I have used it to calculate the length of the hypotenuse needed to square the corner of my deck. I love technology, and I’m grateful for the Internet. I think most of the issues with social media stem from people trying to convince others about things they don’t even understand.

Before I can say whether yoga or meditation is helpful or harmful, or worse yet, dangerous, I will probably have to attend a yoga class or meditate, along with some involved study, so I understand what I agree or disagree with. I’m not saying I have to master everything in the world, because that’s impossible. It takes less time than anything to read a book and search through all the information we have available.

I believe it’s a terrible shame that, in this age when we have access to so much information, we still choose to make things up that best suit our narrative. Sometimes pastors proliferate outdated ideas and ridiculous new theories without understanding them well enough or considering them properly before delivering a sermon or posting something on Facebook.

It helps keep us in the right mindset to say, “In my opinion” or “The way I understand it,” rather than going down the belief rabbit hole based on limited information. During COVID, too many people believed in conspiracy theories and wild, outrageous reports because they were bored and latched onto a provocative idea someone proposed. The bad news is that this process happens in organized religion every day, and people don’t even question the inconsistencies because they’re not allowed to disrupt the flow.

“Holy Books are usually horrible guidebooks.”

Let me just say that I have consciously chosen not to engage in long, complicated defenses or criticisms of the Bible. I have studied it intently for almost 30 years, and I was trained early in life and later earned degrees in it. But I don’t want to spend an entire book arguing for or against it, even though I want to make the point that follows.

One of the catchphrases in my tradition was to form an acrostic from the Bible that said, “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth,” meaning it is effective as a guidebook, even though they admit it’s not a scientific textbook or a literal history book. They still elevate it as the primary guide for living a human life.

Without being emotional or dogmatic, I must emphatically say that if it is a guidebook, it’s a terrible one because it is inconsistent. We know it didn’t include all the gospels, and including the other books would have helped us make better decisions about what we think and believe.

It contains instructions that contradict each other and other parts of it. It says not to murder, then says God murdered a bunch of people and that we should do the same in some circumstances, which are also not clear at all. This misunderstanding caused people to enslave some people and colonize others just because they saw God do that in parts of the Bible, while Jesus seemed to teach something totally different.

I agree that most holy books contain some wisdom. I deeply appreciate the encouragement to love my neighbor and treat people as I want to be treated. However, the Bible is not the only book that says that, and it also contains many other disturbing passages that people have misused since it was compiled 400 years after Jesus lived. Maybe the next point will clarify what we need for this journey.

“We need guides, not gurus”

I always imagine that for every person who enjoys celebrity status, there are many, many others following them, hoping to someday achieve what the speaker has achieved. This is true even when they hope to do exactly what that person is doing, and sometimes even if they want to replace the person who’s there. Followers often imagine themselves eventually becoming what they see, hear, and experience onstage.

As I explained earlier, I was changing careers when I became a pastor, and I was always looking for another man who had the silver bullet that would propel me in the right direction. I was willing to do the work, learn, and experience, but I was looking for a guru to give me that one principle or strategy that would make me successful. In a way, it’s important to query those who are successful to find tested ways of succeeding, but most often, they would tell me to keep doing what I was doing.

In other words, there are no shortcuts to the top. If we really want to be successful, we can study and search for methods that will help us, but ultimately, it’s most helpful to have a guide, not a guru. Is there a difference? I think so.

The guides we have found in the desert of deconstruction are the kind of people who stand on stage and give moving presentations that motivate us to action. They also don’t sit on a mountain, waiting for people to come to them for advice or the magic answer. Guides are people who have walked the same path we are on, and they’ll walk with us for a while to show us what they’ve seen and encourage us to keep going.

Some of the best guides in my life never really gave me advice. Instead, they listened to me talk about my journey and sometimes responded, even without words, simply validating my experience and occasionally sharing about theirs. Their words were not predetermined or golden rules I had to follow. They were fellow travelers confirming what it’s like to be on a journey and what we’re both learning as we travel.

Be where you are, Be who you are, Be at peace!

Karl Forehand