Dru Johnson (00:00)
What does it mean to deconstruct your faith and why are people doing it? Well, this week we’re going to be talking to YouTuber and pastor Joel Wentz, who runs a book review channel. So he’s reading lots of books on deconstruction, and he himself went through that process coming out of a fairly fundamentalist evangelical childhood. So we’re gonna look at why people are questioning their faith, what tools they’re using, what the dangers are, and where the hope and opportunities are well.
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Joel Wentz (00:48)
Yeah, so my mind goes in two different directions. One of them is kind of the crude vernacular form of deconstruction, which I think most often when I run into it, that’s what people, because it’s the colloquial, like it’s a colloquialism right now I’m deconstructing and the most people I assume rightly or not, I assume they mean it in that cruder sense of I am tearing down
my inherited beliefs. If I could put it in a sentence. You know, there’s a whole other layer of what I want deconstruction to mean, which is not typically what I think people mean by it, but that’s which you know, can get into Derrida and all that stuff, whatever all that means going into it. But I think most people if I just hear them say I am deconstructing, I assume that there is a negative balance to the term. And I assume there is an intent to tear down beliefs that they have been.
taught they might consider a dogma or something that they have inherited. They’re interrogating it, but not just interrogating it, interrogating it with an intent to tear down is how I would think about it.
Dru Johnson (01:55)
Yeah, that’s I think that’s a very helpful definition. And and then the more less crude, more formal definition, how would you view that?
Joel Wentz (02:05)
I think if someone’s put more thought into it potentially, I would say the more formal understanding of it would be still interrogating inherited beliefs, but without that negative balance to it. with an intent to understand as opposed to an intent to tear down. I think that those two, the telos of deconstruction, those two differences are very, very significant. Unfortunately, most people I run into, not universally,
But many people I run into that are, even if they’re saying they’re deconstructing, that also communicates something. A lot of people that I’ve, and I’m a pastor and I do this YouTube thing online and I bump into people who are kind of in different…
chapters in their spiritual journey. And there are a lot of people in my experience who I would say are sincerely deconstructing, but they’re not public about it. And they’re actually very vexed and in a lot of torment and pain about it. But they’re not using the deconstruction language themselves to describe what they’re experiencing. But I would say they’re actually more doing what deconstruction actually, you know, if you want to get into the epistemological kind of background of it, I think they’re doing more of what it actually is. But the people who are public and broadcasting and are doing it more with that.
Sometimes it’s just anti-institutional, but it is much more, in my experience, negative, with a negative intent and a destructive, not deconstructive, but a destructive intent. And so I think there’s a difference between the people who are, because of our cultural moment, broadcasting it publicly versus those who are just having questions and trying to work through their angst. And ironically, they’re not using the term for themselves, even though I would say that that’s what they’re doing. Does that make sense? I don’t know if that was clear.
Dru Johnson (03:49)
Yeah.
I mean, it makes sense to me. I also wonder when you say that, if the kind of second kind of deconstructing where people are just kind of quietly reinspecting the foundations of all their belief, if that’s not just called a biblical life.
Joel Wentz (04:08)
Yeah, I mean,
yeah, I agree with you. Yes. Yes, I agree. And that’s how I try to counsel people. It’s like a lot of people just need permission. In my experience, a of people need that kind of pastoral permission. Like the questions are answering. The questions you’re asking are deeply biblical. The questions you’re asking have been preserved in our sacred texts. So you’re not you’re not getting away from that foundation by asking these questions.
Dru Johnson (04:12)
So so maybe yeah. Yeah.
Joel Wentz (04:32)
insincerity. And a lot of times that’s kind of the permission that people need. But because of the cultural moment, there’s a lot of fear and a lot of concern that they’re crossing some sort of Rubicon into heresy or don’t know, or apostatizing or something like that. But yeah, I agree with you. think it’s deeply, I think the healthy impulse of it that I outlined a minute ago is, I would say, deeply biblical and actually a necessary part of spiritual maturity.
Dru Johnson (04:59)
Yeah, I’ve I’ve argued I’m I’m thinking about writing an article just to get it out there in paper, but there’s one comment by an ancient Near Eastern scholar about the Hebrew Bible. He he uses two phrases that have always stuck with me. One is that it’s it has a high critical intellectualism that you don’t see in the ancient Near East anywhere else except for the Hebrew Bible. He was an Egyptologist. But he’s just saying you have this
Joel Wentz (05:16)
Hmm.
Interesting. Interesting.
Dru Johnson (05:22)
This very specific type of critical intellectualism. I wrote about this in my Cambridge book. But then he also says it has what’s also unique is it has a skeptical mood. and w he doesn’t actually say what he means by it, but I guess what he means by that is that and this is from the nineteen forties when they were writing this, is that there is kind of a like, are you sure about that? there’s that kind of vibe throughout scripture.
Joel Wentz (05:31)
Hmm.
Okay.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (05:51)
And like, how do we really know that? and it and it goes in all kinds of it shows up in all kinds of weird places, like ten plagues, right? That really like leave no reason to doubt who was doing what in Egypt, even though people still do and it goes awry. But it now gives you like a reason to say they are being irrational. They saw the ten plagues, they should have known better. Or in the Parsha reading last week was Balaam’s donkey and he’s kicking his donkey.
Joel Wentz (05:53)
Yeah.
Hmm. Hmm.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (06:18)
And when
his donkey speaks to him, he doesn’t freak out and say, Wow, my my donkey is speaking. He just he just has a conversation with the donkey where the donkey says, Have I ever acted like this in the past? Like, are you not picking up what I’m laying down here? This, you know, there was someone standing in the way who was ready to kill you. and just that kind of like fact checking, norming against probable statistics. I mean, Gideon’s fleece obviously would be a real big example of this.
Joel Wentz (06:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (06:46)
Of what are the chances that this would have happened by accident? And that kind of mood seems just completely sewn into the fabric of scripture. And I have lots of intuitions about why that may be the case. And yet, people like my family members who are raised in the church will tell you, now I don’t know if it’s true or not. As a pastor, you know, sometimes you’ll say, Well, my church always said, and you’re like, No, we never actually said that. But I there’s something in the water where they will tell you.
Joel Wentz (06:49)
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.
Dru Johnson (07:15)
I was told just believe, just believe, this is the truth, you cannot doubt it. is that your experience too?
Joel Wentz (07:20)
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you have your finger on it and I am a pastor currently and I’m also a pastor’s kid. And I have this, I have this strange experience. I’m the oldest of three and I was raised in a rural, rural Pennsylvania was where I grew up. This is where my dad was a pastor. And it is fascinating to me because I would have said the same thing you just said for a long time going into undergrad age. would have, I would have repeated that line. Like I was told, don’t ask questions, just believe.
But my dad is an intellectual person. so, and he was the pastor of the church I had growing up. And so I know he never affirmed that idea. And he certainly didn’t, you know, raise us to believe that. And yet I still received it somewhere. And I can remember specific experiences I had of well-meaning friends of the family coming up to me and saying things like, even in some ways, in so many words, you know, maybe,
Dru Johnson (07:55)
Hmm.
Joel Wentz (08:19)
being worried about me going to college where I went to college and I went to a small private CCCU affiliated school in Indiana. But because it was liberal arts and it wasn’t a Bible school, know, like people being concerned about that or, or I remember expressing questions and as a freshman in high school about Genesis one and integrating that with biological evolution and, whatever. And I, and I remember people like closing that door really hard Sunday school teachers getting really, really reactive and nervous about certain questions that would come up. so
I think it’s just so interesting. This gets back to the tension between the leaders of the evangelical church and the people in the pews and the culture of the institution. And sometimes the culture of the institution inculcates a certain mindset. This has been my experience. I don’t want to broadcast this, generalize this too too much, but my experience was that the culture of the church inculcated a certain mindset about an anti-intellectual kind of bent, even though the leadership of the church, which was my own dad, and I can verify this.
Dru Johnson (08:57)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Wentz (09:17)
that he was not interested in that, raising people in the faith that way. Yet I still had a lot of the same tension and I went into undergrad and I would say I experienced what my darkest night of the soul deconstruction, all of that stuff coming out of undergrad into grad school. And a lot of it was wrapped up in these fears about don’t ask questions, don’t stray out of the boundaries of the things that you were taught.
And a lot of slippery slope mentality. If you start asking questions about this issue, that’s going to lead you to apostasy at some point. Yeah, I don’t know. I totally absorbed all of that, even though I know that the leadership of the church that I was raised in was not trying to teach that, which I think is just really interesting.
Dru Johnson (10:02)
That is really interesting. I think even my own kids got some of that when I was a pastor and and working, you know, volunteering in a church. it’s you know, as I always say with freshmen coming into college, it’s difficult in one semester to fight eighteen years of traditioning.
Joel Wentz (10:07)
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah
Dru Johnson (10:21)
Not
fight it, but you know, they like they come in with all these traditions and and it’s just a cacophony of traditions, right? Like they’ve all got different ones, they’ve all got different things that they think are sacrosanct for what it means to be a Christian. And you can’t it’s like turning a tanker ship. You j you know, you one you only get f three to four months with them, which sounds like a lot to people, but I’m like you get to turn it like one degree to the left or to the right, you know. and so I think that yeah, I had never thought about even your own dad. there is this difference.
Joel Wentz (10:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (10:51)
Between you know, and as a pastor you feel you’re always trying to help the congregation turn one way or the other if they’re kind of disoriented or misoriented. and then what are the right techniques to do that? And fortunately I was in a congregation as a pastor where I could be brutal and blunt and, you know, say all kinds of crazy things and they tolerated me, which was probably good. Yeah, maybe they maybe it encouraged me a little bit too much.
Joel Wentz (10:57)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s a gift.
You
Dru Johnson (11:20)
The so did you start your well, A, would you say that you had a deconstruction journey?
Joel Wentz (11:28)
I, yes, absolutely. And I tell people that I might have another one. know, hold epistemological humility has become a high, high, high value for me. I tell people, even new congregants who come to our community, I’ll say, and they want to hear my story and, we get coffee or whatever. And I’ll talk very openly about these questions. And I will try to say, like, I might, you know, have questions.
Dru Johnson (11:30)
Okay.
Okay.
Joel Wentz (11:54)
in years that are going to really rattle me and my commitment is to in faith, you know, wrestle with those questions. But that’s a tangent. My deconstruction journey particularly hit, like I said, when I graduated from undergrad. I went to a small CCCU affiliated school, as I said, and left very jaded, particularly with, I would say it was jaded with lot of institutional expressions of
the evangelical church. But also some of the particular questions that were really pressing for me were around eschatology and the afterlife. Those were the first questions that the first dominoes that fell in my deconstruction journey. And I remember very clearly my dad, speaking of my dad again, he handed me
Dru Johnson (12:35)
Interesting.
Joel Wentz (12:46)
Then a book by someone I had never heard of named NT Wright in 2009, I think, it was Surprised by Hope. And I begrudgingly read it and it blew my mind at the time. And it really responded directly to questions that I was wrestling with in a way that I didn’t even realize. I didn’t quite clarify the questions in my own mind, but reading that book opened up a lot of permission to think about eschatology in a different way than I had received.
And then that started, that really kicked open the door for me. I went down a long journey after that.
Dru Johnson (13:21)
It’s funny how there are are certain pressure points that cause deconstruction or I I guess inaugurated. It’s eschatology of all things because from what I can tell, Gen Z could could not care less about eschatology if they’re unless they were like were forced to attend some worldview weekend where they had some very specific, you know, premillennial eschatology forced upon them or something. yeah. Yeah.
Joel Wentz (13:26)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, I was a 90s kid, right? And so Left Behind was
massive and I was almost… Yeah, you’re almost forced to read. No one forced me to read it, but I did try. I… By the way, I could not get through book one purely on just…
writing merits and fiction merits. I just could not, had nothing to do with the theology. But yeah, I do think there’s a moment in time where eschatology for many of us, and I watched this shift because I did, before I was a pastor, did college campus ministry for eight years, and I watched a generational shift happen in the questions, the first kind of college generation I was working with were still asking questions about the age of the earth and evolution and all of that and Genesis and those completely went away four or five years into my eight years of time.
Dru Johnson (14:02)
I just say literary grounds.
Joel Wentz (14:30)
and they shifted towards what you’d probably guess a lot more. Identity issues, sexuality, gender, ethics, all of that stuff became the pressure points. But yeah, I agree with you. My story represents a particular generational moment, I think, and eschatology caused a lot of angst for me. But the vision of, instead of the premillennial dispensational vision, the vision of the renewed heavens and new earth was just like water on drag around for me. It was…
It was an unbelievably compelling vision that I had never heard before. So that was how it started for me.
Dru Johnson (15:04)
Why
why for you was that so compelling? Like what what was refreshing about it?
Joel Wentz (15:10)
Yeah, I remember very clearly. I remember one moment in particular in church as a kid. can’t remember how exactly how old I was. I was probably around 11 or 12. But I remember a guest speaker talking about how wonderful it was that we would just be what we were just doing, which was singing a hymn singing in our church service. How wonderful it would be that we would just be singing that for eternity. And as a child, I remember the unbidden horror.
that just pressed upon my soul. But as a kid, I just felt this like this, it was horror, it was terror. I was like, I do not want that to be my future. And then I felt intense shame because I knew as the oldest son of the pastor of that church, I should not be thinking those thoughts. And so that created a lot of spiritual tension internally for me. And so that’s just one example anecdote, but it points to
Dru Johnson (15:40)
I remember having this exact same thought as a young adult.
Joel Wentz (16:07)
the vision of the afterlife I had been given. And I had no reason to question it. It was that quasi-platonic disembodied eternal worship service, basically. And the idea of actually the earth itself will be renewed and brought in perfect unity with the heavenlies. that we will have, mean, NT Wright is this long passage. I…
had it open, I could read it because I haven’t marked so heavily, but he has this long passage where he talks about all the physical things we do like gardening or caring for a child or creating art or singing or even building and constructing like that those things all have a place in the actual eschatological vision that the New Testament presents and that idea.
Completely undid all of that terror that I felt about being in a disembodied worship service for eternity And it made me excited about the vision of the eschaton for and it was like first time I don’t think I’m overstating this The reason that book has stuck so much with me or even over the years is that it was the first time I felt excited about the biblical hope for the first time in my life
Dru Johnson (16:57)
Mm.
Joel Wentz (17:16)
But along the other side of that coin was deconstructing all of the beliefs that were making me not excited about the biblical hope. And so that was why the journey progressed along that way for me.
Dru Johnson (17:26)
I’m glad I asked. I you know, I’m realizing just the advantages, you know, there’s many diff disadvantages of not being a young man who was a Christian. and I and I think I found most of them. But one of the advantages, I w wasn’t really raised in a heavy Christian culture and and I kind of came into Christianity. I went to seminary just a couple of years after I became a Christian and was reading Tom Wright, and I was just like,
Joel Wentz (17:37)
Mmm.
Yup. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (17:56)
Yeah, that’s makes sense. so I had none of this angst, right? I like I didn’t have to I mean I did I was still at a charismatic non-denominational church where I was eventually became a pastor there. And so I did have to deal with the disjunct between what I was starting to see in scripture and what I sought at church. I think I’m I’m sorry, I’m thinking out loud of why I didn’t go through a deconstruction. And I but I think also one of the factors was
Joel Wentz (17:56)
That makes sense, yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, it makes sense.
Dru Johnson (18:24)
That church was so biblically literate and so biblically centered. They were also the ones that, you know, said, you’re going to cemetery. you know, it’s what they call seminary because it’s where your faith goes to die. but then I would come back and preach and teach what I was learning at seminary and they loved it. But I what I came to realize with that crowd was if you could show them the pattern in scripture, they would go along with you anywhere. Right. And so it really kind of decompressed.
Joel Wentz (18:29)
Hmm.
Right. Yep. Yeah.
Hmm.
Mmm, yes.
Dru Johnson (18:51)
You know, even if they had these very strong views about the premillennial rapture, which they just inherited essentially, when you showed them in scripture, like the pattern, they’d go, okay, I gotta I gotta think about that, right? And that just I think decompressed a lot of those pressures that build up on a lot of other people.
Joel Wentz (18:57)
Yeah.
Yep. Yeah.
That makes a lot of sense. My wife has this similar story as yours where she grew up completely outside of the church. No one else in her family were Christian and then she became a Christian in her twenties. And so we have conversations a lot about the weird baggage that I have that she feels really grateful she doesn’t have to worry about.
Dru Johnson (19:27)
Telling you. And and I
think it’s important to say too, like the baggage we have, it’s not like we chose it. I mean, there is a point where we like choose to like keep stuffing things in it and carrying heavier and heavier freight. But you know, as my mom used to say about feelings, feelings aren’t wrong. They’re just feelings, just the way you feel. So okay, so that’s the the kind of deconstructing. And how long ago did you start the YouTube channel?
Joel Wentz (19:35)
Yeah.
sure.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
That was a, that was a COVID hobby for me. That was my sourdough starter. I, in yeah, spring of, yeah, like everyone March, April of 2020, and we were all home suddenly with all this time. I thought, you know what? Actually, I’ll tell you specifically what it was. I, posted a video after George Floyd had died. I posted a video of like, Hey, I’ve read a bunch of books on the history of race in America. And, you know, it was a very unpolished, not
whatever, just a stream of consciousness kind of video. But I just talked about a bunch of books that I’d read and I was like, hey, this is what these books about and these might be helpful to you if you’re not sure what to make of this whole situation, what’s going on. And then tons of people were like texting me or asking me if they could share that video with their family. And I thought, wow, I guess people like when I talk about books online, maybe I’ll just keep doing that. So that’s how that’s how it started. But that wasn’t explicitly because of trying to do any sort of theological work at the time. But it’s kind of turned into that, which I love.
Dru Johnson (20:55)
Yeah. Well I I love the YouTube channel as well because you’re yeah, w the the way it’s run is very good. And then it’s formatted so I I know what I’m getting every time. even when you vary the format a little bit. And also it’s a bunch of books that quite honestly I would just never read on my own. Like, you know, they would sit on my desk forever and
Joel Wentz (20:58)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (21:15)
and I
Joel Wentz (21:16)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (21:16)
and there’s just a lot of popular Christian literature that I just don’t read because I don’t have time. And yeah, so and then some things that you have reviewed I’ve ended up going and reading because of the review. So it works out both ways. Yeah. so you did so you’ve been pretty open on the YouTube. The the reason I asked about the YouTube channel is because you’ve talked about your deconstructing on the YouTube channel. and I wonder.
Joel Wentz (21:19)
Yeah. Yeah.
wow, cool. That’s always cool to hear.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (21:41)
what that was like, to A be vulnerable, to talk about these things in public. And did you get any feedback or was it like a you know, like publishing a book where it just goes out into the void and you don’t hear anything for a year?
Joel Wentz (21:50)
You just, yeah.
I get that. Actually the. So the ones where I use more deconstruction language are the ones I called. I call them barely evangelical. That’s kind of my like title for those. So yeah, which I still, I still just think that’s a super clever title. But I, I do these series of videos where I take, I call it barely evangelical. And then there’s a theme like, you know, my journey through wrestling with doctrines of hell, for example. And then I will talk through in one video.
Dru Johnson (22:03)
yeah, yeah.
Joel Wentz (22:21)
20ish, 30 minutes about like, this is the belief I inherited, this is how I started to question it, and then this is the belief kind of I’ve come to, kind of that orientation, disorientation, reorientation framework, or you could say life, death, resurrection. So I trace that theme in that way, and to your second question, those are the videos I consistently get the most feedback on, which is why I’ve kept doing them. I get, it’s been…
Dru Johnson (22:45)
Right.
Joel Wentz (22:48)
Really wild I will get not not I don’t want to overstate this as though I get flooded with messages or something but I it’s not unusual for me to get an email or a Facebook message or something someone finds a way to reach out to me our the administrator our church checks the art Because I’m a pastor as I mentioned our church email account and she will she loves seeing these random emails from people who watch my YouTube videos that she forwards to me But people will reach out to me and will say I’ve gotten emails from spouses who say like
I have gone through this journey, but my spouse has not and I can’t really talk to them about it. And just listening to you articulate how you’ve gone through this has helped me feel like, you know, I’m not crazy or alone. And so I’ve gotten really heartfelt messages from people that have been extremely encouraging. And then I’ve started as more and more of those things came in, I’ve started a bimonthly book club through people on the who listen to the channel and they can sign up for my Patreon just to I don’t hide anything behind a paywall, but that’s just how I stay in touch with people.
Dru Johnson (23:19)
Thank you.
Joel Wentz (23:46)
And we’ve been doing these Zoom chats, you know, every other month to talk about a book, but inevitably it turns into just people looking for spaces to talk about things that they’re questioning. And there’s some people in that book club who’ve been really, really honest and through some really hard stuff with the institutional church. And so it’s been it’s felt like it has really struck a chord with people. And my my hope has been to give people permission to ask those questions. But also, I don’t want to go down the cynical negative.
Destructive route that I’ve seen so many writers and talking heads and whatever influencers going down I’m explicitly trying to position myself as like yes, you can ask these questions, but you don’t have to go down to the full Tear down everything mode There are actually compelling answers and compelling lines of thought That exist in the scriptures and in the Christian tradition to respond to all these questions that we have and so I’ve been trying to position myself as like not afraid of the questions and also not
just giving unfettered permission to go whatever direction you want with it, if that makes sense. I think that’s what, if I can say this, I think that’s what some people have really appreciated is because they want to ask the question, but they also don’t want to be cynical. And they want to hear genuinely if there’s a compelling answer and not just assume that there isn’t because the church has done so much damage. That means they can’t possibly have an answer to questions. There’s a of people out there who want to know, and they don’t want to go down that cynical route. And I think
The ones who stumble on those videos have really resonated with that approach.
Dru Johnson (25:17)
Yeah, I find that when you talk through these issues with people who are deconstructing, some aren’t. They’re just, you know, they just have questions. there’s usually a cultural issue in their church. Like they come from a church. Sometimes I have students describe the culture of their church and I’m like, that still exists, or that really I it’s shocking to me some things that exist. Or it’s a person who did something to them, or it it was an incident at their church or something.
Joel Wentz (25:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (25:46)
And and then that just causes the kind of the framework to shake enough to where they see cracks in the walls and then they wanna follow the cracks. I wonder why you think I mean I have my own thoughts on this, but I wonder what you think is wrong with going all the way down to the foundations. Like why why you don’t recommend that?
Joel Wentz (26:02)
Hmm.
that’s a good question. Well, I think when I when I use that language, I was Waving kind of a cautionary flag against More hmm. That’s a good question. I need to think some more about that my concern I think is the It’s more epistemological or it’s more posture. It’s like how someone positions themselves
against the questions that they’re asking or against the assumed answers. So I have seen an epistemological arrogance in the approach to deconstruction that has kind of assumed the answer is that there is no God and the church has nothing compelling or coherent to say to this. And so I’m going to chase my questions with that spirit and that lens, if that makes sense. That’s more of what I was envisioning when I said, go down to the foundations. If, however, very different,
situation and I have given this counsel to people when I you know in a context of relationship you can kind of sense how how things are unfolding if someone is sincerely asking Then I say go go the whole way, know, like go down to go to the depths Because I think the sincerity and the and the lack of that there’s a humility is what the working army coming back to you if there’s a sincerity sincerity and a humility and the seeking I think you can go down
Dru Johnson (27:08)
Right.
Joel Wentz (27:31)
Absolutely to the down down to the rafters or not the rafters down to the studs down to the foundations So I don’t know if that gets at what you’re asking, but I’m curious what your thoughts are on on that approach
Dru Johnson (27:41)
Yeah, I I think the question, you know, the Bible is skeptical. It has a skeptical mood, and that was from the nineteen forties when they before Vibes. So it has a skeptical vibe. And then and then the question naturally arises to what skepticism towards to what end? Right. And I think this is what deconstruction has classically kind of gotten at. Is it a Nietzschean, you know, like, let’s recreate everything, which means you have to tear everything down all the way, so we have to recreate all of our values, or or do we work within the framework?
Joel Wentz (27:48)
Right? Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Right.
Dru Johnson (28:10)
I I think my reaction would be, and and I get this from Polani, but I think this is true in scripture as well. Like there is no way you’re not ever going down to the foundations in actuality. or the the arrogance of thinking like there is no God or maybe God is just love in this really American romantic sense or whatever, whatever you’re replacing as as you go. So I always this is not a good analogy, but it’s the the only one I have,
Joel Wentz (28:24)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (28:39)
With students, I say it’s like you’re like everybody’s in a swimming pool and you wanna judge like who has the best, the most efficient way of staying afloat in the pool, right? Is it floating, is it dog eat paddle or whatever? And the arrogant assumption that I think you’re referring to you can correct me if this is wrong, is basically thinking that you get to hop out of the pool and look down at everybody and make the judgment, right?
Joel Wentz (28:49)
Hmm.
Right. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (29:03)
When
in actuality everybody’s in the pool together, you’re in the pool, you’re trying to tread water while you’re assessing everybody else at the same time. and so I think that that move lends itself to like layers of deception as well. As soon as you think that you’re the one who gets to hop out of the pool and get to see things, you know, kind of more objectively, that’s where self-deception kind of creeps in and all kinds of new forms and you don’t realize that you are standing on a ladder of which you are.
Joel Wentz (29:08)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Totally.
Dru Johnson (29:31)
completely uncritical, which means you think you really are that tall. Yeah.
Joel Wentz (29:36)
Yes, well
the other piece of the arrogance that I… And this is my experience too, but the other one that I’m cautious about or try to be very cognizant of is simply that other people have asked these questions before you. That’s a huge one for me. And I, know, the whole eschatology thing was my particular story, but realizing the rich tapestry of Christian thought on eschatology alone was…
Dru Johnson (29:51)
Right.
Joel Wentz (30:05)
so life-giving for me because then it let me put down the like that fear of that the fear that I was treading where some somewhere where no one else had gone I was like no absolutely not like people have been thinking about these questions and more questions that I haven’t even thought of yet for centuries and there’s really rich and textured thought on this within Christian Orthodoxy and so I think that’s one of the things I also know notice in people is that impulse of like I can’t believe no one else has ever
seen this before I have or you know, and it’s like come on, you know, and I think that there’s a lot of factors that lead to that but I do see there’s a great little book by Sarah Irving Stonebreaker on priests of history, that’s what it’s called, but she diagnoses us as being in an ahistoric age and I see that a lot in that impulse in particular, that idea that no one else has talked about this before and simply just pointing people to the rich.
Dru Johnson (30:55)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Wentz (30:59)
Again, like I said, that rich tapestry, that rich background of the ways people have dealt with these questions, because there is not a single deconstruction question, including power, how power is dealt with in the church, which a lot of people think is a uniquely modern thing. But I mean, all of those questions have been absolutely dealt with to great length by very faithful thinkers. And some of the greatest thinkers in history actually have dealt with a lot of those questions. So just pointing people to that alone, I think it starts to.
take out some of the claws in kind of the tearing down that can happen. So that’s something I’m really passionate about too.
Dru Johnson (31:35)
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I I used to teach like an introduction to church history because that’s all I’m capable of teaching is like a you know a junior level introduction. but what I noticed over the years is that I always called it my de dogmatizing class because it you know, just going up to the reformation is what I used to teach. And once you realize just the kind of panoply of answers that people have given, and that some of them are really bad, and even s really smart.
Joel Wentz (31:41)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Dru Johnson (32:04)
Faithful people gave really bad answers that were can c you know, f came straight from their culture or their own philosophies. But when they see how the church kind of keeps re sinking down on the the same things, it just is hard to maintain a narrow minded dogmatism in light of all of that, that history. some people still find a way, but it’s it’s hard, you know.
Joel Wentz (32:06)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
But
then you can get to a point to that point, and I’ve seen this too, and I don’t want to automatically assume that everyone’s deconstructing because they had a mean person said something to them at one point. I don’t want to reduce all these struggles to that. That said, it is very common that people have a negative experience in their background, which you said I think a little bit ago, and it could have been because of an abusive…
an abusive family member or pastor or even sometimes, and this terrifies me as a pastor, sometimes pastors who say things off the cuff or even with good intent and those things land with people and stick with them and then create all this angst over time. know, those things frequently, probably not 100 % of time, but it is very frequent in my experience that there is an experience somewhere because it comes out of our story. Everyone has a story.
And somewhere in that story is a seed most likely that planted, you know, what’s turning into these deconstruction I mix my metaphors all over the place, but you know that Uncovering there’s almost a funny deconstructing of the deconstruction questions that can happen in a good conversation Where you receive the initial questions you give permission to ask the questions and then start exploring and start, you know deconstructing what’s going on behind the question and then you can hopefully get to the story behind the question and
Dru Johnson (33:32)
That’s good. We like him.
Joel Wentz (33:54)
That to me is the most healthy approach. And I do find that it’s common that people have, even like I do, I’ve tried it out, particular anecdotes in this conversation about these people said these things to me. And it connected these dots in a certain way that produces crisis that was around eschatology for me. Lots of people have that. And it’s more about, think, you I really love Kurt Thompson’s work in integrating what he, you he’s a psychiatrist, he’s written Anatomy of the Soul and Soul of Shame and
Dru Johnson (34:13)
A minute.
Joel Wentz (34:24)
A lot of times the experience of confessing these things and having them received with love, which is what we believe, how we believe God approaches us, but through another person especially, a lot of healing can happen in my experience around some of these deconstruction questions. And I’ve seen it happen recently too. So I don’t know, those are the things I try to hold as I respond, or as I respond to some of these impulses.
Dru Johnson (34:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean that last point you made, I think the personal responsibility be because it’s it’s not always the case, but I’ve run into because again I wasn’t really raised inside the church. But what I run into is people that kind of l leave the church at eighteen or twenty. and and then they have critiques of the church built in their mind or critiques of Christianity built in their mind. And I
have this weird task of saying, like, well, you you have a childish understanding of the church, right? You have like a pediatric understanding of what’s going on. If you have a pediatric understanding of Jesus, it’s not wrong. It’s just what you have. and so a lot of times the questions they’re asking or the statements they’re making to summarize, you know, the Christianity, are just bad questions, or ill formed questions, or you it’s the wrong question, right? and so you
Joel Wentz (35:24)
Mmm… Mm-hmm… Mm-hmm…
Yeah, right.
Dru Johnson (35:47)
In an ideal situation, you would want to say, let’s help you find a better version of that question that will get you closer to where you want to be with the answers. Even if you don’t like the answers, at least you’ll get the kind of one that you need. But you have like you can’t even have that conversation unless you have a relationship with the person where they trust you to go along. Yeah. And with Gen Z, I’ve found even saying I’ve learned in class, you can’t even say, Maybe that’s not the best question. Maybe let’s find a new you can’t even say that anymore in class because that offends people.
Joel Wentz (35:51)
Hmm.
Yep and trust. Mm-hmm
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (36:17)
so you have to go even softer.
Joel Wentz (36:17)
Hmm. Interesting.
Dru Johnson (36:20)
yeah, and I’ve learned I’ve learned the hard way. don’t do anything that in any way sniffs of public shaming because I mean, literally even saying maybe that’s not the best question. Let’s find a better question. For some people, that’s gonna make them feel completely ashamed of themselves and they’ll never speak again in class because of that one comment. So it requires a lot of trust to walk them through and
Joel Wentz (36:23)
Yeah.
Right, I see.
Yeah. Hmm.
man.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (36:44)
help them see that. And it’s really hard when somebody has a question they’ve been hanging on to for a long time to hear that maybe that is not the best or maybe that’s not the question that that that can be answered in a way that will you’ll find satisfactory. so yeah, it’s it’s tricky. It really, you know, one thing I’ve learned a as a college professor who came out of the military is sometimes people just need a a swift kick in the crotch, right?
Joel Wentz (36:57)
Yeah, I could see that.
Dru Johnson (37:15)
And and then sometimes they need a really gentle hand to guide them. And it’s not always obvious which one they need. Right. yes.
Joel Wentz (37:20)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, there’s an art to caring for
souls in that way for sure. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (37:28)
And as
a pastor, you have the same the same trajectory, right? And as hopefully as just a friend, a Christian friend in the world, we have that same trajectory. and I unfortunately I probably tried the swift kick and a crotch time too quickly. that that was I was too quick to go to that move because it was easier, you know, and I knew how to do it really well. you go with the one that feels natural, right?
Joel Wentz (37:31)
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah
Yeah, right,
yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (37:52)
the
it it really is a great example of no you don’t you’re not literally supposed to love your neighbor as yourself, right? you you ’cause that’s what I need, right, is a swift kick to the crotch, but the okay.
Joel Wentz (37:58)
Hmm. Yeah, exactly. Well, as someone
who jumps to the gentle hand, I’ve also offered that to people when that was not what they needed and that’s not helpful either. So, you know, the other side, other side of the coin.
Dru Johnson (38:15)
Capital D discernment is what we’re all looking for. Yeah. so where you’ve landed, and I don’t mean your positions necessarily on theology or whatever, but I am interested into like d the continuum that you use to kind of help yourself think about what you believe very firmly, like it’s non negotiable versus what’s open ended to you and open to exploration. And how has that changed over the last ten years, maybe?
Joel Wentz (38:16)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yup.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, that’s a fantastic question. So, I mean, my mind does go to the creeds. know, last year was the anniversary of Nicea, and I preached through line by line through the Nicene Creed in our community, which was a great experience. It was really good for me personally. I hope it… sure, yeah.
Dru Johnson (38:54)
Hmm.
I’m tempted to ask which version. No, no, that’s okay.
You can skip the question. Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Wentz (39:05)
Yeah, well, that would take me down a long tangent.
But it was the 381 version. the the experience for me was extremely helpful, not only in revisiting those lines, you know, which obviously stood the test of time, but also in exploring the theological method of the theologians and thinkers and writers who who hammered that out.
Dru Johnson (39:29)
Mm.
Joel Wentz (39:33)
And so I always talk about John Bear’s trilogy. It’s somewhere around here behind me. It’s one of my absolute favorite way that the way that I see it, and I seen faith, those books I think are extraordinarily good. I, know, there’s, there’s a that I could reference, but, but reading and exploring not just, not just kind of an apologetic sense of defending why the lines are good, but like learning how they came to those conclusions.
Dru Johnson (39:37)
Hm. Yeah.
Joel Wentz (39:59)
and especially the importance of Christology and robust doctrine of the incarnation. And all those things were really good for my soul and my intellect and my heart, mind and my soul were really refreshed by that whole experience. And I’m going there in response to your question is to say it was a very restorative and reminding experience of what the Church Catholic has really held.
I mean, it is a remarkable, it’s such a simple statement, but it’s remarkable that the Protestant, the Orthodox, and the Catholic expressions all hold those lines together. It’s an amazing thing. And so, I mean, I go, when I’m asked what’s non-negotiable, I do go to Nicaea, I go to the creed. And I don’t mean that as a cheap, you know, quick answer to the question, but for me, that does give a starting point for figuring out what is non-negotiable.
Dru Johnson (40:24)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Joel Wentz (40:52)
And then in terms of your other question, which is probably the more interesting part, which is what is the what squishier or like what things move around? One very practical example for me has been Doctrine of Hell has moved from something that I felt earlier in my Christian life needed to be more held dogmatically with some certainty has moved towards much more open to holding different interpretations that can have a voice at the table.
Dru Johnson (41:12)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Wentz (41:22)
So, and as it relates to deconstruction and the journey there, one thing I want to just narrate quickly that I hope listeners can relate to is that when you go through a deconstruction reconstruction process, you will typically go through a journey of questioning something you held, rejecting the thing that you held, and then thinking that thing that you held is now a heretical belief, and the new thing you held is now the new dogma. And then you have to like
In many issues, not all, but in many issues, it’s necessary to go full circle through that journey and then to realize actually some of the people that held to the thing that I’ve now rejected actually could, can still stay at the table. Because if you don’t go that entire way, you’re just setting yourself up for another deconstruction process with the new thing that you’ve come to in most cases. But again, those are all things that are outside of, I think, primacy of the Creed. So.
Dru Johnson (42:08)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Wentz (42:17)
I mean, yeah, all kinds of stuff. I’ve gone through all kinds of through journeys on sexual ethics, understanding of human theological anthropology as relates to sexual ethics. I have talked about eschatology already, even doctrine of scripture itself. Really thinking through that. Yeah, I mean, I could go down the lines, but I don’t know if that kicks up any other questions or reactions from you as I as I talk through that.
Dru Johnson (42:38)
Well, I I wonder just on any, you know, you can pick one of those topics, where do you how do you where do you draw the line where you say like here’s my range of you know, like range of possible interpretations? I always, you know, when I teach hermeneuks, I say like, look, there are better and worse interpretations. We’re trying to get to the better ones and avoid the worse ones. so where what are the the boundary markers for you? and where it g it flips over into worse ones or unhelpful interpretations for these matters.
Joel Wentz (42:48)
Yeah. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh.
Yeah,
yeah, I’ll use open theism as an example, actually, because I had I think I did a video on this, actually, I had quite a journey with that where I found it. And actually, the undergrad I went to, I don’t know if you know the names, John Sanders or William Hasker. They both. Yep, they they taught at. Yeah, sure, yeah.
Dru Johnson (43:21)
yeah, of course. Yeah. And yeah. I’ve been in conferences with both of them where they were where
they were positing those ideas. Yeah.
Joel Wentz (43:29)
Yeah,
okay. Okay. Yeah. In early 2000s. So I was in undergrad from 2004 to 2008 at the university where both John and William taught. And so, and there was a whole controversy there around how Dr. Sanders was let go, even though he was tenured and that was really ugly. And I was a student when that was all happening and his son was a student at the school. It’s anyways, it’s a whole thing. So that feeds into back to the importance of story and narrative, you know, that fed into some of my
Dru Johnson (43:58)
Mm.
Joel Wentz (43:58)
story that
I carried into some of my deconstructive impulses. But I found open theism extraordinarily compelling for a long time coming through that whole experience. And part of it was because the institutions of the church and the denomination behind the school tried so hard to, you know, the classic, what’s it called, the Streisand effect when you suppress something so hard that it ends up becoming way more compelling and, you know, popular.
Dru Johnson (44:07)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Wentz (44:23)
That happened to me with open theism, but I did a deep dive into it. I read all of Greg Boyd’s works on it. I read a lot of Hasker and Sanders and Thomas Ord, you know, go down the line. And I found it really compelling and defended it to people in for years. And it wasn’t until I discovered the what would broadly be called classical theism in the history of the tradition that I found a lot of the questions open theism couldn’t answer well.
to be really, really well destructive to the system of open theism in my view. So I narrate all that to say, for me, there was multiple deconstructions that happened in my journey into open theism and then out of it into what I would say is much more of a rich kind of classical heritage that is, would say broadly represented by the history of the church and historical theology around the doctrine of God. And for me, hopefully this is a helpful example of what you just asking about.
How I landed on more of a classical theism being more compelling is informed by the history of the church. And I am a Protestant, so I don’t have the same exact doctrine around church tradition that Catholic brothers and sisters would have. But still, the representation of that thought was so deep and rich and actually was more compelling to me on a personal level than the answers open theism were giving about.
God’s sovereignty over history and how our ability to actually take confidence in the conclusion of history. But also, it is important to me that no ecumenical councils hammered out whether or not open theism was biblical. That just never happened. And so that’s a major, you know, I would never say, I would never say Greg Boyd is not an Orthodox Christian. So I would not draw that line. So I think this is an example of like a tertiary doctrine that can be held.
and can be at the table. But for me, the compelling historical representation of thought, as well as the personal kind of devotion and piety, how it connected with me in my own spiritual life, all those things cohere and then kind of brought me to a place that I no longer held open theism. I would say to someone who’s considering it that I do not think it is compelling. I think there are better interpretations of the doctrine of God.
But I think there’s still, you know, there can still be a seat at the table for that person. Is that a helpful example for what you’re asking about?
Dru Johnson (46:51)
I I think it’s a really helpful example. I think it spurs my next question and and maybe have to be our last. what what practices changed during that? I I don’t want to call a roller coaster ride, but going into open theism and then and then basically coming out with a little bit more critical view of it. did did anything change or was it basically one of those journeys you went through and I was you’re just plowing through, yeah.
Joel Wentz (47:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
just intellectual yet
no that and this is that i’m really glad you asked because it highlights an important element of all these things are talking about which is which is personal devotion and piety and prayer and there’s there’s an irony here because i think i think boyd would say open theism is a more compelling vision for prayer because you’re really contending
Dru Johnson (47:40)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Wentz (47:43)
The opposite has been true in my case. The changelessness of God, the classic doctrines of immunability, for example, have actually provided a ground upon which my prayer life is a lot more peaceful and fruitful in my life. know, love, joy, peace, patience, those things I experience in prayer far more because of the classical doctrines of who most of the churches believe God to be over time.
And so I can absolutely say my personal spirituality has been deeply affected by what could have been just a purely intellectual kind of rearranging of mental furniture. That was not the case for me.
Dru Johnson (48:23)
Hm. Well, sometime Yeah, go ahead.
Joel Wentz (48:25)
There’s a great book, just another,
another, you know, I got to throw a book recommendations out. There’s a great little obscure book called Kierkegaard and the changelessness of God. can’t remember the name of the writer. It’s around behind me somewhere, but it’s, it’s put out by IVP. could find it, but, uh, it’s a fascinating exploration of Kierkegaard as an existential philosopher who actually based his proto existentialism on the doctrine of God’s immutability and how important that was.
And I found it really, really a powerful argument, which would be, it’s very unexpected. You wouldn’t normally compare someone like Kierkegaard with a classical doctrine like that, but I would highly recommend it if anyone’s listening is interested in that kind of thinking.
Dru Johnson (49:02)
Yeah, I actually edited a book on divine perfections by Jewish and Christian scholars. And and it was the it was called The Question of Divine Perfection, like is God actually perfecting all these ways. And it’s funny, though the it was the Jewish classical theist who really made me like question my own thinking. Like whether they really pulled me into the tank and and and argued with me and I I I I’m not an open theist. But
Joel Wentz (49:12)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Dru Johnson (49:30)
I my the question for me always goes back to what were the biblical authors? What are what kind of metaphysics are they trying to sell to us and train us in? So so I still had unanswered questions at the end of that book. but
Joel Wentz (49:36)
Yeah.
man, I feel like we
need to have another podcast on the intersection of biblical theology and classical theism. I love that stuff.
Dru Johnson (49:50)
yeah. Well, interestingly,
a colleague of mine, Ryan Mullins, has taken my book just to some extent, my Cambridge book on biblical philosophy and kind of used it as a pro thank you.
Joel Wentz (50:02)
Which I love, by the way. I’ve told you this before,
but I absolutely love that book. It’s on my shelf back here. There are dozens of us, yeah.
Dru Johnson (50:07)
there are literally a dozen of you. Dozens. yeah.
but yeah, he’s kind of taken that some of the arguments in there to sharpen his arguments for opentheism. which I I actually appreciate some of his critique of classical ideas of simplicity, even though I would not go down the right yeah, so it’s it’s it’s been very interesting to see.
Joel Wentz (50:23)
Wow, interesting.
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (50:35)
what like you said, like what biblical theology is is doing or largely not being having been done, like the work hasn’t been done very heavily. Or you’ll get really I mean I talked to a a philosopher theologian once who finished his PhD on God’s omnipresence. And I said, Well what what like where do you go to the Bible to like give a quick hit and run? Here’s why you have to take omnipresence seriously. And he gave the psalm, you know, Where can I go that I can flee your presence? And I was just like
Joel Wentz (51:02)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (51:04)
That’s your argument. That’s your like that’s it. he says, Well, it seems to be implicit in there. I was like, No, it seems to be implicit that God is a stalker. I could say the same thing to my wife, and it doesn’t imply that I’m omnipresent. It implies that I’m gonna like chase her down, right? But yeah, so I think there’s yeah, like you said, there’s just a lot of th thicker work that me needs to be done with the in the indigenous thinking of scripture, which makes me excited as well. And
Joel Wentz (51:05)
Wow. Yeah.
Yeah.
You have any present?
Yes.
That’s cool.
Dru Johnson (51:32)
Even if we all come back to the exact same conclusions. Like we end up going like, hey, classical theism turns out it’s it’s right on every front. I perfectly fine with that. but I don’t want to have accidental views. what’s the name of your YouTube channel? Is it just Joel Wentz? Okay. Joel Wentz W-E-N-T-Z. and he has lots of things on their regular book reviews, and then as you heard, some of his own personal journey and you interview people every once in a while.
Joel Wentz (51:35)
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
Hmm, that’s good.
Just search my name. Yep. Yep. That’s it.
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (52:02)
As
well. Joel, thank you so much for your wisdom and your story.
Joel Wentz (52:06)
Thank you, Dru. It was really fun conversation for me. I appreciate it.
