No Exceptions Ministries, Inc

“Deconstruction”, when done correctly, is a refiner’s fire burning away that which is faulty or harmful, a gardener’s pruning cutting off those elements contributing to pain and death.  It should never consume the whole nor should it attempt to disconnect the branches from the vine.   While much needs removed, much warrants preservation.  Indeed, like pulling weeds from among the flowers, the purpose of subtracting the faulty is to enable the healthy multiplication of the pure.   A deconstruction process that burns the whole edifice to the ground isn’t healthy and it isn’t helpful.  It’s a form of mass suicide that, by inflicting the same fate on the wheat and the chaff alike, results in the same end as would have been obtained had we never deconstructed at all: misery and death.  (Note: I’m aware there are other, far better terms for the healthy form of ‘deconstruction’.  But I am equally aware that this is the word most commonly used and have adopted it above for the sake of clarity.

Theology - much like change, the mind, the heart, politics, or social media - is neutral.  It can be a tool of oppression OR a source of awakening.  To discard the practice entirely, merely because the misinformed habitually misuse it, would be like doing away with the institution of marriage because some husbands beat their wives or cars because accidents happen.   The truth is, we are incapable of NOT engaging in theology.  For theology is not limited to ‘the study of God’, but extends to all that God does and all in whom He is found.  If Acts 17:28 is correct when Paul tells the pagan Athenians, “for in Him we live and move and have our being,” and John was on point when he said that “all things came into being through Him” (1:3), then each and every thing we do (and are) is in reality an act of theology! When you gaze upon a sunrise and it warms your heart.  That’s theology.   When you hold a newborn for the very first time and experience the full gamut of emotion from fear to imm