I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard or seen that statement now. Some have leveled this accusation directly at me personally. I’ve seen it in the dozens of posts where evangelical and other conservative Christians try to explain why people are deconstructing their faith, leaving their churches for more progressive ones, and/or leaving Christianity altogether. (I will not link to any of those articles, but be sure to check out the excellent response to one of them by Kurt Kroon over at Cascade Church of Portland.)
It’s a garbage accusation. No one goes through the process of deconstructing or changing their beliefs just because they want to “sin.” It’s an explanation that allows the accuser to summarily dismiss the truth of what many people who deconstruct go through. I’d argue that’s most likely because if the accuser took an honest look at what was really going on in such people’s lives, they’d have to grapple with some serious and difficult questions. And that might actually might make then start their own journey of deconstruction.
So as someone who has gone through the deconstruction process and came out realizing he prefers a cauldron over a eucharistic cup any day, allow me to unpack this whole idea of how some of us actually grapple with the topic of “sin” while we deconstruct.
As always, note that this is neither a comprehensive nor an exhaustive list. There are likely aspects of the topic of sin that I will not cover in this post. Hopefully, other people will pick up their pens (whether literal or figurative) and fill in the gaps that I leave so together, we draw a nuanced and beautiful picture of reality.
We question what qualifies as a sin.
I would estimate that 99% of the time that this accusation comes up, the accuser specifically has “sexual sin” in mind. And in 99% of those cases, I’ll note that the “sexual sin” in question is usually centered around engaging in sex with someone who is the “same sex” (in quotes to acknowledge the complex nuances that are added when you start thinking beyond the gender binary) as you. Oh, sometimes, they’ll throw in someone cheating on their spouse (which I personally would classify as breaking one’s word/agreement to one’s spouse rather than a “sexual sin”), but that often feels like an attempt to “prove” they’re not really just out to queer people. (Often, I feel they really are just out to get queer people.)
My response is very similar to Kroon’s response in his article, where he wrote the following:
Maybe what this concept is really exposing is that specific behaviors or identities are seen as sinful in these church communities and the process of becoming who God created them to be gets interpreted as just “loving sin”.
You see, here’s the deal. Some of us experience desires for people that evangelical churches tell us we shouldn’t. They often tell us that even having these desires is inherently sinful. Even in the cases that they don’t, they insist that acting on those desires is definitely sinful.
The thing is, for allosexual gay, lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual people — and even ace/aro people who are not sex-indifferent or sex-repulsed — sexual desires/and or the need to experience sex is a very real and basic human need. Expecting such people to perpetually deny themselves the fulfillment of that need for no good reason (and we’ll get to the reasons in a bit) is cruel. So these churches are demanding something of their followers that is cruel. That deserves to be questioned.
So do some people deconstruct because they want to find sexual fulfillment and intimacy? That was certainly one of my reasons — and the one that got the whole process kicked off. The thing is, I don’t see that as a bad thing. And I’m critical of any theology that does.
We question how sin is defined and determined.
One of the things I learned with my experiences in evangelical Christianity is that “sin” is very arbitrary. That is, the decision as to whether something is a sin and why it is a sin boils down to “God decides what is and isn’t sin.” I have said elsewhere and will repeat here that I think this is the worst basis for a moral framework that I can imagine. Morality must be something more than an arbitrary set of proclamations by God.
To once more go back to sexual desire and the desire for sexual gratification and intimacy, most evangelical Christians will insist that the Bible “clearly teaches” that such sexual activities are clearly sinful. But they do not grapple with whether their interpretation of the Bible is actually correct (there is good faith disagreement on how to interpret the Bible passages in question) nor whether the Bible would be correct even if it was proven that theirs was the correct interpretation. This is where my and others’ anti-authoritarian leanings come into play. “The Bible says so,” even if it were an unquestionably correct statement, does not settle the matter for me. We still must question whether the position is defensible from a moral standpoint. That is, we must look at the impact this doctrine has on the people it targets. That impact is toxic and harmful, which to me invalidates the doctrine. Doctrine that inflicts harm on people should be rejected, even if it’s “correct.” (See also: A deity who harms their own creation is a deity that should be opposed and undermined rather than worshiped and obeyed.)
I will note that some conservative Christians — such as Catholics — do not rely solely on “the Bible say so.” Instead they will invoke “natural law.” The problem is, their “natural law” arguments are based on outdated, obsolete understandings of science and/or outright junk science rather than based on what science has now revealed about the natural world. These arguments also deserve to be explored and criticized, and many queer and queer-friendly Catholics do exactly that.
We question original sin, total depravity, and sin as something that forever separates us from the Divine.
As far as I’m concerned, the whole concept of sin as taught in evangelical Christianity and other conservative forms of Christianity is toxic and irredeemable (pun intended) to the core. The idea that people need to be “rescued” from their sins is laughable and serves no other purpose than to force a perspective of self-loathing, helplessness, and unhealthy subservient reliance on God — and church leadership by proxy.
This is a reality that many people who deconstruct and/or deconvert go through, in my experience. We start questioning the whole idea that we are “sinners,” that sin is something that permanently separates us from God without God’s intervention. Instead, we start to formulate other ways to understand and derive our morality and our relationship with the Divine (assuming we have any further interest in the Divine). We start to explore other ways to address our moral shortcomings and the “messes” we create when we screw up. There are plenty of other models for atonement and accountability. Quite frankly, I consider quite a few of them far superior to the evangelical model, which tends to focus primarily if not exclusively on some perfect afterlife rather than seeking true justice, accountability, and restoration of human dignity in this life.
Concluding remarks.
I hope you, dear reader, are starting to see just how much there is to explore and deconstruct about the topic of “sin.” These are the kinds of questions that those of us who deconstruct and/or deconvert grapple with. And yet our accusers want to flatten that into a trite accusation that we “just want to sin.” I’m not buying it. I hope you don’t buy it either. In fact, I hope you start to see just how cruel and immoral the accusation actually is.
