In my first Unshaken entry, I ended by saying that I eventually put everything I believed on the table and began examining it one piece at a time. That process is what I mean when I talk about deconstruction, although I know that word can make Christians a little nervous. Depending on who is using it, deconstruction can mean anything from questioning a few things you were taught in church to completely walking away from Christianity altogether.

That wasn’t what it meant for me. I wasn’t trying to deconstruct Jesus or find reasons not to believe in God. I was trying to figure out how much of what I believed actually came from Him and how much had simply been handed to me by other people.

And I don’t want to talk about that only in vague terms. As we move through this series, I’m going to give you real examples of beliefs I personally had to tear down and examine. I’ll show you some of the things I had been absolutely convinced were biblical, the questions I began asking about them, what I found when I went back to Scripture, and why some of those beliefs ultimately stayed while others had to go. I’ll also get into specific beliefs I had accepted through both a legalistic, dogmatic, strict approach to Christianity and Mormonism that simply didn’t survive that process.

Because deconstruction, at least for me, wasn’t about tearing everything down for the sake of tearing it down. It was about being willing to take something apart, look at what it was actually built on, and then decide whether it belonged in the faith I was rebuilding.

The truth is that most of us inherit a lot of our beliefs before we ever really examine them for ourselves. We learn from our parents, churches, pastors, denominations, teachers, books, friends, and even the culture around us. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that. We all have to learn somewhere. The problem comes when we never eventually stop and ask ourselves why we believe what we believe.

I had spent years being very good at learning religious systems. Tell me the rules, explain the doctrine, tell me what a verse means and what I’m supposed to do with it, and I could study it, memorize it, defend it, and do my best to follow it. What I hadn’t done nearly enough was sit with Scripture for myself and ask, Is that actually what this says?

That was deconstruction for me.

It wasn’t throwing my Bible away. Ironically, it meant opening it more. It wasn’t deciding that everything I had ever been taught was wrong. It meant becoming willing to find out whether it was right. There is a pretty significant difference between the two.

I also had to learn that questioning something a person taught me was not the same thing as questioning God. Scripture itself tells us, “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, ESV). I came to really appreciate that wording. Paul doesn’t tell us to reject everything, but he also doesn’t tell us to blindly accept everything. He tells us to test it and then hold onto what is good.

That became a pretty good description of what I was trying to do.

Some things I questioned ultimately became stronger convictions than they had ever been before. Some beliefs needed adjusting. Some things I had treated as biblical commands turned out to be interpretations, traditions, or personal convictions. Other things simply couldn’t withstand the questions I was finally willing to ask.

And those questions weren’t terribly complicated. Where did I get this belief? What Scripture is being used to support it? What does that Scripture say when I read the entire passage instead of one verse? Is this something the Bible explicitly commands, or is this an interpretation someone has drawn from it? Is it possible that something I have always considered a universal rule is actually wisdom, tradition, or personal conviction? What do Christians who disagree with me believe, and more importantly, why do they believe it?

Then came the question that was probably harder than all the others: Am I actually willing to be wrong?

Because there really isn’t much point in examining your beliefs if you’ve already decided what the answer has to be. For instance, speaking in tongues is a topic that just won’t leave me alone. While I sort of think I know the answer, I also have to remain open to studying it thoroughly. That’s just one example from someone who has been on this journey for six years now. There are still things I’m studying, questioning, and trying to understand.

I have spent a lot of my life searching for certainty in faith. I like knowing exactly where every line is to be drawn and having an answer for every question. Part of this process, though, has been learning to let that go, and it killed me! There was a stark reality in realizing that sometimes the most truthful answer I could give was simply, I don’t know.

That was uncomfortable at first, but I don’t think “I don’t know” is necessarily evidence of weak faith. Sometimes it is simply an acknowledgment that God has not given me enough information to be as dogmatic as I would like to be. This bothered my husband SO much at first because, as someone who grew up in a faith system where he was given an answer for seemingly everything, hearing I don’t know unnerved him. But that’s part of this process too: understanding that there are mysteries of God that we, as human beings, simply cannot fully fathom or grasp. How can we, as mere humans, expect ourselves to completely understand the brilliant Author of the entire universe? (“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” — Romans 11:33, ESV)

There are things Scripture makes incredibly clear, and there are other things Christians have been debating for a very, very long time. I no longer feel the need to create certainty where Scripture itself leaves room for questions.

There was still one fairly enormous problem with my whole plan, though.

If I was going to take everything I believed and test it against Scripture, I needed to know whether Scripture was actually a trustworthy measuring stick in the first place. I couldn’t simply say, Well, the Bible says it, so I believe it, without eventually confronting the questions underneath that statement too. How did we get the Bible we have today? Had it been reliably preserved? What about all of those manuscripts people talk about? Could I trust modern translations? Was there historical or archaeological evidence for what I was reading?

If I was really going to question everything, the Bible couldn’t get a free pass simply because I wanted it to be true.

Over the next few entries, I’m going to get more specific about some of the beliefs I once held and why they ultimately didn’t stand up to examination. I’ll talk more about the legalism I had subscribed to, where I believe it went beyond Scripture, and why I eventually concluded that some things I had treated as biblical requirements simply weren’t. I’ll also get much more into Mormonism and the specific teachings and claims I could no longer reconcile with Scripture.

I’m not doing that to tear apart people or churches I once loved. There are people from those seasons of my life whom I still think of with tremendous fondness. I’m doing it because if I’m going to tell the story of deconstructing my faith, I think it’s important to explain what I actually deconstructed and why.

But before I could decide which beliefs stayed and which ones went, I needed a foundation sturdy enough to test them against.

So first, I had to ask one of the biggest questions of this entire process: Can I actually trust the Bible?

Once I answered that question for myself, I could begin looking honestly at what I had believed, what held up, what didn’t, and why.

After we work through some of that together, I’ll take you into the part of this journey that ultimately mattered most to me: how I personally began rebuilding. I didn’t want to simply replace one religious system with another. I wanted to intentionally build a faith I understood, had examined for myself, and believed could withstand being questioned.

That is where my unshakable foundation really began.