Not too long ago, I looked up the number of views on different hashtags related to deconstruction on TikTok. Here’s what I found.
- #deconstruction: 1 billion views
- #deconstructiontiktok: 85.5 million
- #progressivechristianity: 61.2 million
- #deconstructionjourney: 17.5 million
- #deconstructiongrief: 1.1 million views
That’s over 1.16 billion views across just five hashtags on a single social media platform on content related to people deconstructing their faith, expressing doubt, twisting or denying core doctrines, and sharing their journey of leaving Christianity. Of course, there is nothing particularly scientific about looking up views on some hashtags, but it indicates that deconstruction is in the digital air.
It’s well known by now that digital algorithms work by serving you more content related to things you have already expressed interest in. That interest is calculated in a variety of different ways. If you engage with a video in any way—liking, commenting, sharing—it is scored as a high-interest piece of content. But you don’t even have to engage with a video for it to be scored as something you’re interested in. Maybe you normally watch three seconds of a video before scrolling to the next one. If you watch the whole video, or even just 15 seconds of it instead of your normal three, the algorithm will register that you were more interested in that kind of content than you are in most other things, so it will serve you more of that.
The problem is that TikTok’s algorithm (or any other platform’s algorithm) doesn’t know or care what the difference between #progressivechristianity and #biblicalchristianity is. So, interest in one might as well be interest in the other as far as the robots are concerned. Someone who is genuinely interested in fairly normal, if not milquetoast, Christian content on social media can easily have a rabbit hole open up under their feet as the algorithm begins to mingle in people who sow seeds of doubt about the reliability of scripture. Soon, they’re inadvertently watching people talk about how the church is complicit in this, that, or the other in ways that unsettle and disturb them, when all they really wanted was to listen to people talk about what they learned about in their Bible reading that day or the new Christian book they are reading.
The algorithm isn’t going to wait for your Bible study. People are being algorithmically served content about deconstruction all the time. They are exposed to people’s deconversion stories and challenges to the faith in ways that are historically unprecedented. But when people stumble across these TikTok videos spurring on their deconstruction, what are they actually finding?
They’re finding people who take their questions seriously. They’re finding people who are willing to talk about the hard things. They’re finding people who want to hold the church to a standard that doesn’t allow abuses of power and the weaponization of scripture. These voices might not have the solutions that lead to any real and lasting transformation, but they’re addressing real problems. Even if the people are misguided in many ways, they’re willing to look at the hard things and be honest about them. Is your church?
Can the people in your church ask hard questions, wrestle through difficult topics, and spend a significant amount of time doing the hard work of trying to understand things in your church? Can they trust you to be transparent with the ins and outs of the church without obfuscating the facts or trying to cover something up that needs to be brought into the light? Do you have the best interests of their faith in mind, or do they perceive your concern to be more with their tithe dollars and volunteer hours?
Here’s another way of thinking about this: when online content creates anxiety in someone’s faith, is your church able to absorb the anxiety and minister to someone? Or is it threatened by the anxiety and instead deflects that anxiety back on the person? Is your church equipped to calmy, carefully, and patiently walk with the person or are you fixated on setting them right and putting them in their place?
It’s crucial for our churches to be places that can absorb the anxiety online content creates in our faith. We must be able to hear questions, concerns, critiques, griefs, and trials and not feel threatened by them, allow people time to process, grow, change, and sort through things, and welcome critical, thoughtful engagement with the faith. Oftentimes, what appears to be the questioning of core doctrines is simply a step toward truly believing those things for themselves, maybe for the first time. It’s a critical part of making faith one’s own and letting it become real to them.
When your church is a place that can absorb and transform these anxieties, the TikTok content becomes a gift—from a certain perspective. It allows people to excavate the depths and riches of Christianity for themselves. It allows you, a teacher of the Bible, to do like Jesus said and bring “treasures new and old” out of your storeroom (Matthew 13:52). Sometimes it takes the foundation of our faith being rocked before we can truly see it as the good, beautiful, and true reality that it is.
I’ve written a book about deconstruction. It’s called Walking Through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith. It’s deeply personal, but it’s not a memoir. It’s an attempt to serve the church—to help the church understand what deconstruction is, what causes it, and how to walk with people who are experiencing it.
Topics:
