Deconstructionism

When I turned the page in my Jan. 2005 issue of Bon Apetit magazine, I really couldn't figure out what was pictured there. On one plate was what looked like a small round of chocolate cake. On another plate it looked like cooked cherries swimming in their sauce; in a small bowl was chocolate syrup or icing; a small dollop of whipped cream was on another small plate; and then the remaining ingredient was a clear liquid in a small glass.

To eat this concoction--one takes a bite of cake, dips it into the chocolate syrup, then the whipped cream, spear a cherry or cherries on the fork and then dip the whole thing into the kirsch (the clear liquid in the glass). Kirsch for the uninitiated is a cherry liqueur.

You have just eaten Deconstructed Black Forest Cake. You can see it HERE.

Deconstructionism has been in the news a lot lately since the death of it's prime philosopher, Jacques Derrida. It originally applied to language--writing if you will. Take each word and give it all the meanings you can think of that relates to that word. If the word and/or related words imply sexism or racism, then have a fit over it. That is essentially Deconstructionism. However, lately, it's being applied to all types of subject areas....including food....and.....even evangelical Christianity.

To take it a step further, some are deconstructing and then reconstructing using the elements another way, or simply using some of them.

In the cake example, let's say you took the kirsch, whipped cream, chocolate sauce and cherries, and left out the cake. What would that be? Black Forest Whipped Cream perhaps?

In Christianity it works like this. Deconstruct (take apart) the essential beliefs of the Bible (and especially the Reformers' theology) and then reconstruct them, leaving out key points and perhaps even putting in others taken from other contexts.

In the Purpose Driven Churches we see this all the time. Leave out important parts of the gospel, or downplay them, and then throw in some management techniques from business or even New Age techniques. I have no problem with running a church in a business-like manner; but I do have a prob with changing the NT organizational structure and substituting something man came up with. I think that is called a hybrid.

The emergent church is worse. It is so deconstructed that there remains almost nothing that could be called Christian (depending on the church of course). The same is similar in the Third Wave so-called revivals.

Perhaps some of these people might want to reread their New Testaments and stop deconstructing it. They might be absolutely shocked and pleasantly surprised how up-to-date the NT is. Even the postmoderns might "get" it.

So, if you go to a church social and see deconstructed Black Forest Cake, better start worrying a bit.