The Road of Deconstruction: A Journey Towards Meaning

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The teachings coming at us from organized religion often become static and obsolete, insisting on reducing our complex humanity to binary modes of thinking. Matters like economic inequality, racial and gender justice, climate change, and tumultuous politics – to name but a few – now permeate our lives perhaps more deeply than ever, thus making reality ever so hard to navigate and, consequently, adding layers of grey to the dynamic of faith .

A dynamic that, for many of us, has always been presented and perceived as black and white.

And as we begin to notice the discrepancy between our lived experiences and the words being shouted from the pulpit, sooner or later a shift takes place within us that disrupts certainty and obliterates previously held identities. This existential shift is what I mean by the term deconstruction in the title of this a dimension of reality where our truths become questions and our questions become truths. If before we were defined by our beliefs, we are now defined by our doubt.

And doubt, contradiction, and confusion seem to be precisely what organized religion cannot tolerate and make space for – a move of self-preservation that in the end does the exact opposite, leading more and more people to lose trust in the institution. Religion tends either to present itself as the solution to our doubt/contradictions or altogether ignore them, and both strategies fail to acknowledge our human complexity. As a result, many choose to leave the suffocating walls of the religious establishment in search of vibrant spaces, spaces where honest conversations can be held without shame and where contradiction is celebrated as vital for communal and individual development. Places where doubt is seen not as the opposite of faith but as its closest and truest companion.

This short fictional story, then, aims to explore and raise questions about the invitation to deconstruct, an invitation that, should we accept it, almost always demands a departure from our communities and a relinquishing of our absolutes. It’s an invitation that always comes with a loss of identity.

Is it really possible to survive the loneliness of the road and the many deaths we experience along it? Will we recognize our faith once we decide to light it on fire? Can we cultivate an existence that does not rely on definitive answers?

Are we really capable of defining what it means to live a meaningful existence?
Do we even need meaning?
Or is the obsessive pursuit of it that leaves us miserable and experiencing meaninglessness in the first place?

This book seeks to generate further dialogue between you and your own life, and not so much by presenting you with answers, but rather affirming the questions you may already be asking.

And perhaps even raise new ones.