The Fall of the House Built on Sand
My Deconstruction Journey
In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus tells a parable about two builders—one wise, one foolish. “Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock,” Jesus said (NIV). When the storm came, that house stood firm. “But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand,” Jesus said. “The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” I grew up singing the children’s song, fists pounding as to “build” our houses, hands flattened to show their fall. I was told that we were building our faith on the rock—on truth, on God’s unshakable Word. But over time, as I asked hard questions, I realized that much of what I had been taught wasn’t built on the solid foundation of Scripture, but on cultural traditions, shifting interpretations, and human authority. And when the storm of honest scrutiny came, that house—so carefully constructed—began to fall.
The First Crack
When I was a teenager, a couple from our church went to a concert. The venue happened to be a bar. Someone found out. Then everyone found out.
Whispers turned to accusations, and soon the couple was called before church leaders and told they needed to repent. They were confused—repent of what? They hadn’t been drinking or behaving sinfully, just listening to music. But that wasn’t the point, they were told. Just being in a bar was enough. It was an appearance of evil, a stain on their witness, an embarrassment to the church. They needed to confess publicly, in front of the entire congregation.
They refused.
The more they insisted they had done nothing wrong, the angrier people became. The debate spread through the church, but those who thought this punishment was cruel and unnecessary were far outnumbered by those who believed it was not only justified, but righteous. I watched as people I had known all my life—people who preached love and grace—turned merciless. They seemed to take satisfaction in the couple’s shame, as though it proved their own holiness. It felt less like a call to repentance and more like a public stoning.
I wrote the couple a letter, telling them how deeply wrong I thought all of this was, how un-Christlike it seemed to treat fellow believers this way.
They never came back to church.
But a few years later, when I got married, they brought a gift for my wedding—heart-shaped and bride-and-groom shaped chocolates, in my wedding colors, that they had handmade. A gesture of pure kindness from people who had been driven out over nothing.
That was the first crack.
The Second Crack
When I was about 20 years old, I asked a question in Sunday School that I felt was important: “As a woman, am I ‘under the authority’ of all men, or just my husband?”
It derailed the class. For the next three weeks, the men argued the question to the ground, dissecting, debating, and deciding the answer among themselves. The women didn’t say much; the discussion belonged to the men, as though the authority to determine exactly how much dignity, how much autonomy, how much humanity to allot to women was theirs by default—and the women largely accepted this in silence.
At the end of this theological tribunal, the men issued their ruling: All men possess some authority over all women, but husbands hold the highest degree of authority over their wives. Their arguments were twisted, their logic was fuzzy, and they refused to engage with any verses that challenged their conclusion. But they were all united in it: Men over women, as God intended from the beginning.
I sat there, listening, realizing that the Bible and I had been reduced to the same thing—objects. Neither of us had a voice. We existed only to be used, categorized, and placed where the men decided we belonged.
That was the second crack.
The Storms Came
Have you ever watched something crack, and then break? There will be one crack, and then a second crack…and then the whole thing begins to spiderweb outward, just before it falls apart.
I noticed that when the Bible said some things—like, “it is shameful for a woman to speak in church,” (1 Corinthians 14:34, NIV), these things were taught as clear, absolute, and universally and eternally applicable. But other verses, like “the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine” in John 2:9 (NIV)—from the story of the Wedding at Cana in John 2:9-11—are not. They might appear to be clear, readily understandable, incontrovertible, or undeniable, but no. Some verses have to be exhaustively investigated and thoroughly studied, looking at the original language, ancient technology and practices, commentaries, alternate translations, and more in order to understand them properly. Through this process of torturous exegesis, the church reached the implausible conclusion that Jesus did not, in fact, turn water into wine but into nonalcoholic grape juice. Ergo, the Bible’s testimony that Jesus turned water into wine cannot be used as support for anyone, ever, enjoying an alcoholic beverage under any circumstances. Not even a wedding.
We read Ephesians 5:19 a lot in church. That verse says, “speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord” (NIV). Throughout my life, Ephesians 5:19 was cited as proof that Christian worship must exclude instrumental music—because it mentions singing but not playing. Instrumental music, I was taught, was not God’s will and was therefore wrong.
One day, I pointed out that the word “psalm” inherently includes the idea of instrumental accompaniment. Historically and linguistically, psalms were sung with instruments—a fact well understood in both Old and New Testament contexts. But when I raised this, I was quickly contradicted: I was told that words can change meaning over time and that by the New Testament period, a “psalm” referred only to vocal music. There was no attempt to reconcile this with historical or linguistic evidence—the discussion simply ended.
This troubled me. Sometimes, a verse was considered plain and self-evident in English, requiring no deeper examination—even when it conflicted with other passages of Scripture. Other times, understanding a verse supposedly required exhaustive study of its historical context, linguistic roots, and cultural background. And then, sometimes, digging into the original language was dismissed as deceptive or unnecessary. But if some verses demand careful exegesis while others are taken at face value, who decides which is which? And by what standard?
It was then that I began to suspect that the church’s approach to Scripture wasn’t always about seeking truth, as I had been taught. Arguments that contradicted the church’s stance were dismissed, not because they were weak, but because they were inconvenient. This was deeply unsettling.
Truth can be difficult, but it is always consistent. My faith was not shaken because Christianity was hard, but because the teachings I encountered contradicted themselves. If we believe the Bible is God’s Word, shouldn’t we expect it to hold together logically? “God is not a God of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33, NIV), so why did so much of what I was taught feel confusing? If we must twist logic into pretzels to make doctrine fit, isn’t that a sign we’ve misunderstood something?
More and more, it felt like doctrine was being shaped not by the pursuit of truth, but by the need to justify a position—a need to argue that God was on the side we had already chosen. This, I realized, was not just bad theology; it was a failure of integrity. If the Bible truly is God’s Word, we should trust it enough to ask hard questions—and to seek answers that withstand scrutiny.
The cracks began to spiderweb uncontrollably. The foundation of sand was sliding; the house was beginning to collapse.
My earlier misgivings about the church’s arguments about women returned. I could clearly see that they were not internally consistent. Women, the church said, cannot “exercise authority” over men, but what is authority? And what is a man? There is no clear Bible definition of either. The church says that women cannot speak in church, citing book, chapter and verse–but then defines things that do not involve speaking, things that do not involve authority, and things that are not mentioned anywhere in the Bible as “men’s roles”-- things like passing the communion or offering plates, and teaching 12-year-old boys—without needing book, chapter and verse to justify their choice.
The church defines a “deacon” as a position of authority and therefore insists that women cannot serve as deacons. Yet, when faced with Romans 16:1 (NIV)—where Paul commends “Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae”—the response is circular: Women cannot be deacons, therefore Phoebe was not actually a deacon but merely a servant. But if deacons are simply servants, as the name implies, why should gender matter at all? And if deacons do hold authority, how can the church justify this while insisting that Jesus’s followers reject hierarchical power?
Great was the Fall of it
So many things the church refused to reconcile logically, like…why would Jesus himself commission women to carry the Gospel to believing men, and then deny them the right to teach men? Why divinely gift women prophets (for example, Philip’s daughters), and then command their silence? Why spend an entire chapter discussing in detail women praying and prophesying in worship (1 Corinthians 11) only to declare women speaking in church “shameful” a few chapters later (1 Corinthians 14:34)? Why command mutual submission in multiple places, if submission is unilateral? Why repeatedly emphasize that in God’s kingdom, there will be no “leaders” as there are in the world, but only servants…and then set up a permanent “leadership” class? Why define the qualifications of church elders and deacons based on virtue, but then exclude women based on gender?
The cracks were splintering. The sand on which my faith had been built was washing out from under me, threatening to carry me with it.
But I was not washed away. When the house of man-made doctrine collapsed, I stood on something firmer. I rebuilt my faith—not on tradition, not on the shifting sands of human authority, but on the solid rock of truth. And that pursuit is ongoing.