Caputo's "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?"

Most Christians are well aware of the question “What Would Jesus Do?” In fact, familiarity with the question has led us to believe that we know the answer. We know how Jesus would vote, what sins he would condemn most severely (theirs) and which ones he would overlook (ours), how he would spend his money, which TV shows he would DVR, and even where he would vacation (Ark Encounter, anyone?). In What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, John D. Caputo challenges our complacency and confidence vis-a-vis this familiar question and calls us to deconstruct our theological constructs in order to rediscover the truth and revelation that lie buried beneath.

Deconstruction. Deconstruction sounds scary, doesn’t it? And in one sense, it is terrifying. But deconstruction is not destruction. The goal of deconstruction (as applied to Christianity) is to strategically remove the layers and coatings of man-made religion that have been built up over the core of Truth. Imagine stripping the coats of paint and stain off a table to get to the original wood or delicately removing the layers of sediment and rock to free a fossil or archeological artifact. On numerous occasions, Jesus declared to the people, ‘You have heard it said...but I say unto you...’. In these moments, Jesus was deconstructing the human-created structures and forms that had developed over God-given revelation. He set about freeing the Sabbath from restrictive rules, holiness from appearance and public opinion, and interaction with God from an established hierarchy. “In a deconstruction,” writes Caputo, “our lives, our beliefs, and our practices are not destroyed but forced to reform and reconfigure--which is risky business...in deconstruction the truth is dangerous” (27). The terrifying part of deconstruction is that it removes all our layers of insulation between us and the Truth and leaves us with little defense or control in God’s presence. The beauty of deconstruction is that it allows us to move closer to the true essence of God, love, and justice.

Heresy. ‘Heretic’ is a favorite label that religious groups like to assign to people who are enough like them to avoid the ‘pagan’ label but weird enough to make the group uncomfortable. Caputo states that a heretic is “anyone who interferes with the work of the church, including Jesus” (32). He points to Dostoyevsky’s story of the Grand Inquisitor who arrests a returned Jesus so that Jesus will not interfere with the purposes and plans of the church. “Having gotten used to the idea that the church defines and determines what Jesus stands for, and what Jesus would do, the church is not going to see its authority threatened by anyone, not even by Jesus himself” (32). Jesus was a heretic 2000 years ago, and he would be labeled one again today by most of our religious institutions if he walked through their doors on a Sunday morning.

Idolatry and the Bible. It wouldn’t be a postmodern Christian book if idolatry was not addressed. Caputo argues against an idolatrous view of the Bible. The Bible is an archive of stories, experiences, and interpretations. It is not God. The Bible is not the object of our worship. “To hear what the Bible says, set it carefully on your desk and listen quietly. After a long enough silence has passed it may hit you that it does not talk; you have to read and interpret it” (94). By this, he simply means that we need to step back from our unyielding declarations of ‘God says’ or ‘the Bible says’ toward a more humble position of ‘this is what I think God is saying’ or ‘this is what I got out of that passage’. Be careful to avoid attributing qualities to the Bible that belong only to God.

What Would Jesus Deconstruct? by John D. Caputo (at Amazon)