Last week I started writing a novel, Deconstruction: A Novel. I've edited the first chapter several times this last week, trying to find the right characters. I'm posting more extensive stretches on Patreon, but thought I would put some excerpts here as well. Here is a little from the first chapter. Post-edits will certainly happen.
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We met on the first day of college. Matt was a Southern Baptist from just over the Georgia border. April was a Methodist from Beaufort, South Carolina. Brad was a Pentecostal from Kings Mountain, just into North Carolina. Of course, they say we’re all just different flavors of Baptist in the South.
We all thought ourselves Christians. We all believed in the Bible. We each in our own way wanted to see the defeat of sin and injustice in the world. We all couldn’t wait to go to a Christian college, where we thought everyone else would be just like us. We were going to learn more about God. We were going to have a lot of fun. Welcome to Ebenezer College in the fall of 2016!
It was a strange and unique time in American history. Our first semester saw the election of President Trump. Our time there ended with COVID. None of us were expecting to struggle with our faith. None of us had any real sense of how much a person could change in three or four years. You see it looking back. They tell you it’s going to happen. You’re going to transition from teenager to adult. But it’s hard to see what that looks like from the front end.
They have a word for what some of us experienced. Deconstruction...
Deconstruction is the idea that, as you build something, it falls down under its own weight. The very building of it brings about the unbuilding of it. The principles that construct it lead to its un-construction. It unravels in the very process of trying to sow it together.
We all had different personalities. Matt was a firebrand. At one point we all thought he should have been the preacher. He was always fighting something. The world for him was a never-ending boxing match, with enemies out to get us around every corner.
Brad was funny. He never missed an opportunity to treat a subject lightly. We didn’t realize for a long time that he spent the other half of his time depressed. Looking back, it was really his search for God’s presence that drove a lot of our discussions.
April was more practical and far more organized than the rest of us. She was someone who kept a calendar of what to study each day to get her homework done and be ready for the test. It really annoyed her when Brad would ace a quiz or paper he had only worked on one night, while she had actually read the material and studied a little each day.
Meanwhile, Jessica and I pretty much looked on and watched the show. Jessica was April’s roommate. I lived in the same suite as Brad in the nicest dorm. Jessica came for softball, not paying any attention to the fact it was a Christian college. Required chapel really took her by surprise, as did the rules about not drinking. She hadn’t quite figured out what to major in. She wasn’t really there for the classes.
I thought I came to be a doctor. I found myself that first semester in the same biology and chemistry classes as Matt and Brad. But a lot of things change in college. Most students change their major at least once. The same would be true of me.
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