A critique of 'deconstructing faith'.

I have seen more than once this idea of someone 'deconstructing' their faith, and while I'm not entirely sure how this term is being used among those using it in this way (for I am familiar with the term coming from Jaques Derrida's deconstructionism, which is a kind of approach to interpreting texts, namely, deliberately interpreting them in such a way as to find contradictions inherent within them, pulling at the seems of the text, as it were, so as to 'show' how it unravels from within itself) but the idea of deconstructing one's 'faith' seems to me to require either that the term is not bieng used in the Derridian sense, or else if it is being used that way, that it is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of what faith is; but even if it's not being used in the Derridian way, it still seems to be rooted in a misunderstanding of the nature of faith, for faith isn't a construct, but rather a virtue. 

The issue in either case is that there is a suggestion here of the one deconstructing their faith somehow understanding their faith fully enough in order to engage in such a deconstruction; but much the point of faith is that you 'don't' understand what you're dealing with; not that you don't understand it 'at all' but that you don't understand it 'in full', that there is yet some mystery present that has not yet fully been explored.

An example of this would be how a child who has yet to experience even a picture of the aurora borialis may be told by their mother that it is quite beautiful; and so the child takes the claim on faith, even though he has no real concept of what the aurora is; he believes the claim anyway, despite not fully understanding it, because he trusts his mother; so likewise faith, at least in the Christian sense, is meant to be directed towards God primarily, and secondarily to his Church, who teaches us about God; as one saint said 'one cannot have God for his Father who does not have the Church for his mother'; in either case, the point here is that there is a faith that, while open to seeking more understanding, still begins in mystery; not a mystery that cannot be explored mind, not a mystery we cannot learn more about, but merely as any mystery, a mystery we do not yet know everything about.

Now in the case of Christianity this mystery is the mystery of God himself, and so is not a finite mystery as those we are accustomed too, but an infinite mystery, so that there will always be more to know about it; it is a mystery we will never be done learning about, but none the less, it is a mystery which we can keep learning about, keep exploring, a mystery that is always new; and we believe the words that express this mystery both because we trust the one who speaks them; that is, we trust God and his Church to know these things.

Neither is this to say that there are no difficulties here, for there are surely times where trusting God and his Church are difficult, either because the mystery which we do not yet understand may at times seem incoherent or to contradict known fact, and other times, because the one's propounding the mystery, that is, God and his Church, seem indifferent to us, or even to hate us, but in either case they begin to seem untrustworthy for a variety of reasons; these are real difficulties that we have to contend with; but as St. John Henry Newan once said 'a thousand difficulties do not make a single doubt' i.e. one can persevere in faith despite these mysteries, and may often have quite good resaon for doing so; reasons both internal to the faith itself, as well as reasons external to it.

The external reasons may be such things as the philosophical arguments for God's existence, the historical arguments for the resurrection of Jesus, the various arguments from miracles in history to the present day which surround the Church and so point very strongly to her divine origin; and likewise the Church herself stands as a kind of perpetual motive of believing herself credible, insofar as despite a history of tumult from within and without, she herself has peservered, and grown, and been fruitful in all sorts of endevours, contributing to humanitarian efforts, philosophy, the sciences, the arts, etc. all of these serve as a constant indicator of the Church's credibility and in turn, for God's credibility, and so as a constant reason for faith.

However for those who have 'some degree' of faith, and so are not yet tempted to completely abandon the faith, but who are have difficulties in keeping and growing in the faith, there are also motives internal to the Church; indeed, taken through the lens of Church doctrine, all possible reasons against faith in God and his Church become reasons for faith; for any suffering we experience, be it from the world or even from evil elements within the Church who by their sinful deeds obscure the truth of the faith, and sometimes even obscure the truth of the external motives of credibility, making them harder to see, these were all always something we expected; the Church's own teaching predicts these difficulties for all the faithful; our Lord himself warned us that we are as sheep being sent out amongst wolves, and that we need to be as shrewd as serpents while remaining as innocent as doves, he predicted false teachers who would be as wolves in sheeps clothing, warning us that we would know their by their fruits, he told us to expect persecutions, that he came not to bring peace but the sword, and that for him children would go against parents, and siblings against siblings, he warned us that if we would be his desciple, we would have to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow him.

This was all always taught by God and his Church, it is right there in scripture, it was never hidden, never fully obscured; for what is the most recognizable symbol of the Christian faith if not the cross? and especially among us Catholics, not just an empty Cross, but Christ Crucified upon it; as Christ himself said "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life" (John 3:14-15) thus you see that the cross has never been fully hidden, it is the core symbol of the Christian and Catholic faith, suffering and difficulty of all sorts is to be expected; we have 'always' expected a cross, and a heavy one at that; for we are to follow Christ, who is the infinite God, and if God himself fell three times under the weight of his cross, we who are finite should not be surprised should we three hundred times, three thousand times, three million times, or were it possible for us even infinitely many times; and it is apt to be the case that many more things will make us stumble than which made Christ stumble.

Thus we should not be surprised, but rather confirmed in our view, when the world and even many elements in the Church turn on us; we Catholics have a whole tradition of saints who have suffered at the hands of the world, and some of the greatest suffered at the hands of the Church as well; but they continued to believe in both God and his Church despite this, indeed, in light of the above, perhaps even because of this; their faith giving their sufferings and difficulties deeper meaning;.

Thus for one who has no faith, there are many external reasons to accept the call to faith that one hears in the world, and for one who has faith, everything, even the greatest of difficulties, becomes a reason to persevere even in the darkest of hours and darkest of nights, in the midst of pain, of difficulty, of confession, faith in the teachings of God and his Church can give us strength to peservere, and can draw strength from even the most contrary things; for as St. Simeon said to Mary, Jesus is a sign of contradiction, set for the rise and fall of many in Israel, as St. Paul says, the cross of Christ is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to gentiles, but to we who are in Christ, it is the wisdom and power of God; as our Lord himself put it; "“For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” (John 9:39).

The cross sits atop the world,
atop the mountain of the skull,
where the sky of the heavens meets the earth;
and the road to the cross,
is a crossroad, in truth,
and a decision must be made,
on what way to take,
to be blind to God's plight,
or to see in it, God's might,
and oh how I pray,
that man will choose to see.

For when the blind lie,
and say they see,
the blind lead the blind astray,
and both fall into the pit,
where there is much moaning,
and gnashing of teeth;
but when the blind speak truth,
saying they cannot see,
then, you see, there is hope,
found in the God-Man
who was hung on a tree.

The sum of this in any case, is that it makes little sense to speak of deconstructing faith; for to deconstruct it you would have to understand it, and there is no mystery worthy of the name that is yet understood well enough to be deconstructed; for if someone wishes to point out some error in how the mystery is understood, then they are free to do so; but that does not mean the mystery is a falsehood or illusion or such like, it just means that we misunderstood the mystery; if all the reason we have tells us that the persons communicating the mystery to us are trustworthy, and that they have yet more to say, then while it's true that what has been said so far at any given point may have some fault in it taken on it's own, that is not issue for the person, because if they have yet more to say, then what they have said is not 'meant' to be taken on it's own, but rather taken in light of future clarifications they intend to give; if we refuse to have patience for those future clarifications, and instead are constantly trying to find some fault in what was said, despite reason telling us to trust them and their word, then we are being irrational, now it's easy to fall into the habit of doing this unawares, and so it's good to have it pointed out to us, and if we have the humility of rationality, then we'll adjust our ways, but if we realize this after it has been pointed out to us, and yet we chose to keep doing it, then we are being 'willfully' irrational.

There are ways one might try to justify this; say, by saying that the one pointing it out might not be trustworthy, and perhaps this is true; but then I'm bound to wonder why we don't give them the benefit of the doubt?

If one finds some fault in how they've articualted themselves, then why not let this person clarify themselves? Why presume that an apparent fault in their wording is a real fault, rather than a misunderstanding on your end? Even if it's a real fault in the wording, why presume it implies a real fault in the persons view, rather than them simply accidentally misarticulating themselves or such like? We might argue, in the case of average people, that they are fallible and so we cannot give them endless benefit of the doubt; but there are two issues here (i) this does not apply to God and (ii) it applies as much to one's own self as it does to anyone else; and if we are so quick to doubt others, should we not also then be doubting ourselves? our own reasoning about how to interpret another and how to articulate ourselves?

To be clear, this last question is not to suggest that we should doubt ourselves and give all our belief over to another; but is rather to say that we should approach things in a balanced manner; we should be no more critical nor believing of ourselves than we should be of others, nor of others than we should be of ourselves; if we employ a method of doubt on other people's words, we should do the same for our own words, and if we think the demand is to great for us, then all else equal, we should presume it is too great for others as well; and so hold it to be an unreasonable standard of doubt.

Critical thought is good, but it requires prudence, that is, it requires one to keep in mind the goal of critical thought; and that goal is attaining the truth, all other goals related to critical thought, such as avoiding falsehood, clarifying one's language, exercising one's mind, etc. all of that is subordinate to the higher goal of truth; if we can attain others, but at the cost of any chance at truth, then it's not worth it; and if there is still some chance at truth, but the chance is reduced; then the more the chance at truth is reduced, the less worth it is any cost in the order of critical thinking. After all, if we have no chance at truth, then we have no chance at knowing it's true that it's worth it; and the less of a chance we have at truth, the less of a chance we have at having the truth that these costs being worth it.

Returning to the point though; the idea here is that there are upper limits of critical thought, certain things that, if we doubt them, we throw away the chance at truth, and conforming our minds to reality, and so in truth, of having any meaningful sense of fulfillment (for the chances that it's true that we have a meaningful sense of fulfillment will be at least as low as our chances at truth in general), thus we cannot be like those who would so doubt their own senses, memory, and reasoning that it would prevent any chance at truth, even if we know we are not infallible, we cannot hold our faculties to be so unreliable that they can't get us any truth, because then they couldn't even get us the truth that they can't get us any truth; so we have to give ourselves some benefit of the doubt; but then by the above reasoning, all else equal, we would have to do the same thing for everyone else, and so we see that the principle of giving others the benefit of the doubt is, in essense, a basic principle of reasoning and knowledge; to fail to do this is inherently irrational.

But then what is this procedure of deconstruction but a refusal of just that? For either we're deconstructing a text, in which case we give the author absolutely no benefit of the doubt, since we've come to ignore the author and begun to try and break down the text independently of them, or else we deconstruct our faith of some sort, be it natural faith in another person, in which case again, we've stopped looking at the person and have now only begun to look at their words at their past words; if we give them no opportunity for clarification, then we can never truly believe we have found fault in their old wording; for all we know we could just be misunderstanding them (and indeed, we have good reason to believe we are misunderstanding them if we are giving them absolutely no benefit of the doubt; for if anything that seems to be a recipe for producing misunderstandings, and once one is aware of this fact, it becomes a recipe for producing misunderstandings 'on purpose' i.e. deliberately; which is immoral) and if we owe even our fellow human beings this most basic benefit of the doubt, and the corresponding opportunity of clarification, before we begin to presume fault on their side and in their words, then how much more so do we owe it to God? and if God has commanded we give that same faith to his Church, then likewise will we not owe yet more faith to the his Church, through whom we have received God's message in the first place?

A strong line needs to be drawn in one's mind between one's own self and everyone else, and so also between one's own self and God; one must keep in mind that you are not them, and they are not you; that there is an infinite mystery that exists between the mystery of one's own self, the mystery of one's fellow creatures, and even more greatly, the mystery of God; there is a mark of the infinite in all God's creatures, because God is infinite, and being related to him as his creatures, so we have in ourselves a relation to the infinite, and this relation is a certain mark, so likewise is there room for infinite mystery in all things, insofar as we seek to learn how they relate to God, and all the more so how they relate to all these other things, as those other things relate to God; there is always more to learn, always more to seek, always more to do, and in it's relation to the infinite God, this more to learn, seek, and do is at once ever ancient, and also ever new; for it reflects God who is the 'beauty ever ancient, beauty ever new'; who is the spirit of our life renewed, and in whom we find ourselves, and so also, one another, all made clear in the light of God, all made starkly clear by Christ upon the cross.

It seems to me that one who engages in deconstruction then is one who has lost the sense of mystery, but this itself is not so sorrowful a thing (for there are false mysteries, there are things which pretend at having hidden depths which do not, or at least, whose depths are not as great as they make them out to be) but what is also terrible is that there is a loss of the sense of the infinite, the infinity of the created order, the infinity of one's self, the infinity of one's fellow created persons, and most sorrowfully, the infinity of God.

Again there are, perhaps, false infinities; things called infinite which are truly finite; or else infinite things which none the less are not infinite in every aspect of their bieng, but only some aspects, but which are treated as being infinite in ways which they are finite; so there is perhaps a certain rationality in a certain wariness of those who propound the infinite; but that there are false and illusory infinities does not mean there are not real ones, that there is not something greater and beyond and towards which we might continually move and from which we might go and so something which we might continually explore, and in which we might live, and move, and have our being; and so for which we might strive continually to keep in mind these distinctions, this line between self and other, creature and creator; precisely that in keeping this distinction, we might have, and do, and be all that I just spoke of.

I find the other in the distinction of the other from myself, I am not you and you are not me, and this is something to be celebrated; for if I am not you then I can know you as someone other than me, and if you are not me, then you can know me as someone other than you, and so if there are others in the world, then we are not alone, and even if others reject us, if we know that there is someone other than all creatures, that is, a creator who loves us, then though we may be left alone by some, there is always one who leaves us alone.

I mention these in part because some who engage in this deconstruction seem drawn to certain spiritualities which would destroy these distinctions; because of loneliness, for lonliness is indeed the most ancient of evils; in the bible, the very first thing that is said not to be good, indeed, the very first thing God himself says is not good, is that man should be alone; for this reason God made Eve from Adam, that he would not be alone; but that ancient and original lonliness can come back in various hidden forms; and to eliminate the lonliness they experience in this life, some had attempted to eliminate themselves, sometimes through suicide, other times through a more conceptual separation.

For they will deny that there are others in truth, but will insist rather that all are one; and the logic (consicous or unconscious though it may be) is perhaps something like this; 'if there is no me that is other than anyone else, than I cannot be lonely' or again 'if I am one with everyone else, then I am not truly apart from them, and so I am not alone'; and there is a deep sorrow in this view; for it doesn't see that it has not truly elimianted lonliness, but rather has eliminated all company; it has turned reality into isolation, it has destroy the other and the self, it has destroyed both the 'I' and the 'thou' and any words it uses to speak of things as though they are persons is nothing more than the corpse left over from a more sane time; hating lonliness, those who once saw their own loneliness have practically plucked out their own eyes that they need not see it anymore; but now they are blind to the fact that thir reality has become consumed in solitude.

This is not to say that solitude is always bad, there is a difference between being lonely and being alone, but it is not good for man to be alone, not indefinitely, nor forever; man needs company; but there is a price that must be payed for company; Adam had to loose his rib for it; and that was before the fall, in a time where there was no struggle; in these times the price is much greater, in these times, the price of company is pain; thus Eve, the mother of all, and so the source of all our company, was cursed to suffer pain in childbirth; Adam, whose job it would be to sustain his family, and so to sustain his company, would do so by the price of toil, the ground putting forth thistles as works it to produce food for him and his own; but the truth is that this price is worth it; for even before these pains, and even before the loss of his rib, Adam had longed for company; for if he did not so long, why would he go through all those animals in the garden to name them, if he was content to be on his own? and why would he shout 'oh, now this is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone!' if his great longing was now satisfied by the company of Eve, who though of him, was other than him; and there seemed to be a similar joy when Eve named Cain, for despite the pains of childbirth she did say: "With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man." (gen 4:1); if Adam so longed for company that he was willing to toil before the curse of toil, and suffer loss before the curse by which the garden was lost, and Even so longed for company that she would rejoice even past the pains of child birth with which she was cursed; then how much more terrible must the pain of longing be in the lonely heart of mankind? How much more horrible must these dark ideologies be, which would deny us the distinction between self and other, us and them, I and thou? What terrible pain and blindness, that we should be surrounded by our fellows but not be able to know their company! I am reminded of the one poem: "Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink' and so how horrible must it be, to be surrounded always by too much company, and yet never to have enough?

There is a balance to be had between company and solitude, different people need a different balance from others, but all have some need of both; in solitude we can do work to bring to our company, and in company we can do much to bring to our own minds in solitude; and so in the exchange between the two we can grow as individuals and as a people, provided we do not have too much of one or the other; and so how much more terrible an evil is it, those views which would deprive us of the distinction?

If there is no distinction between self and other, then there is no knowledge of either, and so no love of one for the other, and so no service given nor received in knowing love from the one to the other; this seems to me to be a terrible thing.

Thus even many who do not believe in God and his Church will often reject (sometimes by intuition, and perhaps sometimes by such explicit reasoning as I have worked up here) any such ideology that would obscure these distinctions between us, and thereby obscure the ties that bind us as well, and so drown us in the illusion of endless solitude through the delusion of endless company.

I suspect however that such as these make the equal and opposite error; for these are those who are more inclined to solitude, and so they reject God because they are more confident in the existential solitude of mankind, of our need to make our own way in this world, in their belief that there was no way set out before us by such a being as God, nothing prepared for us, and so no need to seek out such things, and to conform our lives to them; I fear these make a similarly reductive error; for where those who profess the oneness of reality eliminate the multiplicity that gives company; those who deny the oneness of the source of reality eliminate the unity that makes sense of all things.

The non-believer is apt to object that the world clearly makes sense; he will appeal to the formal and empirical sciences to show how mankind has made our way in the world, and so made sense of much, and in light of our success in the past, have reason to hope for success in the future; I do not deny this, indeed I agree whole hearteldy that the success of science is grounds for hoping in future success; but my point was not that things are not intelligible if you are a non-believer, but rather that the fact that they 'are' intelligible makes no sense i.e. their very intelligibility is itself, unintelligible; we are left wondering how the world could make any sense whatsoever, if there is no God behind it all, no mind ordering all things? The idea isn't that the world does not make sense on the atheist view, but that it makes 'too much sense' on the atheist view; how are we to make sense of the fact that the world makes so much sense?

One might argue that it doesn't actually make that much sense; pointing to say, the cataclysmic destruction on the comsological scale, the various destructive chemicals that occur both naturally and artificially, the fact that evolution only gets it's way through immense death and suffering, and all the more they will point to all the evils and horrors of mankind and human history of all sorts, they may poitn especially to the apparent evil of religion; I myself have already admitted that there are those in the Church who can do much evil, some may point out also various difficulties in the doctrines of the Church, how can a loving God have such a place as hell, for example; can hell be proporitionate to these crimes? what moral person could accept something like htat? indeed, if such a being as God existed and also cared for us; we should not expect any of this evil; or at least, if some evil must be permitted for such things as freedom and the goods that are born from freedom; such as knowledge, love, company, and service all freely given and freely received, still we should not expect nearly as much evil; and so on that front it is the view that God exists that makes the least sense, whereas the view that the world is not ordered by a loving God better fits with the fact that there is so much nonsense in the world.

The issue with all of this though is that it faces the same argument I had already set up before; namely, it just blatantly refuses to give God the beneift of the doubt, for there are many things that do not 'seem' to make sense to us when say, our friends begin to explain them, but we will give them time to explain; and we will given even more time to the apparent nonsense of experts; we will have faith in the word of medical doctors, be they doctors of pyshiological or psychological ills, we are quick to give these not just the benefit of the doubt, but a great deal of credence even when we don't understand most anything they say or do, nor why it is required; all on account of how they have done their homework, how they have been veted by other colleges who have done their homework as well, and how they are part of a long tradition of medical experts striving to do what they can to make us well in body and mind, and which from what we know from the history of medicine, have had ever growing success in their aims as this tradition has developed; now if all this trust is rooted in the knowledge of these beings and all the goods they have done for us in the past; despite the seemingly meaningless and sometimes painful things they say and/or have us do for the sake of health; why then should we not give all the more faith to God; who if he exists, is infinitely more knowledgale than even all the medical doctors combined, and not just that are alive now, but all those who have been and ever will be; and who also is the source and sustainer of 'all the goods we have' and all the goods we may ever attain; and so surely has done us inumerable good things; if then we would trust human medical even when much of what they say and do seem meaningless and are greatly painful; and indeed, we might even condemn others for 'failing' to give credence to these doctors even when they are wary of the pain and apparent incoherence; all the more so then are we not bound to trust God, and indeed, be greatly critical of those who would refuse to trust in him?

If the preceding reasoning is sound, then the answer to this question would of course, have to be yes; and so all the more so then we are justified in holding that even though things may not 'seem' to make sense, that there is still an acceptable reason for them, even when they are greatly painful; if we will give our peers trust in such cases, and give doctors yet more trust in such cases in light of their superior knowledge and ability, and God is far greater in knowledge and ability to the doctors then the doctors are to laymen, then in light of that, we are bound by the same logic to give God far greater trust, should he exist.

Thus this attempted counter doesn't really work; and we are left where we were before, with the non-believing view having this greatly intelligible world, and though there is much evil that seems to be without meaning, they cannot deny that this might just be a greater mystery waiting to be revealed; not that there is no evil in the world (though some things that seem evil may not be; just as some things that seem good may yet be evil; as poison may taste sweet, but kill quickly without an antidote) but that there is an explanation for the evil that, once we finally recieve it in full, we will find it acceptable; and we are not merely holding out for an explanation we never get; but rather in light of God's infinity, we can continue to seek out a deeper understanding of what we see; and it is not that we never get the explanation, but rather that we get 'more and more of it' all the while; for as all things relate to God in some way, and God is infinite, so all things have a mark of the infinite, even evil itself; though evil relates to God as anti-thesis; so that if God is infinite being, in the sense of having a fullness of being, then evil is infinite distant from being; not that it does not exist, but that it exists in a most empty way; like a cavity in a tooth; evil is to God as injury and sickness are to health; both exist, but clearly injury and sickness exist in a degraded manner, while health exists in an exuberant manner; so too with evil and God; and so again, we should expect a certain infinity to the mystery of iniquity, since it is understood most clearly in contradistinction to God, who is source and summit of all mysteries; and so we will learn more of evil, and be ever more satisifed; but that also means we are never fully satisfied at any given time; at least not in this life; but then, I don't think that should suprise us; for there seems to be something inherent in evil that if we were to be fully satisfied, then that would suggest there is something wrong with us; evil does not have the right to exist, and so to be satisfied with evil's existence would seem evil in it's own right; and we wish to be good; and so if there is to be a satisfying answer to the mystery of evil for a good man, that answer can only ever at most be partially satisfying; it can be over growing in satisfiaction, but so long as we are limited to human means of explaining things, then there must always be an element of disatisfaction; at least as far as humanmeans can tell, a good person must never be satisfied with the existence of evil, for it is in the nature of a good person to strive to be rid of evil; which they would not do if the were satisfied with it. The only way we might be both good and satisfied is if there were some way to both be satisfied with evil and also strive to eliminate it; but it's not clear that any human means allows for this.

One may of course point this out as an issue for Christianity; how can the Christian be good if he is limited to human means? How can he choose to have faith in God, and so act as though there is a satisfying answer to the mystery of evil, and yet continue to try and do good?

The answer, of course, is that if Christianity is true, then we are 'not' limited to human means; nor have we ever really claimed to be; for the Christian holds that he his helped by God himself, whose nature is far above our nature, and so is, relative to our nature, supernatural; we hold that it is by God's supernatural grace that we have faith in God; by God's grace that we have hope for the life of the world to come, and by God's grace that we have the virtue of charity, whereby we will the good of the other; so it is precisely in this supernatural (and so, superhuman) way of living that we are able to both be good and be satisfied, being both partially in this life (for we can always learn more of God's mysteries, and always strive to do more good deeds and so to be better people) and finally in a full and comprehensive manner in the life of the world to come.

Thus again, we see that the Christian view at least, can make sense both of the apparent intelligibility of the world, but 'also' of those aspects of the world which are apparently unintelligible; but the non-believing view struggles to make sense of either of these.

Now the non-believer may admit this, but feel that it's not enough to require them to believe, that it's one point in favor of theism, but does not necessarily tip things over; after all, given enough time the non-believer may be able to find fault in these arguments; now perhaps a fault may be found (though one must be wary of violating the principle of the benefit of the doubt here) but this should at least be enough to tentatively take on a theistic view (and ideally, a Christian and even Catholic one) so that one will become a theist, but just admit that they are not yet committed to the view nor convicted of it's truth, for they are a theist only for this very thin reason, which may proof itself inadequate; this seems to me to be the most reasonable move to make at this point to one who thinks the preceding reasoning is sound; from there though I have already indicated the other sources of belief; the motives of credibility in the Church's character, the miracles and fulfilled prophecies associated with her; the historical arguments for Christ's ressurection, the philosophical arguments for God's existence; and of course, everything I've just said so far as a sort of underlying line of reasoning by which one might evaluate each and every one of these things; a set of principles by which hte truth of these things can be discerned; in such a case it seems to me that there is more than adequate reason not to just be confidently committed to Christianity and indeed, Catholicism, but to be fully convicted of its' truth; to know then not only that we as individuals are not alone apart from our fellow man; but that mankind is not alone in existence, we are not the highest beings, and this isa relief, because it means we do not have the responsibility of being the highest being; a responsibility we likely could never truly bear; we are not alone, but God is with us, and the God who is with us loves us to the point of death, even death on a cross.

There is perhaps infinitely many more things to say on this topic of deconstruction, especially the deconstruction of the faith; I have been very brief on certain points, passing over them quickly so as to get into other points, and so to work out the more general structure and arc of my argument, than to bother about the details on those points, which can become very complex and subtle for those interested in them; I have gone into detail more on those things of most immediate concern to me and which most primarily motivated me to write this work; but I have spent a good bit of time writing this and while man is infinite in his relation to God, which gives him thus an infinite potential, still man is finite with respect to how much of that potential he can actualize at any given time; and so I am reaching the limits of my finitude; I could perhaps push myself to speak more, but I fear my thoughts have already near the end here become a bit less coherent than they were when I first set out to write this; and so lest the quality of the work diminish yet more, I'll leave my point here.

I thank anyone who has taken the time to read this then, I hope that I have been able to provide at least some insight to you, and I apologize if I have not, it's not for lack of effort; I pray that God will bless you if you have read this; whatever your views are, and if you do not believe in God then while I still pray this, none the less I also wish you well, and hope you have a good day.