Deconstructing Deconstruction - Part 2

Thriving in a secular community requires a moral compass that is most likely different from the one you used when you belonged to your former faith-based community. When you were part of that community, you had commandments that were given in your sacred text. A multitude of additional guidelines were established from those commandments. There were prescribed codes of behavior that governed such moral issues as birth control, sexuality, your relationship with your physical body, social interaction, recreation, and even how you dressed. You might have even been taught how to deal with your emotions and that most certainly meant controlling them.

When leaving a faith-based community, many individuals feel a sense of freedom, but that freedom can almost feel overwhelming. When you release all of the restraints on your behavior and your emotions that you used to have, how do you move forward? Of course, you don’t want to throw away all of the morals you learned earlier. It is still not a good idea to cheat, or steal, or lie, or kill.  But how about socializing and having fun? Are you free to go to nightclubs and dance and drink alcohol? Are you free to dress as you choose and flirt and have sex outside of marriage? As long as you don’t break any laws or hurt anyone else, I’d say you are free to explore all of that. But, how do you know if any of those behaviors are bad for you? Where do you find your new moral compass?

The good news is that you don’t have to look too far for your new moral compass. Believe it or not, you have always had your own moral compass. You may have suppressed it with what someone else told you should be your moral compass. But it has been there all the time. It is what you accessed when you decided that you could no longer abide your old faith-based community. It gave you the courage to take action.

As you rely more and more on your internal moral compass, your trust in it grows. While all of this is going on, you are making more decisions on your own. And maybe this feels very empowering and perhaps it also feels a bit frightening. This may be the first time you feel that you are free to make your own decisions based on what is good for you. You may be concerned that you don’t have a lot of experience when it comes to making choices about your own needs. What if you make bad decisions? Here is a little secret. We all make bad decisions from time to time. Hopefully we learn from them and don’t repeat them in the future.

Each of us possesses a skill that helps us in our decision making and it is critical thinking.

Some may not have relied very much on your own critical thinking while you were deeply involved in a faith-based community. You may have easily accepted the teachings from the community leaders as facts.  It was not necessary to hold these teachings up for critical review. But when you transition to a secular community, critical thinking becomes a very valuable skill to dust off and use when evaluating new information.

There are many sources of information. There is the news media which is available through a variety of different transmission channels; television, radio, printed publications, the internet, etc. Then there is information that is communicated through conversation. It is important to remember that information communicated through conversation with some else has most certainly been filtered through their personal perspective. That doesn’t make it wrong necessarily, it just means that it has probably been altered to some extent. I highly suggest that everything you read in books be held up to the light of critical thinking because the author certainly has his or her own perspective on the subject material. Just as I have my perspective on what you are currently reading.

If you feel that your critical thinking ability is a little rusty, don’t worry. Like most things in life, the more you use it, the better you become with it. Practice does improve most skills. The key to critical thinking lies in not believing that everything you hear, see, or read is true. There is an old adage, “Don’t believe everything you hear”. It helps to keep that in mind. There is nothing wrong with taking some time to validate new information that you receive. You would be amazed at how many people believe things that absolutely are not true. This is not the place to dive more deeply into what people believe and why they believe it. There are plenty of books on that subject. 

Gaining confidence in your own internal moral compass will help you in acclimating to your new secular environment which I consider to be a substantial consideration in deconstruction. Exercising your critical thinking will help you to make better decisions for yourself. I’m confident that these skills will serve you well as you become more comfortable with your new life circumstances.