Deconstruction, The Dark Night, & St John of the Cross
For a couple of years I was a pastor of a small church plant in Canton, OH. In the middle of this time, I began to question some of the ways I had been taught to approach faith in God, as well as assumptions I had carried from my upbringing. Needless to say, this was a very tricky place to be as a pastor. There seemed to be mixed messages within Evangelical culture about what many label as “deconstruction,” but the overwhelming responses were often those of judgment or condemnation, along with instructions to just believe harder, or warnings to stop trying to disprove one’s faith. It often seemed as though deconstruction was viewed as something people chose out of rebellion or sinful motivation. This was a darker period in my life. I loved God and remained committed to following the leading of the Holy Spirit, but I grappled with a deep angst, not knowing how to rebuild something beautiful after leaving behind beliefs and approaches that I no longer had room for. I couldn’t simply force myself to believe something different once I had seen otherwise. Thankfully, I was blessed with deep spiritual friendships in other pastors and Christians who were willing to love me and walk with me through this season into something more generous and rooted in love.
In my training to become a spiritual director through the Order of the Common Life, I was exposed to the life and teachings of John of the Cross for the first time. John was a 16th-century Spanish Carmelite monk and mystic who, alongside Teresa of Ávila, helped reform his religious order toward a more contemplative and stripped-down way of life. His efforts were not well received by everyone. In fact, members of his own order imprisoned him in a small, dark cell for nearly nine months. During that time, he endured isolation, hunger, and physical abuse. It was in that place of deep darkness that John began to articulate what he would later call the “dark night of the soul.” Rather than seeing seasons of confusion, doubt, or spiritual dryness as failures of faith, he came to understand them as a necessary, and even sacred, part of transformation. For John, the dark night was not evidence of God’s absence, but a sign that God was at work beneath the surface, gently stripping away false securities, attachments, and limited understandings so that something deeper and more rooted in love could emerge.
The framework offered by John gave language to what I had been living through. What I had interpreted as deconstruction began to look more like what he described as a “dark night”, a necessary process of purification in which God leads us beyond certainty and into love. When I first encountered John’s life and teachings, I found myself frustrated. This reframing of spiritual darkness as a deep, necessary, and ultimately grace-filled invitation led by the Holy Spirit, had been present within the Christian tradition for centuries. And yet, I had never been introduced to it. How many others were walking through similar seasons without language, without guidance, and without the reassurance that this path may actually be leading them closer to God? What if spiritual darkness and the seeming absence of God are not signs that something has gone wrong but indicators that God is at work in a deeper way than we can yet perceive? What if this season is not a curse, but a gift? Not a failure, but a mercy?
The last several years I have been seeing a spiritual director every month and it has been such a gift to share with someone whom I know will not judge my experiences but only help me become curious about them as we identify together what the Holy Spirit may be saying through them/in them. This is the kind of work that St John of the Cross would encourage to someone seeking help from a spiritual director during a dark night. According to John, the best spiritual director would be the one who creates space, listens deeply, and helps the person attend to God. A spiritual director is not there to give answers, but to help someone remain attentive to the quiet, often hidden work of God. And that’s where the most beautiful work happens within the dark.
