The Light in Our Eyes: Rediscovering the Love, Beauty, and Freedom of Jesus in an Age of Disillusionment - Softcover

McDonald, Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593601521 ISBN 13: 9780593601525

Publisher: Multnomah, 2025

Synopsis

For the millions who have felt disillusioned with American evangelical culture, this book is a lifeline for navigating the cynicism of both conservative and progressive beliefs to find real hope in the life and mission of Jesus.

As a pastor and author, Nicholas McDonald spent years helping people work through serious questions about the evangelical church’s gospel and its often hurtful responses to those confused by American Evangelical culture. He quickly realized that what these people needed—what he really needed—was not merely apologetics answers but the good news that speaks to their deepest dreams: love, beauty, and freedom—the very things Jesus promises to those who follow Him.

With excellent storytelling and profound insights from his own deconstruction journey, McDonald compassionately addresses the concerns so many readers have with the evangelical subculture’s sense of entitlement, nostalgia, and cynicism. And he outlines a clear path to finding restoration in Jesus. The Light in Our Eyes offers nine ancient practices to help you experience anew—or for the first time—Jesus’s love, beauty, and freedom and to embody and extend them in the world. Through the scriptural song of Zechariah and relatable, inspiring stories of men and women who have been restoried by the gospel of Jesus, this book reminds us that Jesus’ dreams fulfill what our hearts have longed for all along.

Journey from despair and darkness to faith and light as McDonald outlines a path to becoming reenchanted by the dreams Jesus has for each one of us, the church, and the world. To take up His dream is the invitation to believe again, and to hope again.

About this title

About the Author

Nicholas McDonald is the Associate Pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian church in central Indianapolis and has served in ministry for over fifteen years. His previous positions have included roles in youth ministry and four years as the Campus Minister of Reformed University Fellowship at the University of Missouri. McDonald received his degree from Gordon Conwell Seminary and studied creative writing at Oxford University. He writes regularly for The Gospel Coalition and is the author of Faker. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and their three children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Disillusionment, Deconstruction, and the Great Dechurching

To make our way forward is to go back in history. To recover past trauma is to awaken to the pain, and we cannot heal until we see the narratives of the past renewed by faith and hope. We cannot move forward by ignoring the past.

—Makoto Fujimura, Silence and Beauty

Can faith be bought
in supermarkets
Like canned soup
lined up in a row?

If it is defective
may I return it?
As it is two sizes
too small.

—E R Skulmoski, “Both the Wicked and the Righteous Have a Midlife Crisis”

You probably know this by now, and if you don’t, it’s time: The American evangelical church is facing the largest mass exodus ever recorded. It would not be an exaggeration to say that tens of millions of people have left the church over the past decade. You might be one of them.

In their book The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham observe,

More people have left the church in the last twenty-five years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, and Billy Graham crusades combined. Adding to the alarm is the fact that this phenomenon has rapidly increased since the mid-1990s.

Those who’ve dechurched often call their experience “deconstruction.” The term has grown in popularity thanks to trending exvangelical social media influencers like Joshua Harris, Abraham Piper, and Rhett and Link. But deconstruction is often a slippery term to define. Is everyone who has dechurched also deconstructed? Is everyone who is deconstructing also dechurching? Is there such a thing as “good deconstruction”? Hip-hop artist Lecrae has suggested that, yes, deconstruction can be a good thing:

Many don’t realize there have been healthy Deconstructions throughout history. . . . There are generations of believers who have been thru this and we can learn from them versus destroying our life and faith trying to figure it out alone. . . . Many movements from the reformation to the civil rights movement involved deconstruction using scripture and then reconstruction. I offer this as an encouragement to those struggling. My faith is stronger than ever. I’ve been there and healing is possible.

Others like Alisa Childers and Tim Barnett have taken issue with this, saying, “Faith deconstruction is a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without regarding Scripture as a standard,” so faithful Christians should not use this term to describe healthy spiritual growth. But is the characterization of deconstruction as a full-throated rejection of Scripture fair or accurate? That may be true of the loudest online voices of the deconstruction movement. But Davis and Graham observe that, on the whole, the dechurched tend not to be critical of orthodoxy:

Dechurched evangelicals are still largely orthodox in their faith. When it comes to our primary doctrines, 68 percent of those we surveyed still believe in the Trinity, 64 percent believe in the divinity of Jesus, 65 percent believe Jesus’ death on the cross paid the penalty for the sins of those who believe in him, 67 percent believe in the resurrection, 62 percent believe that Jesus is the only way to God, and 61 percent believe the Bible is a reliable document for all matters of faith and practice.

This would strongly suggest that the term deconstruction is not a one-size-fits-all description. In my experience, folks mean at least four separate—but related—things when they use the term deconstructing to describe themselves. That’s why a better approach would be to see deconstruction as a spectrum of postures.

Edition details

• Publisher: Multnomah
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593601521
• ISBN 13: 9780593601525
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256