We’ve probably all had the sad experience of watching someone we love walk away from the faith they’ve professed. We witnessed their baptism. We heard their testimony. Or perhaps we didn’t know them personally, but we enjoyed listening to their music or reading their books. But now they say that they no longer believe in Jesus or the Bible — at least not as they did before. Whether they’ve turned to skepticism, Hinduism, or transgenderism, in current lingo they’ve “deconstructed” or “deconverted”; in older parlance, they’ve “apostatized.”
As we listen to deconversion narratives, we’re often not sure how to feel. If we take the accounts at face value, we might feel pity or admiration. After all, perhaps such people wanted Christianity to be true, but they could no longer bear the intellectual strain of reconciling apparent contradictions in Scripture. Perhaps they had a non-Christian friend who died tragically, and they couldn’t bear the thought of him being in hell. Or maybe they saw gaping moral hypocrisy in the pastor who had discipled them, and it shattered their trust. In these narratives, those deconstructing often appear as victims betrayed by ultraconservative believers or as heroes driven by intellectual courage (or both).
But before we walk down this road too far, we need to pause and ask, How does God view deconversion? Hebrews 10:29 provides us with a sobering vision of apostasy. The more we imbibe this vision, the more we will see apostasy as God sees it: as the ultimate act of betrayal and disloyalty, deserving of divine judgment.
Rejecting God’s Grace
Hebrews is full of passages that warn against turning away from Jesus and back to old-covenant Judaism. Hebrews 10:26–29 is the climactic warning, coming at the end of a long section unpacking the superior priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus (4:14–10:18). In it, the writer alerts us to the danger of rejecting God’s grace in Christ:
If we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? (10:26–29)
These verses convey a startling lack of sympathy for people enticed back to Judaism, even though they had endured significant suffering. We’re later told that these believers had faced “reproach and affliction,” with some going to prison and others having their property plundered (10:32–34). Surely, we could understand why victims of such trauma might seek shelter in a more accepted religion, especially when that religion was one that God himself had once ordained. But the author doesn’t share that understanding. To him, such a person has “trampled the Son of God underfoot.” This language inspires no sympathy for the trampler.
Trampling the Son of God
A memorable scene in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde illustrates the metaphor. On a dark street late at night, Mr. Hyde accidentally collides with a little girl running toward a corner. But instead of helping her up, Mr. Hyde steps on her, producing screams of pain. Before long, Hyde is surrounded by an angry mob demanding justice.
People will celebrate you for some sins, but trampling on an innocent person isn’t one of them. That’s how God views apostasy — except you’re trampling on Jesus. If someone deconstructs for the “right” reason, the world will support them, at least for a little while. But when they stand in judgment on the last day, the cruelty of their treason will be laid bare, and the world will turn on them like the mob around Mr. Hyde. If you receive the message of a crucified Messiah only to re-crucify him later, then even the men of Nineveh will rise up and condemn you (Hebrews 6:6; Matthew 12:41).
People “died without mercy” for abandoning Moses’s words (Hebrews 10:28), and Jesus is far greater than Moses, worthy of far more glory (3:3). Trampling on Jesus, then, will bring a “worse punishment.” And according to Hebrews, this punishment will be “deserved” (12:28–29).
The point is not to kindle hate against those who apostatize or to lose all pity for them. But it is to warn us about the seriousness of what they’re doing, lest we minimize their sin or follow their example.
Remember Judgment Day
Picture a person who deconstructs after their pastor committed sexual abuse. They leave the church and then throw themselves into advocacy for abuse victims. In their efforts, they declare substitutionary atonement a cruel teaching that enables abuse.
We may sympathize with this person, but if we think that on judgment day Jesus will condone their choices, we haven’t absorbed Hebrews 10:29. It’s true that leaders will bear a heavy responsibility for those whom they caused to stumble through their hypocrisy. But Jesus also warned us that ravenous wolves would come in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15), so no one should be totally taken off guard. Hypocrisy and abuse should rightly stir us to anger and grief, but they should also drive us to Christ, not away from him. We can’t conflate the sins of the church with the one who died to save us. When we do, we trample Christ — and invite his judgment.
Jesus called the believers in the book of Hebrews to follow him even at risk to their own safety. His bar for us isn’t any lower. He calls us to be faithful to him in a world of plausible-sounding lies and excuses (Matthew 10:16–23; John 8:44). And when he listens to deconversion stories, he isn’t nearly as impressed as we might be. Not only does he see apostasy for what it is, but as the one trampled, he feels it.
We must learn to feel it too, so that we don’t trample on him. It’s not wrong to view apostasy through the eyes of the apostate. But that can’t be our main lens. We need to see apostasy as God sees it: as an act of treachery and betrayal that Jesus takes personally.
So when you hear deconversion stories, don’t be swayed. Instead, pray for the fallen. Plead for God to give them eyes to see. Pray that he would put his fear into their hearts (Jeremiah 32:40). Ask him to guard you against the deception that has drawn them away. And through it all, pray that Christ would be exalted, his Spirit honored, and his saints kept to the end.
Desiring God