Did the Lord Send Brisket?

Why cute idioms can't stop the deconstruction movement. (Part 2)

Let’s talk about the day it rained meat.

Yep, you read that right. Way back in 1876, Mrs. Rebecca Crouch was a farmer in Kentucky. One day, she went outside to make soap. And the craziest thing happened. She looked up, and it was literally raining meat. From the sky. For real.

Whether you like your meat stories well-done or rare, stick around for the juicy details. Get ready to laugh, cringe, and question everything with me.

The Kentucky Meat Shower happened on March 3, 1876. Yes, it’s a real thing. Yes, there’s a whole festival dedicated to it. And no, it was not an early marketing stunt for Arby’s.

Picture this: It’s a crisp March morning in Bath County, Kentucky, and Rebecca Crouch is filming a day-in-the-life video for her viral Trad Wife TikTok page. (Not really, because it’s 1876. But you get the idea.) As a social media content writer, I’ve taken the creative liberty of scripting the video for her. I dare you to read it in your breathiest, most delicate Trad Wife voice:

Hi, I’m Rebecca, and I’m a farmer’s wife from rural Kentucky, living my best life with no electricity, no boundaries, and no FDA oversight.

Get ready with me for a typical Saturday on the homestead while my big strong brute of a husband plows the back forty acres with nothing but grit and our mule named Rapture.

I usually like to take it easy on weekends, so I trained our rooster to crow at 4:45 a.m. to let me sleep in a little. Then I’m off to milk our cow Bessie, who once spoke in tongues during a tent revival and hasn’t been the same since.

Then for my cardio routine, I like to frolic barefoot across the yard, chasing down our chickens to fit them into their little bonnets.

Next, I do 15 minutes of high-intensity wood chopping, while shouting Psalms at the squirrels to keep them out of the root cellar.

Once I’ve finished my morning chores and wiped the goat spit off my skirt, it’s inside for a light butter-churning session. I like to churn standing up. It’s great for your core strength and spiritual sanctification.

After churning, it’s time for my favorite part of the day. Soap-making! I just grab a bucket of lye, some leftover beef tallow from last night’s dinner, and that mysterious grey water that collects under the chicken roost. And, don’t worry. I know several of you are gonna be begging me for the recipe in the comments. I’ll drop the link in my bio.

I like to do this around 7 a.m. when the late-morning sun hits just right. The smell of hot fat and ammonia just makes me feel alive.

So let’s grab a bucket and head out th—

Wait. Do y’all see that? What is that?

*camera flips*

Omg. Guys. I think it’s raining meat. Like actual meat. From the sky. I’m not kidding. Look!

*Whispers in awe* Did the Lord send brisket??

Can you see it? Raw meat is falling from the sky, as if God himself tripped and dropped a celestial charcuterie board right over her homestead. She gathers her neighbors and friends as witnesses. They exclaim, “It looks like beef!” Others pick it up and say, “No, it looks like lamb!”

And let’s be clear. This isn’t just your everyday meat sprinkle. It’s a shower, covering 100 yards—about the size of a football field. That’s a lot of meat.

Some of the townspeople decide to taste the meat. Bold move.

They begin to argue, “It take’s like venison!” and “Nah, it definitely tastes like bear.”

In the days following, those who witnessed the event called it a miracle. They decided that the meat was divine. Part of the local lore is that some people even traveled from nearby towns to come and taste the divine sky meat.

And here’s a shocker. The people who ate the meat got sick.

So imagine these people. Puking their guts out. And then being delusional enough to say, “Wow, what a miracle!”

Somewhere amidst all this questionable decision-making, someone (bless this human being and their common sense) wrapped a hunk of the meat in a kerchief and sent it off to scientists to analyze it.

The analysis was inconclusive. No one really knew where this gross, rancid-smelling meat came from. And so, the question lingered among the townspeople.

Did the Lord send brisket?

Two years later (yes, these people were that committed to this story), the scientists finally came to a conclusion: A flock of vultures likely puked when flying high above the field.

And just like that, the miracle meat became vulture vomit.

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What’s for dinner? Not toxic theology again!

Speaking of meat, let’s deconstruct another classic Christian idiom: Chew the meat, spit out the bones.

It’s one of those thought-stopping phrases churches love to use when people start calling out abusive trends within the system.

Translation: “You should be able to separate the good parts of this teaching from the dangerous ones.”

On the surface, it sounds wise—like a call for spiritual discernment. But underneath? It’s textbook DARVO behavior: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

Instead of fixing the problem (hello, serving up a choking hazard!), churches gaslight people and tell them they just need to become theological food critics. Because a “mature” Christian should be able to detect subtle notes of heresy and gracefully spit them out.

Chew the meat, spit out the bones.

This silly meat metaphor is nothing but a big fat caveat. It encourages people to tolerate harmful teachings under the guise of spiritual maturity. It’s the equivalent of a spiritual shrug. Are you choking, hun? That’s on you, not the chef.

Let’s get back to reality. That’s not how we teach people to eat.

No parent hands a toddler a rack of ribs and says, “Figure it out, Charlie.”

And I don’t see a bunch of adults out there ordering their hamburgers bone-in, either. We’ve built entire factories to make meat safer to eat for everyone.

Now, before the chicken-wing crowd comes for me—yes, lots of meat still has bones. But when it does, it’s obvious. It’s labeled. You know what you’re getting into. It’s a choice, not a trap.

But for the most part, we like to serve safe food. We like to make it easier—not harder—to be nourished. So why do we expect anything less in church?

Honestly, it baffles me.

The Kentucky Meat Shower holds up a mirror to the phrase chew the meat, spit out the bones. And here’s why. . .

This idiom assumes that there’s something inherently good about the “meat” to begin with. But with the Kentucky Meat Shower, there wasn’t. The meat was rotten. It was disgusting. It was predator-puke. But the people were so intent on seeing a miracle, that they didn’t have the presence of mind to look up at the sky and see the vultures.

Often, in controlling religious spaces, people see what they want to see, with little regard for facts. Very few people question the pastors and influencers out there who write bestsellers and make really convincing Instagram reels.

Where is the “meat” of these teachings (the content) coming from? What spiritual ecosystem did this person get their beliefs from? Is it meat, or is it just grossly misinterpreted theology?

Look up. All the way up. To the vultures at the top. Who’s in power? Who has preyed on the vulnerable, regurgitated abusive teachings, and passed them off as miracles to unsuspecting, hardworking people?

I can name a few: Mike Bickle from the International House of Prayer. Robert Morris and Gateway Church. Mark Driscoll. Ravi Zacharias. James MacDonald. The Southern Baptist Convention and Paul Pressler. Bill Gothard and the IBLP. And these are just a few off the top of my head. The list is truly endless.

Every single one of these big-name celebrity pastors, politicians, and evangelists has blamed their victims. They’re just bitter. They just need to chew the meat and spit out the bones. Christianity is under attack! Satan wants to ruin the Church’s reputation.

Here’s a quote from Julie Roys to address this:

God’s name is not being blasphemed to the rest of the world because of whistleblowers and advocates. It’s being blasphemed because of the hypocrites, and it’s about time we put the responsibility of what’s happening back on them.

Here’s the thing. This is incredibly uncomfortable to do. And it should be. Going after Christian celebrities and holding big names accountable isn’t the cool thing to do. Telling the truth isn’t comfortable.

The mental image of a flock of vultures puking over a 100-yard field isn’t comfortable, either. It’s gross. Eerie. Upsetting. Just like what’s going on in our churches. So what do most people do? We say things like, “My church isn’t like that.” and “Not all Christians are bad,” to distance ourselves from the discomfort.

It’s easy to agree that that one guy was abusive. And that one church had it coming. And then continue listening to our podcasters and megachurch pastors who spew the same kind of messaging.

It’s time to lean in to the discomfort. To question our teachings. To advocate for victims. It’s time to pay attention to the current Christian-celebrity voices who sound like the people on the first list.

You know them. The ones still flying high, saying eerily similar things, platformed by the same systems. Josh Howerton. John MacArthur. Emerson Eggerichs. Joe Rigney. Doug Wilson. Joni Lamb. Paula White. T.D. Jakes. Matt Walsh. Charlie Kirk. This list could go on, too. Watch closely. Their messaging reflects patterns we’ve seen before, in spaces where abuse has thrived.

I know, that sounds harsh. But we need to start paying better attention to the whole system. And frankly, we need to cut out all the voices who are just regurgitating the tried-and-true evangelical talking points.

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Deconstruction is a lot like decluttering.

What would Rebecca Crouch’s morning have looked like if she’d slowed down and looked up at the vultures? She’d go back to working hard and being present in her daily life. That’s not really the kind of story that gets communities to unite. It’s not as cool as claiming God chose to bless your farm with heavenly meat manna.

Similarly, what would American Christianity look like if we stopped consuming the celebrity vulture vomit?

It would look pretty ordinary. Maybe even a little boring. Instead of waiting for the pastor to open his mouth and make us feel like we’re thinking—we’d actually have to think for ourselves. Listening to someone isn’t thinking. Being told the right answers isn’t thinking. Being manipulated into fear isn’t thinking. Actual thinking takes lots of time and patience. It’s not as quick and neat. All your questions can’t be neatly solved in a forty-minute sermon that hits all the right political talking points.

When we’re raised to be spoon-fed answers, critical thinking will feel boring and lonely. Because it forces us to slow down and distance ourselves from the groupthink. It forces us to be okay with the story not making sense. And it keeps us from doing crazy stuff like eating vulture puke.

We all love to belong, and good marketing invites you to be part of something. So we follow big influential pastors in shiny happy churches. We buy their brands and share their posts. We unknowingly (or knowingly) fund their New York Times bestsellers, their mega-mansions, and their large donations to political candidates.

The evangelical church has become a transactional system, where everyone gets what they want. Trump gets his votes. Megachurch pastors get clout. And we get the illusion of belonging. (It’s an illusion because it’s conditional.)

This is why so many Christians are scared of deconstruction—because it threatens the whole system. When the illusion of belonging is what keeps people in line, asking questions feels dangerous. Not because deconstruction is wrong, but because it exposes what was never real to begin with.

Here’s another way to look at deconstruction. A friend recently shared this post with me that said:

I’m a decluttering Christian. I’m learning that there’s a lot that felt essential but was just cultural clutter. I’m not tearing down the house, just cleaning.

We don’t have to get swept up in the clutter of culture wars. Boycotting Barbie, Target, Starbucks, Greta Gerwig, women pastors, Bud Light, The Grammy’s, and the Olympics is exhausting (and annoying) to keep up with! And it’s not what makes anyone a Christian.

The influencers who spark these outrages are the Kentucky Meat Shower vultures. We’re just trying to live our quiet little lives, and then someone like Charlie Kirk swoops overhead, pukes out his opinions, and we’re like “OMG this is so great! What a miracle!”

We literally eat it up. (Bleh.)

So to answer the question in the title: No, the Lord didn't send brisket to Kentucky in 1876. Miracles don’t come hidden in rotten meat and rancid theology. It’s just not a thing.

Personally, my faith feels a lot more peaceful without the clutter. Sure, it’s ordinary. Maybe even a little boring and uneventful. But there’s something about slowing down, rejecting binaries, and stepping away from Christian consumerism that makes me feel healthier, more grounded, and more human.

If you’re going to comment, here’s what I’d love to hear:

1. What’s another churchy idiom you’d like me to deconstruct?
2. How have you been slowing down, decluttering your faith, and giving yourself space to think critically?