As I have read Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian, he has brought about a lot of formation to feelings and thoughts I have had before regarding Christianity. The book discusses how what we know as Christianity is from a modern context and just as our society has changed into postmodern so must the Church. While I don’t agree with everything he claims, I agree with the fact that our view of Christianity is from an American, Western culture context that might be very different than what Christ originally intended for his followers.
Here are some different quotes that intrigued me:
“The last thing we need to do is insert yet another division into the church… I don’t want to divide ‘New Christians’ from ‘Traditional Christians’ or ‘Postmodern Christians from ‘Modern Christians.’ I don’t have time for that kind of foolishness, so I think we have to be very careful about the language we use. Please help me try to avoid any ‘us-and-them’ kind of thinking… We’re talking about a new kind of Christian, not the new kind or a better kind or the superior kind, just a new kind.”
We are far to quickly as Christians to judge and group people into insiders verses outsiders. Christ never did that. While labels can be used as useful descriptions of other people, we much more frequently turn them into words that contain preconceived judgments about them and an attitude that says: “we are better.” As I look through scripture, I see that the only people Jesus seems to separate out as a typically “worse” kind of sinner are those who think they are righteous, the religious.
“What if the real issue is not the authority of the text but rather the authority of God, moving mysteriously up here on a higher level, a foot above the ground? What if the issue isn’t a book that we can misinterpret with amazing creativity but rather the will of God, the intent of God, the desire of God, the wisdom of God – maybe we could say the kingdom of God?”
While I found that McLaren didn’t fully explain his ideas about biblical interpretation, I appreciated some of the thoughts. I have found that Scripture can be used to pretty much say anything a person wants it to say, whether for the good or bad. How do we then base our lives off something that can be used to do that? How do we know we are interpreting the scripture correctly and not using it for our own manipulation? At the heart of reading and understanding Scripture, our desire should be to find Truth, discover God, and try to understand our own prejudices, preconceptions, and culture barriers we have coming to the text.
“What if faith were more like the earth than a building? What if faith could never be stable in the way God intends it to be if it didn’t have forward momentum and if that momentum weren’t in a field of the gravity of God himself? The earth seems to get its stability from a combination of things – it’s own momentum, the gravity of the sun, maybe even the moon and other planets play some role. And if you don’t like that metaphor think of a bird in flight or a bicycle or a ship on the sea. In each case, there’s movement in relation to some larger forces and realities. Stability comes through an intervplay of those factors. Stability is not always as simple as a static building sitting on a solid foundation. John Wesley understood this very well: he talked about the church deriving its stability from a dynamic interplay of four forces – Scripture, tradition, reason and spiritual experience… maybe both liberals and conservatives are working from a static model of authority and both need to be called to a higher point of view to see that our situation is much more dynamic, much more predicamental.”
Evangelism:
“Demonstration must accompany proclamation… instead of saying, “hey, they’re wrong and we’re right, so follow us,’ I think we need to say, ‘here’s what I’ve found. Here’s what I’ve experienced. Here’s what makes sense to me.’ Instead of conquest, instead of a coercive rational argument or an emotionally intimidating sales pitch or an imposing crusade or an aggressive debating contest where we hope to ‘win’ them to Christ, I think of it like a dance. You know, in a dance, nobody wins and nobody loses. Both parties listen to the music and try to move with it. In this case, I hear the music of the gospel and my friend doesn’t, so I try to help him hear it and move with it. And like a dance, I have to ask if the other person wants to participate.”
“Why do you think church people get so tense, so inflexible? “They come to religion for some certainity, some clarity, some simplicity. They react when the thing they’re counting on for stability starts shaking them instead of consoling them, calming them. I think a lot of them are afraid and actually, to be fair, they have some legitimate concerns. They’re afraid of heresy and sin creeping into the camp. They want to keep everything safe, sanitized.”
How do we remain open and accepting of people without compromising and condoning sin?
“Isn’t it possible that God could have a special mission for the Amish and an equally special mission for people like you and me who live very differently? Does one have to be wrong and the other right? I mean, it’s right there in the Bible- the sons of Rechab in the Old Testament and John the Baptist in the New served God by being total abstainers from alcohol, and Jesus served god by turning water into wine. Talk about complexity… Another problem with the modern view of sin: it wants to make everything simple, universal, uniform, black and white. Life isn’t that simple. Sin isn’t that simple… One of the most dangerous things in the world is to redefine sin to suit our own tastes.”
He describes his understanding of sin using the story of the Good Samaritan. Everyone realizes that the robber is bad and the Samaritan is good, but people fail to also notice the Priest and Levite that also walk through the story. Is their sin of ignorance not as great as the sin of the robber? Our sins are all connected and we live in a community, which means we are not individuals merely sinning by ourselves, but what we do affects others. Thus, we should have a higher understanding of sin that is not just point out what is bad but is actually finding the good and striving for that. It’s more than just being a neighbor that doesn’t steal from the person next to you, it’s about being a good neighbor that helps and is concerned for the person next to you…. Anything beneath that is a sin.
I'll probably have more thoughts along the way, but this is kind of my first reaction to the book. He presents his arguments in a dialogue/story setting instead of theological debate, which makes the book easy to read and understand. While I don't agree with everything he says, I did find that many of his thoughts resonated with my own experiences and developments throughout my life.
