Sunday, September 10, 2006
Brian McLaren
My Sunday reading included a story in the Washington Post about Brian McLaren, a name I see more and more. Known as a progressive evangelical and a leader in the emergent church movement, he is also the author of The Secret Message of Jesus. It is interesting to hear some of these new voices and to study what effect they are having on the Christian church.
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12 comments:
He takes the "Essenic" route.
Brian McLaren dude. Brian.
Thanks, Adam. I have corrected my error.
Thanks, Jean, for alerting me to this article. I have read some of McCaren's work, and, while I don't agree with all of his assertions, I am grateful for his voice. We can never be comfortable and confident in our understanding of the Gospel unless we are willing to hear and wrestle with interpretations different from our own. To refuse to do so invites the attitude that is the major failing of the Religious Right and fundamentalists of all faiths: "I am right and you are wrong, and, by the way, that makes me better than you."
Where is the Kingdom of God? How inclusive is it? Who defines the terms? Today's emerging church has already moved the boundaries of His Kingdom. It has redefined God's Word and is fast embracing the latest versions of the old Gnostic quest for secret knowledge (gnosis) and self-actualization, whether through mystical experience or collective imagination.
To think or not to think........To eat or not to eat....To be or not to be.....I AM or I ain't.....McClaren or the New Economy of Grace --- We can't self flagellate all the questions because we eventually tire of beating ourselves up, and as soon as we skip a beat on the next lash, we allow doubt to creep into even the most rigid of faith journeys. Why not approach the "Mind of Christ" with an open mind that allows Christ the benefit of the doubt in his ability to be imaginative department?
Does "Secret Message" move us toward "Secret Gospels"?
Why does't the number of comments change when there are more that 4?
Tom - Clearly my intellect or my education or both fail to match yours as I am unable to translate your comments. Have you read a lot concerning the "emergent church"? Are you suggesting we should not be open to hearing non-traditional interpretations of Scripture? If so, which traditions and doctrine and dogma do we accept and then defer to Christ to be imaginative? How would we have reacted to Augustine or Thomas a Kempis (or more properly Gerard Groote) or Martin Luther or Dietrich Bonhoeffer? What must it have been like when someone dared to produce an English translation of Scripture that differed from the KJV?
I don't mean to be argumentative. Rather, I am hopeful Jean's blog will offer an opportunity for dialogue and I will learn something that will move me further along my faith journey, or, as John Wesley would say, inch me along toward perfection.
George-(Why not approach the "Mind of Christ" with an open mind that allows Christ the benefit of the doubt in his "ability to be imaginative" department?)
The previous question was copied and pasted from my original post. I added much needed quotation marks to simplify and clarify the major premise of my initial thought. I hope this makes interpretaton easier. We all think faster than we type. I think that any time modern Christians are confronted with the possibility (especially in a title and book written by someone of theological influence) of Jesus having an agenda other than what is conventionally accepted, and certainly when that agenda suggests that had they been contemporaries of Jesus that they might not have qualified as recipients of a "Secret Message",they are threatened at the psyche. Personally, I believe that Jesus hsd enough sense not to speak in parables when he did not have to. How He composed His thought process could only be limited by "His imagination" which is a product of "His Mind" which I think we should aspire toward having. So, please, put me down as one who would be eager to entertain the possibilities of alternative interpretations since it is impossible that the truth of the Gospels lies anywhere but smack in the middle of possibilities, and it is impossible that the concept and reality of Resurrecton did not and do not carry with them the aura of mysticism. So, yeah. any authors willing to step up to the plate and swing hard can keep those cards and letters coming.
My E-mail address is tomcandoit@hotmail.com
Would love to be able to expound on positions or listen to yours.
In an interview, Mclaren was asked and responded to the following:
Q. What are the issues that make your approach to Christianity different than the others?
A. I would say there are maybe three significant differences that come to the top. The first is an understanding of the Gospel that centers on Jesus' teaching of the Kingdom of God. I think just about everyone agrees the message Jesus proclaimed is the message that the Kingdom of God is at hand. I grew up in the church, and I never heard about that. When I heard about the Kingdom of God it was always interpreted as going to heaven after you die. So the message that the Kingdom being at the center of the Gospel is just staggeringly important, in my opinion. We're not unique in emphasizing that, but it’s important.
The second thing would be an eschatology of engagement rather than abandonment. The idea that the world is going down the toilet and that we should just abandon and prepare for evacuation, I think, creates horrible possibilities of injustice. And so, we're trying to have an eschatology that thrusts us into the world as agents of justice and peace and reconciliation and service, rather than one that makes us stand on the edge with condemnation and judgment, because we're always planning to depart.
The third one would be the word integral. We're interested in integrating things that previously have been seen as polarities. So that involves, for example, finding the strengths of mainline Protestants and strengths of evangelicals and saying we're better off with the strengths of both than strengths and weaknesses of only one.
I could not have phrased his second point any more personally.
Thanks for sharing that quote from McLaren. Sadly, I have to agree with him on the first point. I believe most of us, at least in my generation, grew up with the understanding that life after death, the New Jerusalem of Revelation, was the Kingdom on which we should set our hopes.
With that as our eschatological view, it is easy to be disengaged and still feel righteous. I, too, am in full agreement here with McLaren. We have been too willing to ignore and even turn our backs on the cries of God's children in this world who are the victims of injustice.
And I believe that mentality is both caused by and contributes to the issue in his third point. We spend so much energy disparaging others because their way of expressing their faith differs from ours, and we fail to reach out and claim a universality of faith in a Resurrected Christ who calls us follow Him. We hate the Samaritan because he/she is a Samaritan and fail to acknowledge that he/she is good and a child of God.
John Wesley said that "In the essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity." May God grant us the wisdom to discern the true essentials and, in our searching and debating, to always treat others with charity, or love.
Tom, I may not have understood you at first, but I feel a strong kinship, brother.
Cool enough!
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