Brian McLaren is not a heretic. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a heretic, but he's not a porn star.
Honestly, I don't know much about Brian McLaren. Back in my "Catholic" days of being a Christian -- when I used to let various authorities decide what was and wasn't true without any investigation or thought on my own part -- Brian McLaren was a known danger. He was even a step up from the dreaded Rob Bell, which is really saying something.
During the course of my journey towards enlightened bliss, however, I grew tired of the spoon feeding, the policing, the defending and protecting. The same people going after Brian McLaren were going after Tom Wright, and that's just not on! If Wright is a threat to the church then he is a much-needed threat, and his voice demands urgent hearing. But the powers that be would like a safe church, and so voices that attempt to shake her out of her comfort zone are to be screened, steralised, or just silenced. They're banned, 'cause the Regime don't like it, man.
If it sounds like I've simply replaced one group of popes with another (Wright), rest assured that I have not. But what I like in Wright and others (such as Daniel Kirk) is their approach - wrestling with the text of Scripture honestly, and letting it speak for itself to a community eager to hear. This is not to ignore tradition. But as Scot McKnight writes in The Blue Parakeet, we are best reading the Bible when we read it not through tradition but with it. There is a difference.
What's all this got to do with Brian McLaren? Well, I guess I felt it was time to read Brian McLaren for myself rather than letting the opinion of others also be my opinion. And why am I even writing about this? Well, I want to examine a couple of chapters at the beginning of McLaren's latest work, A New Kind of Christianity. These chapters have to do with the Christian story, the story of the Bible.
To sum up, McLaren says we have gotten it wrong.
Expect a conversation between McLaren and I (and perhaps even you?) over the next week or two.
Honestly, I don't know much about Brian McLaren. Back in my "Catholic" days of being a Christian -- when I used to let various authorities decide what was and wasn't true without any investigation or thought on my own part -- Brian McLaren was a known danger. He was even a step up from the dreaded Rob Bell, which is really saying something.
During the course of my journey towards enlightened bliss, however, I grew tired of the spoon feeding, the policing, the defending and protecting. The same people going after Brian McLaren were going after Tom Wright, and that's just not on! If Wright is a threat to the church then he is a much-needed threat, and his voice demands urgent hearing. But the powers that be would like a safe church, and so voices that attempt to shake her out of her comfort zone are to be screened, steralised, or just silenced. They're banned, 'cause the Regime don't like it, man.
If it sounds like I've simply replaced one group of popes with another (Wright), rest assured that I have not. But what I like in Wright and others (such as Daniel Kirk) is their approach - wrestling with the text of Scripture honestly, and letting it speak for itself to a community eager to hear. This is not to ignore tradition. But as Scot McKnight writes in The Blue Parakeet, we are best reading the Bible when we read it not through tradition but with it. There is a difference.
What's all this got to do with Brian McLaren? Well, I guess I felt it was time to read Brian McLaren for myself rather than letting the opinion of others also be my opinion. And why am I even writing about this? Well, I want to examine a couple of chapters at the beginning of McLaren's latest work, A New Kind of Christianity. These chapters have to do with the Christian story, the story of the Bible.
To sum up, McLaren says we have gotten it wrong.
Expect a conversation between McLaren and I (and perhaps even you?) over the next week or two.
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