Title: Brian McLaren’s A New Kind Of Christianity, Ten Questions That Are Transforming The Faith.
Overview: As Emergence Christianity progresses, it becomes critical for voices to begin offering not just critique but alternative perspectives that make sense. Brian offers ten questions that begin to frame an alternative perspective to traditional evangelical orthodoxy.
The book is broken up into two sections. Question 6-10 addresses more practical questions of community and living out the faith.
Part 1: Question 1 | Part 2: Question 2 & 3 | Part 3: Question 4-5
Question 6: What do we do about the church?
What I Hear Brian Saying: Brian is suggesting that over the last 2,000 years we’ve gone from simplicity to complexity. And now we are beginning to go back to simplicity in how we gather together. Brian offers one statement that caught my attention. He says,
“What one great danger do people need to be saved from and, more positively, what one great purpose do they need to be saved for? Around what melody can we harmonize without trying to homogenize? Of many possible answers, there is one to which I am continually drawn, embarrassingly obvious an simple to understand, but also embarrassingly challenging to do: the church exists to form Christlike people, people of Christian love.“
My Response: I cannot help but celebrate Brian’s response, with his desire to develop people of love. Love is to me the center of the Gospel and the best expression of what it means to be human. The only tension I have in this statement is that it is still removed from understanding the problem that it addresses. And once again, it also expresses my tension with Brian’s approach, and why many will label him simply liberal. Brian seems to be suggesting that human is simply progressing as opposed to addressing a deeply embedded problem. When we remove our understanding of the problem, we remove the context for understanding why love is so profound.
I also want to propose and suggest that our historical understanding of the problem does a terrible job of informing us effectively why being like Christ and engaging love is so important. When we get our understanding of the problem wrong, it robs us of an effective, intrinsic, and mobilizing story. Brian is right to address the problems these traditions create, but I just find his solution lacking.
Question 7: Can We Find A Way To Address Human Sexuality Without Fighting About It?
What I Hear Brian Saying: This question addresses much of the fundamental practice of vilifying those who practice homosexuality. Brian rightly rejects the notion that these acts are damning and create a one and done exit from God.
My Response: I really like what Brian is trying to do with the whole question of homosexuality. I’ve had many conversations with good friends about the nature of sexuality, and specifically homosexuality. The problem is when we place such emphasis on a single act of sexuality between the same sexes and draw a radical conclusion that is so counter to the notion of grace that we completely forget the other person is still human. I for one don’t thing the problem is the specific subjective act but in the judgments we make about the person performing the act. When we see something we don’t agree with, using the Bible as our guide, and we forget love int the process, damning the person to hell (which no one can actually do) we miss the centrality of the Gospel’s capacity to transform through love. If Brian is doing anything, he is suggesting we take a strong look in the mirror for once and recognize how our strong stances are so counter to the way Jesus operates that we miss the hypocrisy of it all.
Question 8: Can We Find A Better Way Of Viewing The Future?
What I Hear Brian Saying: This question addresses the recent issue of dispensationalism. Brian suggests that we’ve reduced Christianity to a grand “soul-sort”, where we determine who is in and who is out. Brian addresses the issue of determinism inherent in the more fundamental circles.
My Response:It was interesting for me but not terribly interesting. I grew up in a dispensational world and have long left it behind (pun intended).
Question 9: How Should Followers Of Jesus Relate To Other People Of Other Religions?
What I Hear Brian Saying: Brian is suggesting that as we enter a world of religious pluralism (especially in the US) we have to begin seeing it differently. Brian actually makes the argument that Jesus wasn’t very concerned about other people’s spiritual status with, “What is that to you! You follow me.” (John 21:22) Brian does address the “no one” statement in John 14: 8-11 in a rather compelling way, but I can easily image many just ignoring his response.
My Response: I would suggest that our answer to this question begins when we shift our attention from “religions” and back to “people”. Before we ever believe anything we are first human begins. And that is the answer to our problems. We have no credibility to anyone when we don’t begin with love, which begins with another person’s dignity and seeing the God image with them.
Question 10: The What-Do-We-Do-Now Question?
What I Hear Brian Saying: Brian’s final question offers one of the most compelling reasons to buy the book. He offers a color coded progression of faith development that is not new but insightful. You have to buy the book to read it because I could not do it justice in such short detail. Needless to say that his final stage of development is Ubuntu, which I loved. I also loved how Brian suggested that each state just is what it is. One is not better than the other but one can’t help recognize that one is more productive that the previous.
My Response:Much of Emergence I believe operates in the green (individuality) and indigo (honesty) states. A large group of people have come to question the paradoxes and problems inherent in our traditions, specifically the atonement theories, the idea of denominations, and the inherent limitations of or church practices. But as Brian suggests, these are not the final states of community. True integration comes in the violet state of unity.
