OK, so it's not really a meeting. I did get to shake the guy's hand and say a cursory hello.
(By the way...that's me on the fourth row aisle seat, looking stoned. I wasn't. I promise. My brother and sister-in-law are to my left.)
Brian McLaren, known in many ways as the father of the emergent church movement, visited my brother's church (Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky) this past weekend, delivering a Sunday morning sermon, holding an informal Q&A during Sunday School and then lecturing on the thesis of his new book, "Everything Must Change." I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in all three activities and certainly enjoyed the experience. Not that I agree 100 percent with his theology, but I think he is raising some important issues for the Church to consider.
(Others didn't agree either, especially during the evening Q&A. This is McLaren's take on the event. I looked across the blogosphere for the guy who challenged McLaren about redemption, eternity and the emergent theology during the Q&A but couldn't find him. I also looked on Twitter to no avail.)
Of course, I could spend hours talking about where McLaren and I agree and disagree. Feel free to peruse posts tagged "emergent" or "brian mclaren" for times we've discussed it before.
Sure, this is a late response to that particular blog post, but I'm sharing nonetheless.
I'm certainly in agreement that religion has treated science with disdain when the two are not inherently competitive. I'm also in agreement that society has, in large part, sacrificed objective truth on the altar of subjective morality (although I don't think Charles Darwin is solely to blame for this shift in cultural attitudes...post-modern thought didn't arise from one man's scientific theory).
I disagree with Ken that "do unto others as you would have them do until you" is the core of Christ's message. It is undoubtedly an essential part of the Christian theology that Jesus established. It is not The Gospel. To think otherwise is to place man's actions ahead of God's salvation. Indeed, that line of reasoning has it backwards; the reverse, in fact, is true: salvation first, works that result from that salvation is second.
The Gospel is this: in an outpouring of love, God created the universe, and with it, mankind. The first man chose sin instead of a personal relationship with God, and, thus, sin entered the world, separating imperfect humans from a perfect and divine God. Yet God, in his great mercy and love, ever-seeking to restore man's relationship to Him, provided Himself as a sacrifice by coming to earth as a man, Jesus, who lived a perfect and sinless life prior to giving Himself to death.
In that act of sacrifice--and in His glorious, bodily resurrection from the dead three days later--Jesus now stands at man's side as an advoate, saying to God on behalf of those Christ has saved: "This is my child. He/she has asked forgiveness for the sinful acts of their lives that have separated them from you. Yes, this one is imperfect. But I was willing to live the life he/she could not have lived by dying the death he/she should have died. I took this one's place, Father. My perfection provides Grace to them in your eyes, regardless of their worthiness."
That's The Gospel. Sure, gratitude from Christ's sacrifice pours itself out from Believers in acts of sacrificial love; these are reflections of Christ's love for man, stirred in us by Christ living within us through the Holy Spirit. This manifests itself as Christ commanded, through "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you." But that oft-quoted verse is not The Gospel. A component, yes.
I'm not as intelligent as Charles Darwin. I think he came up with a fascinating theory. The minutae of how God, in His omniscence and omnipotence, established Creation, is beyond the limits of my human intelligence. Don't misunderstand. I'm not suggesting that it is somehow wrong to attempt, with vigorous scientific observation and inquiry, to discern these and other matters. What I am suggesting is that mankind is guilty of a collective arrogance in regards to its attempts at comprehending God. That, among other reasons, is why I can't understand the reasons behind some evangelicals' celebration of an agnostic scientist, despite his obvious genius.
So, what do you think? Agree with me? Disagree with me? That's cool...but share your thoughts. Back 'em up.
Ah, if only spirituality was as simple as answering a bunch of questions on a quiz to find out who you should worship.
Apparently, it is that easy. At least if you use Beliefnet's Belief-O-Matic. I'm not a big fan of Beliefnet; it's a little too Deepak Chopra-esque to me. But the Belief-O-Matic is mindless fun. Some of the questions need more varied answers--I found that for many of them I had to pick answers that were as close to my Evangelical Christian convictions as I could get; the "right" answer wasn't there--but if you want to spend five minutes taking an online quiz (and who doesn't?), try the amazing, 100% guaranteed Belief-O-Matic today for only three easy payments of $19.99!
In other Emergent news, there are rumors that Rob Bell is leaving Mars Hill Bible Church (Michigan). Has anyone else heard this rumor? Is there anything to it?
* What were your Belief-O-Matic results? (I was quite relieved to discover I am, in fact, a born-again Christian. Glad the Belief-O-Matic cleared that up.)
* Should pastors and other Evangelical leaders publically support a presidential candidate? Why or why not? What role should Christian leaders take in presidential politics?
* What do you like about Rob Bell's theology? What don't you like?
* Would having a Mormon on a presidential ticket influence your vote? What about a Muslim? A Hindu? An atheist?
Here's the thing: I don't want to come off as being reactionary when it comes to Emergent types in general and Brian McLaren specifically. I really don't. I also don't want to be what Emergents roll their eyes at--an evangelical, Reformed Christian who only points out bad theology or worldview instead of engaging in dialogue.
But if I am what I hate, then I have something in common with the Apostle Paul, and that puts me in good company. Am I rationalizing? Sure.
Q: How is what you recommend different than the humanitarian work churches do already? A: It's not working within the paradigm that a lot of Christians work — which is all that God is ultimately interested in is extracting souls for heaven. And we might do some good works here on earth, but we don't really expect any of it to work, because the world is sort of, the toilet has been flushed and it's going down.
Ummm...OK. So far, so good. No complaints here. This is one of the central points of why I walked away from my faith in my late teens/early 20s (real original, huh?) and why society has de-valued Christian thought in recent decades.
Q: What do you mean by systemic change? A: You can make incremental changes within a subsystem but in order to actually change a whole system you have to get a lot of the parts changing all at once. ... You can pour money into building a school, but then if there's a war, the war wipes out all the benefit you got from the school and the school shuts down. You can improve agriculture, but if HIV runs through, then there's so much upheaval, then you can't maintain the advances in agriculture.
And now we're 2-for-2. Of course, I would argue that the "whole system" of Christian theology hardly needs changing. Again, and this is the central point of my beef with Emergent types, if we start talking about systemic change, then we get down a path that questions Christ's divinity the inerrancy of Scripture, etc.
Q: But there's an impression churches are already so active on these issues. Why does anyone need to urge churches to do this? A: One of the really important concepts is the difference between mercy and justice. There's that famous passage from Micah 6, "Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God." One way to describe it is unjust systems throw people into misery and mercy brings us to relieve some of their misery, but until we confront the unjust systems by doing justice we're never going to make a change. ... I think what churches in America, especially evangelical churches, are just waking up to is the way they have to deal with systemic injustice, not just charitable giving to people in misery.
Bravo, Mr. McLaren. Bravo.
I think the naivete of some of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of screwing up.
OK, now we're starting to have trouble. A pristine understanding of the Gospel? How about "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life...no one comes to the Father but through Me." How are we in danger of screwing up if we start with that as cornerstone No. 1? Is that not a pristine understanding of the Gospel? Look, I know "no one comes to the Father but through Me" is divisive. But Jesus said it. Sorry. End of story.
Ten years ago, the question was, why are Gen-Xers dropping out of church? .. So we've been grappling with these very deep theological questions over the last five or seven years.
Fantastic. That's the question I've been seeking an answer to as well. I know my own story, and I would suspect it is similar to others'.
Q: What are the weaknesses of the movement? A: Nobody had a master strategy for this. That creates weaknesses as well as strengths. It means you don't have anybody calling the shots and it means that things happen in a somewhat haphazard way. And I think there's a huge range of responses. ... Among evangelicals you have people who are not doing any theological rethinking at all. The theology that they inherited, they're staying with 100 percent. They're trying to do sort of methodological innovation (in styles of worship). And my personal feeling is that's great. Those'll be steps in a good direction... I'm not a purist about anything. I think it's all good. We're all trying to stumble along and take some steps in the right direction. Others of us are asking theological questions and that's always messy.
I am a purist...about Jesus, what He said, what He did. I'm not apologizing for it. It seems like too many people are. Again, the big question: What if Jesus meant everything He said? And, again, what does "theological rethinking" mean, anyway? Does it mean we are rethinking core aspects of the faith, the Truth of Christ? The inerrancy of the Word of God? Because these are areas where there can be no compromise. Again, that's divisive. But Jesus was divisive to a lot of people. That's one of the reasons they wanted to kill Him. (But they failed...they didn't kill Jesus. Jesus laid down His life.)
...if liberal means that government can solve all of our problems and that secularism is better than faith, and that it doesn't matter what you do in your personal life and that morality is up for grabs, then I'm not a liberal.
Nor am I.
I welcome all comments. Feel free to comment on-page, or e-mail feedback to CandidChristian@gmail.com.
My state newspaper (the Charleston Gazette--warning: terrible functionality) ran an Associated Press interview with Brian McLaren on Saturday, which is great because here, in West Virginia, the level of understanding about emerging trends in church and worship are, at best, woefully understood and, at worst, represent a complete ignorance.
As always, I find myself disagreeing with the guy on a bunch of things (am I consciously looking for things to disagree on, or really listening with an open mind? I hope the latter), so I think I'll sit down and churn out a few words about it tonight.
I couldn't care less where Barack Obama goes to church, or who is pastor is. I do care what Obama thinks and believes...but they aren't necessarily the same as what Jeremiah Wright thinks and believes. (Speaking of that, check out this video. I think I'll keep a running diary of it and post here and on Twitter either tonight or tomorrow. Great, great stuff in this video, and another side of a man many of us only know from soundbites.)
My question is this: Did Jeremiah Wright really refuse to affirm Christ as the only way to God at today's meeting with the National Press Club in Washington? If so, it means Wright's beliefs are part of a troubling trend in the 21st century, post-modern church.
Wright, Brian McLaren and others of their ilk apply a rigid standard to Jesus' actual words when it comes to His stance on social justice. I applaud that. Further, I wholeheartedly agree that we, as Christians, have put far too little emphasis on that aspect of our faith, focusing instead on our own spiritual development at the expense of those outside the often country club-like atmosphere of white, suburban, middle-class congregations. Might I, however, submit that those more philsophically on the left are just as guilty as narrowly defining what Christ said and meant as those on the philosophical right?
Why can't those emergent, post-modern "evangelical" leaders apply that same standard to everything Jesus said?
