what is Destiny Image doing, putting out this book?

A while ago, I did something crazy, and joined Destiny Image's book review club, or whatever it was at that time. Hey, if I'm going to read NAR junk and put reviews of it on Amazon, it may as well be for free. I've tried to be fair and my reviews, and some have even had a slight positive side to them, but overall...yeah, garbage.

Anyway, DI did change things recently, and now they simply offer e-books for free or on sale on Amazon, and send e-mail notices about them.

So, a few days ago, I got one of the e-mails. There was a bit of an ad for a book they will release soon. What got my attention about this ad was the quote from someone whom I guess had read the book, and liked it. Here's that quote and the person who is credited for it.

"This book may just save Christianity from us Christians"--Frank Schaeffer.

I don't do it much, for reasons of health, but I know that I have opined about Schaeffer a few times here. For example, Schaeffer is the one who gave us such gems as "...BEHOLD REPUBLICANS WILL NOW OWN EVERY CHILD KILLED BY A GUN". Please note, I did not add the all-caps, that was Schaeffer's doing. Or, these paragraphs...

The terror unleashed on Norway - and the terror now unleashed by the Tea Party through Congress as it holds our economy hostage to extremist "economic" theories that want to destroy our ability to function -- is the sort of white, Christian; far right terror America can expect more of.

Call this the ultimate "Tea Party" type "answer" to secularism, modernity, and above all our hated government. Call this the Christian Brotherhood. From far right congress people, to far right gun-toting terror in Norway and here at home, our own Western version of the Taliban is on the rise.

Foreigners, visitors from another planet and Americans living in a bubble of reasonable or educated people might not know this but the reality is that the debt ceiling confrontation is by, for and the result of America's evangelical Christian control of the Republican Party.

 Please note, yes, I have linked to my own articles above. You can find links to the sources for those quotes on that page, but, frankly (pun intended), I have little desire to stomach any more of Frank Schaeffer's hate-filled nonsense then I must, and so will not link to his words any more than I must.

So, Destiny Image is proudly putting a blurb of this man's words in an ad for a giveaway for this book, Undiluted, by someone names Benjamin Corey. Take a good look at the book's cover, and you'll see that there are a few words in praise of the book at the bottom of the page, by one Brian McLaren. Yep, the same man who has pretty much denied every cardinal doctrine of Christianity.

Now, since the book's page has the author's website, I made a quick little visit, and was certainly not surprised by what I saw, given Schaeffer's and McLaren's words of praise. Basically, it's a blog in favor of progressive --ianity (that may be my new word for it, as there is basically no Christ in it at all).

So, in other words, Destiny Image is proudly promoting a book put out by someone on the far left. Yeah, let that sink in.

If you want to find basically any book on bad Charismatic theology, Destiny Image is your source. So, don't (repeat: DON'T) be surprised at Destiny Image and charismania going to the left. This isn't the first time I've seen this in charismatic writers, and why should it be a surprise? Consider that both charismatics and progressives put much more emphasis on hearing a supposed voice of God inside themselves, over what is actually taught in the Bible. Since both get their guidances from the same source, why should a meeting of their minds not happen?

well, he predicted it, somewhat

First, what did he somewhat predict?

Q & R: Let's talk about premarital sex

One reason for the scarcity of safe spaces for dialogue will probably be demonstrated in the ways a sentence or two from this reply to your question will be lifted and spread around the internet ... "Can you believe what McLaren said (or didn't say) this time?"

Yep, Brian McLaren had it someewhat right, though I don't intend to lift just a sentence or two here.

First, a side comment--McLaren's blog seems to consist mostly of him replying to e-mails sent to him. One element most of the e-mails he chooses seem to have is that they contain great praise for his works. Just noting.

In this e-mail, a man has questions about if he and his then-fiance may have gone too far. While they were engaged, they had sex. The e-mail is on McLaren's post, so you can read it, and see how he justifies what they did, and how he engages in "If it feels so right, it can't be wrong" reasoning.

A real pastor would likely have gone to passages in the Bible that speak about fornication, sex before marriage, and how it is wrong and a sin against God's laws, something to be repented of. McLaren, well...

You and your (now) wife, it seems to me, took a more Pauline approach: instead of focusing on what things were lawful, you focused on what was expedient (1 Cor. 6:12 - the language sounds a bit clinical in this setting, doesn't it!). Your approach was also highly Jamesian ... focusing on wisdom (James 1) and "the royal law" of love (James 2). You monitored what was happening in your individual souls and the soul of your marriage, and when you felt that what was happening was obsessive and therefore "unfree" and not flowing from good faith (I think this is what you meant by idolatrous?), you changed course.

So, this couple was "Pauline" and "Jamesian", as if they were following what the Bible teaches about sex instead of going against it.

You didn't find a verse to justify what you were doing, and then conclude, "Now we have no more moral responsibility," but instead you tried to live in sync with the Holy Spirit and ultimately chose to be abstinent until your wedding because your heart and conscience made you want to do so.

So, by engaging in sex before they were married, then deciding to quit for a while, they were trying to "live in sync with the Holy Spirit"? What? Is really trying to say that the Holy Spirit was leading this couple to bed with each other before they were married?

Why doesn't McLaren just come out, say what the Bible says about this issue, even if it would disagree with the actions of this McLaren-praiser?

The standard way of engaging issues of sexuality seems to focus on "Where is the line? What is sinful, and what is not?" Then we engage in theological football - playing this verse and and that, seeing how one set of down turns out, followed by the opposing side lining up their verses and playing them. Over time, one side gains yardage and scores, and the game continues. Often (as I also discuss in NKOCy), this approach serves to strengthen what I call a constitutional reading of the Bible, and in that way, whichever team wins, we all lose - if (as I suggest) the constitutional approach is itself problematic, morally compromised, and in need of revision or replacement.

Oh, yes, those nasty people who think that Bible actually teaches us how to live and gives us rules to obey. So, if the people who teach what the Bible says about proper and improper sexual activity win, then somehow we all lose? Or perhaps we lose only when weasel-speak practiioners like McLaren win?

So, Mr. McLaren, in you refusal to correct this couple's sexual activities, you in essence came out in support of it. More than that, in saying that their actions were someone good reflections of teachings in the New Testament, you lend further support to them. You are the one who is wrong, and you are teaching others to practice sin. Shame on you, Mr. McLaren. At least, there should be shame, but I'm doubting you are capable of such a thing.

let the propoganda begin

It doesn't take long, does it? When a nut shot a woman who is in the US Congress a few months ago, voices of sympathy were followed closely by those who were more than willing to use the event for their own political ends.

And after what happened in Norway just a few days ago, those same voices are not long in trying to use that event for their own ends.

Norway's 9/11

The early reports are disturbing. They violate the familiar us-them dichotomies we (think we) know how to live with - christian/muslim, democratic/marxist, us/them, sane/crazy.

Umm...really? You mean, I can't say that the man in Norway was a nut? That, by his actions, he has made himself on of "them", as in those who think that killing innocent people is the way to get his way?

The fact is, we know very little yet about this incident, and this man.

But speaking of nuts, take a quick gander of this.

Christian Jihad? Why We Should Worry About Right-Wing Terror Attacks Like Norway's in the US

My family was part of the far right/violent right's rise in the 1970s and 80s when we helped create the "pro-life" movement come into existence that in the end spawned the killers of abortion providers. These killers were literally doing what we'd called for.

Funny, I don't recall this man's father, Francis Schaeffer, ever telling people to kill abortion providers. Perhaps someone can show me where he ever said that?

The terror unleashed on Norway - and the terror now unleashed by the Tea Party through Congress as it holds our economy hostage to extremist "economic" theories that want to destroy our ability to function -- is the sort of white, Christian; far right terror America can expect more of.

Call this the ultimate "Tea Party" type "answer" to secularism, modernity, and above all our hated government. Call this the Christian Brotherhood. From far right congress people, to far right gun-toting terror in Norway and here at home, our own Western version of the Taliban is on the rise.

Foreigners, visitors from another planet and Americans living in a bubble of reasonable or educated people might not know this but the reality is that the debt ceiling confrontation is by, for and the result of America's evangelical Christian control of the Republican Party.

Yeah, he isn't trying to play on people's fears at all, is he? Not to mention that his claims seem rather harsher than the reality.

There are two responses, I think, that would be wise here.

1. Sympathy and compassion for the people of Norway, particularly those who were either victims of the attacks and survived, or were family and friends to those who were, but also for the people in the nation as a whole, because all were to some degree victims.

2. A bit of restraint in regards to the blame game (hear that, Mr. Schaeffer). We know very little about this guy, and far too much speculation is running around, which is fueling hate speech like Schaeffer's.

multi-tasking mclaren

Oh, dear, a visit to McLaren's blog. Must be time to see gratuitious bashing of all people who dare disagree with him.

Religious Ping-Pong

It's the tendency we've all noticed - to create one-issue fixations. For Republicans, Brooks says, the current fixation is tax rates. Responsible governance, he argues, requires we work with many issues simultaneously and pay attention to the larger historical process in which we are participating. But single-issue fixation allows us to forget all that complexity and focus on one issue only, right now only.

Ah, yes, shame on Republicans for focusing on the big issue of the moment, the big crisis, the thing that most needs to be dealt with. Why don't they just turn their attention to other things, and lets the adults like the President and Vice-President and Harry Reid do the heavy lifting.

In case you were wondering, that last paragraph should be read with as if soaked, sauteed, and braised in sarcasm.

Teaching evolution in schools ... prayer in schools ... abortion ... gay marriage ... the rapture or other eschatological topics ... these single issue fixations change over time. But something is "abnormal," to use David Brooks' term, when we ping-pong from one single issue to another, lacking a broader ability to hold multiple issues in dynamic tension.

I'll give Brooks half-credit for a decent point, but the problem isn't the focus on one issue at a time. It's bouncing from one issue to another, one crisis to another, without having properly dealt with the ones that came before.

Thus, we live in a perpetual state of perceived crisis. We try to focus on getting the economy solidly back on track, and the Administration goes around saying it's ignore DOMA and say the military should no longer Don't Ask Don't Tell. We try to focus on doing away with socialized medicine, and the Administration tries to sink us deeper in debt and make it so they can do it even more by raising the debt ceiling. We try to make an economy where jobs can be created, and the President gets up and bashes those companies who have corporate jets.

In chess, one must keep many things in mind when deciding on a plan. But often enough, a single move with address only one or two things. If, for example, the person playing white opens the game by pushing the king's pawn forward two squares, that move directly addresses the need to fight for control of the center of the board, and indirectly helps in development by openning up paths for the king's bishop and the queen.

That player would be unwise if he were to be distracted by bizarre play from the opponent, though any real threats that player may manufacture must be considered.

So, too, the Republicans should focus on certain things, things that have been proven to work, things the people care about, and not be distracted by the attempts to distract them from those things. Things like fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, social conservative issues like the defense of marriage and the restriction or (hopefully) abolishing of abortion, and the return of freedoms to the people and away from the restrictive grasp of the government.

McLaren is simply barking up the wrong tree. Please, Republicans, ignore him. Or read him for the unintentional humor.

they're the good guys, of course

So, back to McLaren's flavors of Bible reading...

2. Reading the Bible conversationally:

Which means...what, exactly.

If a culture is a community of people who converse (or argue) about the same things across many generations, it makes sense to learn the contours of the main players in the conversation.

Oh, yes, because, of course, the Bible is a conversation. Yeah, Right.

For example, in the gospels, Jesus enters ongoing conversations among Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Herodians, priests, scribes, prophets, Roman authorities, excluded sinners, and the poor.

Really? Jesus just kind of threw out his thoughts about things, like your typical coffee house denizen at a jaw session, just kinda making a point, giving his opinion, let's have some feedback and maybe he wasn't really right or anything?

I rather think that Jesus was doing more than just entering into and joining some kind of antenicene form of the emergent conversation.

Across the Hebrew Bible, there is a persistent tension between priests (who are the institutional caretakers of what we might call “organized religion”) and prophets (movement leaders who critique the very status quo of ritual and sacrifice that the priests work so hard to defend from the forces of chaos and compromise).

Now, I think I know the Bible pretty well. Maybe not as much as scholars do, but fairly well. And I haven't noticed this "persistent tension" McLaren claims is there.

First, let's consider his characterizations of priests and prophets. Were priests the institutional caretakers of the organized religion of ancient Israel? Perhaps that's not a wrong description, though it is rather simplistic. Plus, given that it's McLaren saying it, it carries a certain slam with it. Priests were, first of all, established by God, and their function was very important.

McLaren's characterization of prophets is rather more problematic. They weren't "movement leaders". And their job wasn't some kind contra-priests thing, where they just went around being subversives of the things the priests did, and being OT anarchists who were only trying to cause trouble.

Perhaps someone else has a better definition for what the prophets did, but so far as I can tell, their messages were mostly to political leaders of Israel and Judah, sometimes to other nations, and on occasions to all the people of Israel or Judah as a whole. They primarily dealt with sins, personal and national, calling the people to repent of those sins, and at times telling them what judgment is coming if they don't repent. There is also a far future element to their prophecies, where God reveals things to them about what will happen at the end of days, both the horror and the final deliverance.

Finally, there just doesn't seem to be this "persistent tension" McLaren claims. Yes, sometimes the prophets spoke against the priests, but they did so because the priests weren't doing right. Samuel, for example, was given a prophecy concerning Eli because Eli was simply not being a very good priest--he was, for example, allowing his sons to abuse their positions, and they were sexually immoral. But the prophet Zechariah has a prophecy of good to the high priest Joshua, in Zechariah 3.

There's more that McLaren says, maybe I'll get back to it later, but for now, I'm content enough to put paid to the ways he's tried to revise history, to make the relationship between priests and prophets in ancient Israel into something similar to his take on the current emergent church movement, with of course the emergents being like the good-guy prophets who went around causing trouble and making outrageous statements and basically being anti-establishment for no better reason than being anti-establishment.

a ball of confusion

Ok, so, here's the first of McLaren's flavors of Bible reading.

1. Reading the Bible narratively: This means reading the Bible in context of the nested series of stories it is telling. For example, if you’re reading the Epistle to Philemon, you need to read this letter within the story of Paul’s fourth (probably) missionary journey, which unfolds within the story of Paul’s life and ministry, which unfolds within the story of the early church, which unfolds within the story of Jesus and his mission, which unfolds within the story of Israel under the Roman empire and the empire’s economic dependence on slavery, which unfolds within the story of the Jewish people, which unfolds within the story of economic systems that use slaves to advance their ends, which unfolds within the story of humanity, which unfolds within the story of creation. Every word we read in the Bible needs to be seen in the context of local and larger narratives like these. To do otherwise – which we do when we read and use the Bible as a timeless constitution or legal code - would be like trying to understand Dr. Martin Luther King without understanding the larger stories in which his story was nested – including the stories of the United States, the African slave trade, the African American church, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws and segregation, the Social Gospel movement, and the global post-colonial movement for human rights that emerged in the aftermath of World War II and the holocaust.

Wow. So, did you get all that?

Now, I'm all for taking context in consideration. Context is good, context is our friend. Knowing the context in which Paul wrote this letter to his dear friend Philemon and his family is no doubt very helpful.

But, really, we need an in-depth knowledge of the Roman economic system in order to understand the little book of Philemon? Really? We have to consider all the things McLaren mentions in order to understand Paul's message to his friend, asking him to forgive the slave who stole from him and ran away, and to welcome him back as a brother and fellow believer in Christ?

The need to forgive those who have wronged us is a fairly universal experience. We can understand very well Paul's call for his friend to forgive the thief, because we've had to forgive others who have wronged us.

More than that, we have all needed forgiveness. From each other, of course, but more importantly, we have needed to come to God, repent of the sins we have committed, and receive the forgiveness Christ provided for us through His sacrificial death.

We can know all of that, without having to research the Roman Empire in-depth. We need only read the Bible.

What do Brian McLaren and Baskin-Robbins have in common?

So, I've found this document, given to us by the great (post)enlightened one, Brian McLaren, so that we simple simpletons may in our simplicity know that we do not read the Bible in an acceptable way to this oh-so-great (post)enlightened one and his cohorts, but we must read it, well, the way of pomo-complexity.

A New Kind of Bible Reading
It must be said the the ways of Brian McLaren do come a little short of the 31 flavors of Baskin-Robbins. He gives us simple simpletons only 15 ways that we must read the Bible so that we too may become great (post)enlightened ones, though the 15th is complicated by three sub-practices.

So, yes, if you thought that you could just pick up a Bible, and start reading it yourself, and end up getting a pretty good idea of what it's teaching us, STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!!!!! That's right, no more just reading the Bible for you!! Oh, no, if you're not reading it with a bunch of other people (preferably emergents), if you're daring to read all those laws and ordinances as if they were really laws and ordinances God really expected people to obey (you know, like a constitution), if you're daring to read the Bible as if God cares more about people's eternal souls and that they be forgiven for their real sins instead of realizing that God cares only for the here-and-now and the forcing of the agenda of the Democratic Party upon the stupid simpletons of the United States and other parts of the world, if you're daring the read the Bible as if it were the Word of God rather than Jesus being the Word of God (as if those ideas are mutually exclusive), then...

SHAMESHAMESHAMESHAMESHAME!!!!

No soup for you.

If I weren't already trying, in my still limited time, to comment every now and again on Rollin's delirious heretic, I'd have some more fun with this, because it is so full of fail. Maybe that time will come.

mclaren's idea of a good question?

Q & R: Shake your hand at Wild Goose Festival, guilt/cynicism, maybe the best hell question I've received

Your hell question is, I think, among the best I've ever received.

Well, high praise indeed, I suppose, from McLaren. What, we may right ask, was this highly-praised query?

Why do you think all of those who vehemently defend eternal concious torment in the afterlife for the vast majority of humanity never live like they believe it. It seems to me that if they really believed it, they would never have kids (to spare them the large chance that they would experience ECT) and that they would spend every moment of their life screaming and frantically running around trying to rescue people. I've heard of these logically consistent people, but have never met one. Why do you think this is?

That's it? That's the question McLaren things is so good?

So, let's see--if you believe in Hell, and that it's eternal, you shouldn't have children? And you should go about like a maniac all the time, trying to rescue people?

First, upon what basis are Christians who believe in eternal punishment in Hell suppose to not have children? Upon the basis of fear? That's logical? No, this is asinine, silly, pathetic.

Children are a gift from God. Children are a blessing. They are also a responsibility. They will not raise themselves, but godly parents are to raise them to respect and love and fear God. Yes, even the aspect of their eternal destiny is a responsibility, and they are the ones who have a great say in that themselves, but Christians are commanded to live in faith in God, and not to cave in to fear and the nonsense behind this person's question.

Much the same could be said about the second part. There are many Christians who have gone to places where the Gospel has been little known or not known at all, and have presented the Gospel to those people.

But running around like a chicken with its head cut off will not work. There is a point at which we have done out duty, the Gospel has been presented, and after that, it's time to stop playing umpteen-zillion chorus during the altar call, to stop trying to manipulate. We may pray that they will respond differently later on, that perhaps God will grant them repentence, even an apostate like McLaren. But antics and theatrics on our parts will do no good.

So, I find McLaren's 'best' question to be little more than rubbish.

twisting

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all still means all, right?

First Move: Reduce Jew and Gentile to the same level of need (Rom. 1:18-3:20). After his introduction, Paul describes Greco-Roman culture in graphic detail going from moral catastrophe to moral catastrophe. He invited disgust as he details the horrible way pagan sinners suppress God's revelation in creation. They obsess over idols, indulge in sexual orgies, and display a shocking range of depraved behavior--including envy, strife, malice, deceit, covetousness, lack of compassion, and gossip...
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, p 147

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be know about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchange the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped tand served created things rather than the Cretor--who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these things but also approve of those who practice them
Romans 1:18-2

In one sense, McLaren's statement is correct. Paul was giving a description of the society in which he was most familar, that of the Roman Empire, with it's various cultures and subcultures--Roman, Greek, Corinthian, Hebrew, North African, et al.

But his statement is, I think, incorrect. If I may add one little word, McLaren is essentially saying that Paul "describes (only) Greco-Roman culture in graphic detail going from moral catastrophe to moral catastrophe".

But what are the words of Paul, translated in English? "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness". I would contend that "all" means, well, all, which while including the people in the Greek and Roman cultures, is not in any way limited to them.

This is important, because things Greco-Roman seems to be the big bogey-man for McLaren in this book (though maybe he has nothing against Greco-Roman wrestling, unless wrestling is too violent for him).

And let us leave aside the fiction that the only world known to people in the Roman Empire at that time was that of the Roman Empire. Alexander the Great had taken his own empire to parts of India, and trade was going on with China. I remember in listening to an audio book of Will Durant's works on history, in which he says that Buddhist monks had come to Egypt long before. And, of course, those things come up when people want to say that, for example, Jesus was influenced by Buddhism, or Jesus had travelled to places like India and Tibet, or what have you.

And Paul seems to have been a well-educated person. When he uses the word "all", I'm reasonably certain that he knew he was including much more than just those in the Roman Empire.

pomo reading shenanigans

Every generation, on the basis of its own social and cultural history, tradition, education, and experiences, reads the Bible in ways that our ancestors would not recognize. This is because we always read the text of our own lives in relation to the biblical texts," Carter Heyward observes.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 108.

Every generation reads the Bible in ways people before us would not recognize? Oh, really? And what proof can this Mr. Heyward offer for that claim?

Perhaps he bases it on things in the writings of the early church fathers? Irenaeus? Justin Martyr? Or is his way of reading them, let alone the Bible, so different that he can't even read them correctly?

And why just the Bible? Do people read Plato and Aristotle that same way? Or other Greek writers, poets and playwrites and philosophers? Can we not even understand Homer in any correct way?

Now, I've read a small bit of a few of the early church fathers. Not much, I admit, but a bit. I know, for example, that Justin Martyr had an eschatology that was rather a lot like what he today call Futurism, meaning that there would be a time when an Antichrist would rise and rule before the physical return of Christ. Though, as well, he thought that the church had taken the place of Israel, which I have a few problems with, but as with other Christian writers like Chesterton and Lewis whom I have found informative, I reserve the right to disagree as well as agree.

But I don't think the read the Bible in some kind of way that was so different from my own that it would not by recognizable to each other. Granting areas of disagreement, if the problems of language could be bridged, I think we could mostly understand each other.

On the other hand, I've recently had some encounters with those who could be said to read the Bible in ways that a Justin or an Irenaeus would likely not have understood, though maybe Irenaeus, in his studies of the Gnostics, would have been familiar with similar things.

The encounter began when I responded on an internet board to someone writing the he or she didn't believe that Christ died for our sins. I responded by posting several New Testament scriptures showing that Christ did indeed die for our sins. I was then told that this wasn't good enough because they weren't from the Gospels, that I was quoting Paul and John and not Jesus. And when I responded that I was quoting the Word of God, I was then told that if I was going to quote the Word of God I should quote Jesus, because of John calling Him the Word in that Gospel, that Paul and the other epistles-writers were struggling to understand Jesus' death and resurrection and what it meant to them (putting into question the concept of divine inspiration in the epistles), and that we can't even say that Bible is really the Scriptures.

And, to go to another though rather related source, even the words and teachings of Jesus are not enough. "...I could live with the idea that Paul condemned what we today have constituted as 'homosexuality' and that if anyone ever asked Jesus about it (and if they did we have no record of it) he would have said the same thing as Paul...In my view, even if there is a dominant view against homosexuality in the Scriptures and tradition...I would argue that on this point the Greeks were right and the dominant tradition among the Jews and Christian is wrong...Indeed, by invoking the spirit of a certain Jesus, I would argue for a counterfactual conditional: were Jesus alive to day and familiar with the pros cna cons of the contemporary argument, his centeredness on love would have brought him down onthe side of the rights of what we today call the 'homosexual' difference..." (Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, pp 108-109). In other words, Jesus' own acceptance of and agreement with the laws against homosexuality is not enough if one can spin (I mean, deconstruct) things to the benefit of one's agenda. Even granting that the Bible never condones homosexuality means that we today must do so, in the minds of those who would call good what is evil. And apparently showing what the Scriptures say about the blood of Christ is not an "intelligent argument", whatever that means.

And there are others, too. I would wonder if Irenaeus would feel forgotten, because after he put a 1000 year kabash on Gnosticism through his works, it's back and people want to make such Gnostic gospels as authoritative as the biblical Gospels (or maybe take the authority of the biblical Gospels down to the level of the heretical Gnostics).

So, maybe Heyward has a point. Though if his point, and that of the Heretic's Guide authors, is that one way of reading the Bible (or, more accurately, interpreting it) is as good as the other, well, even they don't think that's true. If anything, Burke and Taylor and other emergents and progressives use themselves as the starting point for reading the Bible--they are the ones that judge and even condemn the Bible, not the Bible that judges us and both condemns us and tell us of God has provided us salvation. They even have the gall of judge and condemn God, as McLaren does in "A New Kind of Christianity" when he says that there are times in the Old Testament when God is "Unchristlike".

I really can't imagine a Justin or an Irenaeus thinking the God in the Hebrew scriptures was unlike Christ. When that happens, I think McLaren's views of God and of Christ are seriously, even fatally, skewed.

religion of story

Jonathan Merritt...wrote, "According to Public Religion Research, 37% of evangelicals ages 18-34 have a close friend or relative who is gay. Only 16% of evangelicals 35 and older can say the same"...The difference goes far in explaining why younger Evangelicals are changing their opinion on sexuality. Knowing a gay person is like observing the retrograde motion of the planets
Brian Mclaren, A New Kind of Christianity, p 281

First, he ignores rather completely the other aspects of society that influence the young--pressure, for example, especially the one called 'political correctness', where things have become such that it is simply verboten to question homosexual behavior. One can also recall how homosexuals and the left reacted to the Mormons in California, in regards to the defeat of the gay marriage amendment, to see that this pressure can border if not outright go into violence against those who dare to disagree.

But mostly, I want to point out that this is simply the emergent practice, the postmodern practice. Objective truth is trivialized, even discarded, and 'story' is brought in to take its place. If you're one they consider 'oppressed', be it for race or religion or sexual choices, then your story is credible (even if not factual or true). Story is the new truth.

Strangely, in my years, I've known many people who have done many things.

For example, one of my best friends in college lived with his then-girlfriend for a while. Funny, but I don't consider premarital sex ok, even with having known people who have engaged in it. I knew other people who may have participated in recreational drug use, probably marijuana, and I can't say that I approved then or approve now. I knew some who would drink too much, and I can say I ever considered drunkenness a good thing. I've known people who have done hard drugs, usually in their past, and it has done nothing to make me think that doing those kinds of drugs is good.

I've known people who cheated on spouses, and can't say that I consider marital unfaithfulness a good thing. I've known people who have had children before they were married, and was never tempted to consider that maybe abstinence was a faulty ideal.

Heck, I've even known some gay people, and they've been nice enough people. But that doesn't mean their sexual practices are good. Being nice doesn't mean all you do is ok.

HIs argument that simply knowing gay people will make one approve of their sexual practices is simply specious, and tying it into a faulty theory of the solar system is ridiculous.

A New Kind of Christianity: The Jesus Question

The two chapters which McLaren devotes to this question are based on a couple of quotes from sources he doesn't identify, though in the footnotes he does give a YouTube web address for one of them.

The first one is from someone he only calls "one of my most loyal and dedicated critics". This person said...

In Revelation, Jesus is a prize-fight with a tattoo down His leag, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.

McLaren, of course, finds this appalling. He tries to compare this to how the character Ricky Bobby sees Jesus in "Talladega Nights", p 121. He then brings out one of his favorite weapons--the Scare Tactic. "So, in successfully rejecting an insipt "hippie, diaper, halo Christ," we may unintentionally protect and uphold the white supremacist Jesus, the colonial Jesus, the Euorcentric Jesus, the Republican or Democrat Jesus, the capitalist or communist Jesus..." p 122. The paragraph and his various Jesus' goes on longer, I really don't want to give them all, I hope that's enough.

McLaren does reference the place in Revelation 19:11-16 where the other person gets the idea of Jesus, but he says this like sci-fi stories. "For example, when we read or watch Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, The Matrix, or Wall-E, we don't think the writers and filmmakers are trying to predict the future. No we understand they are really talking aobut the present, and they are doing so in hopes of changing the future." p 123

Which means that how McLaren interprets this passage is to say that the correct interpretation is rather the opposite of how it looks. "Rather, this image fo Jesus as a conqueror reassures believers that the peaceable Jesus who entered Jerusalem on a donkey that day wasn't actually weak and defeated; he was in fact every bit as powerful as a Caesar on a steed..." p 124

"Revelation celebrates not the love of power, but the power of love. It denies, with all due audacity, that God's anointed liberator is the Divine Terminator, threatening revenge for all who refuse to honor him, growling "I'll be back". It asserts, instead, that God's anointed liberator is the one we beat up, who promises mercy to those who strike him...The suffering, serving one who bled on a cross--not the one with a commitment to make others suffer and bleed--is the King of kings and Lord of lords." p 126

Here's the second quote that McLaren responds to.

The only reason Jesus came was to save people from hell...Jesus had no social agenda...[He didn't come to eliminate poverty or slavery or]...fix something in somebody's life for the little moment they live on this earth.

"For him, Jesus is not the one who saves from poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression, even though these are Jesus' very words (borrowed from Isaiah) to describe his mission. I think you'll agree, my faithful critic's statement can only make sense, first, if we interepre Jesus within the confines of the Greco-Roman six-line narrative; second, if we predetermine to read the Bible as a constitution; and third, if we construct and solidify our understanding of God before seeking to understand Jesus, rather then letting Jesus serve as the Word-made-flesh revelation of God's character" p 128.

Over the next several pages, McLaren does an interesting exercise, comparing Jesus in John to events and people in the OT books of Moses, doing so in order to support his view Jesus as an earthly liberator.

"But even these few examples, selected from so many more, make it clear that Jesus, contrary to my loyal critic's assertion, did not come merely to "save souls from hell." No, he came to launch a new Genesis, to lead a new Exodus, and to announce, embody, and inaugurate a new kingdom as the Prince of Peace(Isa. 9:6). Seen in this light, Jesus and his message have everything to do with poverty, slavery, and a "social agenda"." p 135

My thoughts on this.

McLaren may well be right that sci-fi is most often not interested in trying to predict the future (though I suppose Jules Verne could complicate things a bit, like writing about submarines before there were such things). But equating biblical prophecy to sci-fi just won't work, and is a rather childish attempt to negate the importance of prophecy. They are two different things.

Also, McLaren shows an amazing lack of historical context, in his dismissing of the return of Jesu in judgment. Here are some excerpts from very early church leaders, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, and what they wrote about Christ's return.

“So that you ought rather to desist from the love of strife, and repent before the great day of judgment come, wherein all those of your tribes who have pierced this Christ shall mourn as I have shown has been declared by the Scriptures. And I have explained that the Lord swore, ‘after the order of Melchizedek,’ and what this prediction means; and the prophecy of Isaiah which says, ‘His burial is taken away from the midst,’ I have already said, referred to the future burying and rising again of Christ; and I have frequently remarked that this very Christ is the Judge of all the living and the dead. And Nathan likewise, speaking to David about Him, thus continued: ‘I will be His Father, and He shall be my Son; and my mercy shall I not take away from Him, as I did from them that went before Him; and I will establish Him in my house, and in His kingdom for ever.’ And Ezekiel says, ‘There shall be no other prince in the house but He.’ For He is the chosen Priest and eternal King, the Christ, inasmuch as He is the Son of God;
Justin Martyr, dialogue with Trypho, ch 118

For the prophets have proclaimed two advents of His: the one, that which is already past, when He came as a dishonored and suffering Man; but the second, when, according to prophecy, He shall come from heaven with glory, accompanied by His angelic host, when also He shall raise the bodies of all men who have lived, and shall clothe those of the worthy with immortality, and shall send those of the wicked, endued with eternal sensibility, into everlasting fire with the wicked devils.
Justin Martyr, First Apology of Justin, ch 52

If the Father, then, does not exercise judgment, [it follows] that judgment does not belong to Him, or that He consents to all those actions which take place; and if He does not judge, all persons will be equal, and accounted in the same condition. The advent of Christ will therefore be without an object, yea, absurd, inasmuch as [in that case] He exercises no judicial power. For “He came to divide a man against his father, and the daughter against the mother, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law;” and when two are in one bed, to take the one, and to leave the other; and of two women grinding at the mill, to take one and leave the other: [also] at the time of the end, to order the reapers to collect first the tares together, and bind them in bundles, and burn them with unquenchable fire, but to gather up the wheat into the barn; and to call the lambs into the kingdom prepared for them, but to send the goats into everlasting fire, which has been prepared by His Father for the devil and his angels. And why is this? Has the Word come for the ruin and for the resurrection of many? For the ruin, certainly, of those who do not believe Him, to whom also He has threatened a greater damnation in the judgment-day than that of Sodom and Gomorrah; but for the resurrection of believers, and those who do the will of His Father in heaven. If then the advent of the Son comes indeed alike to all, but is for the purpose of judging, and separating the believing from the unbelieving, since, as those who believe do His will agreeably to their own choice, and as, [also] agreeably to their own choice, the disobedient do not consent to His doctrine; it is manifest that His Father has made all in a like condition, each person having a choice of his own, and a free understanding; and that He has regard to all things, and exercises a providence over all, “making His sun to rise upon the evil and on the good, and sending rain upon the just and unjust.”
Irenaeus, Against Heretics, Book 5 Chapter 27

McLaren essentially says that if we believe in this coming of Christ in judgment, then we negate all the things He taught about forgiveness. The truth is, no, we don't; rather, he is the one who has to make what Jesus and others say about His second coming mean something else.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall the gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.
Matt. 25:31-32

Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
Rev 1:7

And to these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophecied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgement upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which theyhave ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
Jude 14-15
these scriptures found in the book "What the Bible Teaches" by R. A. Torrey

McLaren seems to have almost no concept of justice, outside of what he considers "social justice". He can only seem to see Christ return in judgment as revenge, not as justice, just as he can only see hell as torture, not justice.

I can't help but find it off-putting that McLaren doesn't say who said the quotes he gives, or really when and where. I'm pretty sure that the first quote is from Mark Driscoll, I think I've heard him say that or similar. The second I'm not sure of, and when I looked up the YouTube address he gives in the end notes, it wasn't there. As such, looking up those quotes and checking the contexts is much more difficult. I would especially like to see the context for the latter.

Since he goes on for several pages concerning how Jesus is like Moses, going into it in detail is probably beyond what I'd care to do right now. There may be some points of interest, but as with most things with McLaren, I doubt either his claim, or his interpretation of it. Some of the parallels are rather weak, I think. "Just as Moses was initially rejected by his brothers (Exod 2:14), so Jesus was initially rejected", p 131. But such rejection was and is hardly uncommon. One could find rejection with almost any prophet. "In Exodus, God's presence was associated with the tabernacle, a sacred tent, and John says, "The Word became flesh and lived [made his dwelling, tented or tabernacled] among us" (1:14)" Unless there is some relation between the word John uses that is interpreted "dwelt", then this parallel isn't really saying much.

One thing I want to bring up is his attempt to re-interpret the concept of a Promised Land. "As we considered earlier, the narrative beings with the longing for a literal homeland...Gradually, the idea of a promised land morphs from a geographic reality into a social one: "a land flowing with milk and honey" becomes a society in which justice flows like water." pp 132-133.

One must be careful of saying too much here, but the practical outcome of such thinking should be clear--if there is now no geographical Promised Land, it does away with any divine right the Jews may have to the land of Israel, which plays into the Left's ideas about Israel and Palestine. I don't want to go so far as to charge anti-Semitism against McLaren, but just as he likes to play scare tactics about the ideas of others, so I think we can think of all-too-really-horrible outcomes that could come from his ideas.

Earlier, I pointed out where McLaren seems to show a streak of anti-supernaturalism when he wrote about the Nile turning to blood in Exodus, saying instead it was a red tide. He does it again, in regards to the prophecy in Isaiah 40:1-5, which speaks of "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills;".

"Obviously, the prophet isn't predicting a literal tectonic shift in which Jerusalem rises further above sea level and Mt. Everest sinks, but rather a time when God's wisdom draws nations up to the higher level of relating, so disputes are settled nonviolently, wisely, peacefully..." p 134.

Umm...no, it's not "obvious" that this is only metaphorical language. The God I know and love and serve is the One who made the world, the One who made the waters into literal blood, the One who parted the waters of the Red Sea so that Israel could flee, and it is not beyond His power to literally fulfill this prophecy. Unlike McLaren's new-agey view of mankind going to a higher level, I think this prophecy will be literally fulfilled, that the Lord will Himself judge and arbitrate, and not the UN or any other man-made organization or institution. Certainly not anything McLaren is associated with.

This 'new-agey'-ness shows through a time or two more.

"Jesus evokes Moses directly in his conversation with Nicodemus, saying that the Son of Man (a complex term drawn from Daniel 7:13-14, which I believe suggests a new generation or genesis of humanity) will be lifted up as Moses lifted up a bronze serpent in the wilderness (Num 21:9)." p 132.

Jesus claiming to be the Son of Man "suggests a new generation or genesis of humanity"? What??? Is McLaren claiming that "a new generation or genesis of humanity" must be lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent? And how new-agey does "a new generation or genesis of humanity" sound?

He makes much of how the world 'hell' doesn't appear in John, "(John, it should be noted, never mentions hell, a highly significant fact)" p 130. But this quote has a footnote, which shows the shenanigans. "Since we aren't assuming the six-line narrative, it would be an unwarranted conclusion to equate words found in John like "condemnation," "death," and "perish" with the word "hell," which is never found in John." p 275.

Claiming there is no hell because John doesn't mention the word is like claiming there is no love because Ruth doesn't use the word, or there is no God because Esther doesn't mention God. It's a weak argument, emblematic of desperation, a thin straw a drowning man will grasp at with unthinking hope that it will keep him afloat.

Finally, you'll find very little about the crucifixion in this part of the book. I've found one mention it it of that event, "If you don't want to worship a guy you can beat up, then I might humbly suggest you reconsider Caesar and the Greco-Roman narrative. It sounds like "Christ and him crucified" is not for you. At least not yet". The one real mention of the crucified Christ in these chapters is little more than a cheap shot.

reading into it

How would I answer if someone asked me to describe the story line of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"?

Probably something like this: Four human children are drawn to a fantasy world called Narnia when they walk into a wardrobe. One of them meets up with bad company, the White Witch, and tries to betray the other three. Those three are helped to reach Aslan, and with his help they rescue the betraying brother, who has learned the error of his ways. But the Witch claims the life of the betrayer, so to settle that just account with her, Aslan lets himself be killed by her. But he returns to life, destroys the White Witch, ends her perpetually winter, and appoints the four children as kings and queens of Narnia.

Now, suppose the person who asks me to do that then starts shaking his head in a superior fashion, and tells me that I have it all wrong. He says that his explanation is the correct one, and then goes on to give it. He talks about how the four children, who are English and white, merely show the author's Euro-centric, or even Anglo-centirc, superiority, and the fact that all of the Narnians they encounter are non-human merely show how the English, and whites as a whole, held and still hold a view of non-whites as being essentially non-human. He gets particular agitated when it comes to the Father Christmas in the story, who gives the children weapons, and says that this is a polluted view of the friendly and harmless Santa Claus, and shows how religion has compromised with the military-industrial complex. He laughs with a proud tinge when it comes to Aslan's death, saying that it wasn't really a substition for the traitor, becaus that would be barbaric, but was meant to show how awful the reign of the White Witch had been, even though (you think) the people of Narnia already knew how bad her reign had been and was why they were against her and for Aslan in the first place. Aslan setting up the children to reign over Narnia comes back, this interpreter says, to Anglo-centric superiority, saying that even the children of whites are more capable of ruling than the adults of the not-human conquered natives, and that God approved and himself set up the Anglos to reign.

If you've read Lewis' story, you'd probably think that this person's take on the story would be nonsense. I would agree. Keeping that in mind, read these remarks about a much greater book.

To be a Christian--in the West at least, since the fifth or sixth century or so--has required one to believe that the Bible presents one very specific story line, a story line by which we assess all history, all of human experience, all of our own experience. Most of us know the story line implicitly, subconsciously, even though it has never been made explicit for us. We begin our quest for a new kind of Christian faith by questioning this story line.

This unspoken story line of the Bible that we were explicitly taught--or that we implicitly caught--can be diagrammed with six simple, elegent lines

(I can't put the diagram here, so I'll sum it up best I can here)

Eden
fall
condemnation
salvation
heaven or hell/damnation

...That's why this quest begins not by tweaking details of the conventional six-line narrative, but by calling the entire narrative scheme into question. We do not for a second say "These six lines present the true shape of the biblical narrative, but we reject it". Rather, we stare at this narrative, scratch our heads, and with a bewildered look ask, "How in the world, how in God's name, could anyone ever think this is the narrative of the Bible?"
Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, excerpts from pp 33-35

How in the world could anyone think that is the narrative of the Bible? A more important question would be, how in the world could anyone think that such a question is one worth asking?

Consider the elements of the narrative he wishes to denigrate.

Is there an Eden? Yes.

Is there a fall? Yes.

Are there seemingly endless pages of people falling into sin and suffering the consequences, even mention of the consequence of hell and eternal judgment? Yes.

Is there a Jesus who comes to offer salvation? Yes.

Is there a choice, Christ or the world, blessing or damnation, eternal life or eternal death, Heaven and a place in God's house or hell and the lake of fire? Yes.

Just as someone rereading a Narnia book to fit his politics is likely to sound ridiculous, so does McLaren start sounding ridiculous as he attempts to deconstruct/spin the Bible to do away with the obvious elements of the biblical account. Eden and the Fall and Cain and Abel becomes a coming-of-age drama and was actually a mythical story of mankind's rise from hunter-gathers to early farmers and city-dwellers; much of the Bible is fictional tales of people wrestling to understand god, and getting it less-or-more right depending on if the ancients agreed with McLaren or not; Jesus and the Apostles were actually anti-Roman Empire even though they never explicitly said so, and Jesus Himself seems to have disappointed those who were looking for an anti-Roman Empire Messiah.

A New Kind of Christianity: The God Question

In this third part of the book McLaren puts his two prongs, the supposed Greco-Roman god Theos and the Bible as cultural library, into use.

He begins with the question "Is God Violent?". McLaren acknowledges that, as useful as his 'Bible as cultural library' proves to be for him, it just doesn't do away with all of what he considers disturbing images of God. "But as a serious reader of the Bible, I'm still a little uneasy, because I know about some of the other images of God that are also found in the Bible--violent images, cruel images, un-Christlike images", p 98.

What he posits to answer this is a form of 'progressive revelation', or as he called it, "this evolving understanding of God", p 100. He says there are five ways that the Bible shows such an 'evolving understand--God uniqueness, from a God supreme among many gods to one true God; God's ethics, from ritual and cermony to social justice; God's universality, from a tribal God to one who loves all people; God's agency, from a distant God to one close and involved; and God's character, from a violent God to one who is gentle, pp 100-102.

He claims that this isn't an evolution of God himself, but of how people understood God. "I am not saying that the Bible reveals a process of evolution within God's character, as if God used to be rather adolescent, but has taken a turn for the better and is growing up nicely over the last few centuries. I am saying that human beings can't do better than their very best at any given moment to communicate about God as they understand God, and the Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestor's best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God...If we read the Bible as a cultural library rather than as a constitution, and if we don't impose a Greco-Roman plotline on the biblical narrative, we are free to learn from the evolutionary process--and, we might even add, to participate in it", p 103.

He likens it to math. Students in early grades learn simple math, and as they advace, they learn more complex forms of math, onesthat may even seem to contradict what they had previously learned. So, those early in the Bible who recorded what he considers less-mature images of God were simply understanding God as best they could, as a second-grader understands math in only a limited sense. But people like McLaren are more advanced. To make his point, McLaren uses one of his favority tactics--a series of unanswerable "What if...?", questions, p 104-105.

As if to show us what that is like, McLaren gives another example--people from today are somehow sent a bit over 1000 years into the future. People in this speculative future are some different from us, they are "deeply spiritual", they have "grown socially", they no longer fight wars, eat meat, or use fossil fuels, p 106. When those from today arrive, the people of the future are horrified that people used to fight wars and pray for God to bless them in doing so, eat their "fellow creatures" and even view vegetarianism as being 'pro-life', and thought it ok to ruin the planet by using oil.

People who don't like this way of thinking are, of course, stuck in the old Greco-Roman and constitutional way of viewing the Bible, p 108.

McLaren focuses on the story of Noah. Instead of seeing it as God saving a man and his family, he focuses instead on God practicing "ethnic cleansing", p 108, and a story in which people may find justification for similar destructions. "In this light, a god who mandates an intentional supernatural disaster leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worth belief, much less worship", p 109. He even points out that the flood was a failure, as Noah and his sons soon enough start sinning and soon the world is a mess again.

He does say that, while for him the story of Noah is now distasteful, it is still a step up from what he considers to be the origin source of the story of Noah, something in Gilgamesh, where the gods kill mankind because man is too noisy for them to sleep.

"This approach helps us see the biblical library as the record of a seris of trade-ups, people courageously letting go of their state-of-the-art understanding of God when an even better understanding begins to emerge", p 111.

When coming to Jesus, McLaren quotes a Quaker scholar named Elton Trueblood, "The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means the God is like Jesus", p 114. Jesus, then, "...bring us to a new evolutionary level in our understanding of God. An old definition of God does not define Jesus--the experience of God in Jesus requires a brand-new definition or understanding of God", p 114.

"The character of God, seen in Jesus, is not violent and tribal. The living God is not the kind of deity who decrees ethnic cleansing, genocide, racism, slavery, sexism, homophobia, war, religious supremacy, or eternal conscious torment. Instead, the character of the living God is like the character of Jesus", p 118.

My thoughts on this.

A few years ago, I heard someone talk about "chronological snobbery", which essentially means that a person or people will look back on those before them as having been rather stupid. Maybe they will try to say nice things about those ancients, saying they did the best with what they had, but we today know so much more and know it so much better.

Essentially, McLaren's whole position here is an astonishingly towering tribute to chronological snobbery. The arrogance emerging from this part of the book is almost more than I can imagine.

About a year ago, I read parts of a book called "The Lost Message of Jesus" by a couple of emergents on the other side of the pond, Chalke and Mann. They say this about God in the Old Testament.

Hence, Yahweh's association with vengeance and violence wasn't so much an expression of who he was but the result of his determination to be involved with his world. His unwillingness to distance himself from the people of Israel and their actions meant that at times he was implicated in the excessive acts of war that we see in some of the books of the Old Testament. From the very beginning, Yahweh's dealing with Israel were motivated by his desire to demonstrate his love. But to a people saturated in a worldview that saw him as power, this was always going to be a slow uphill struggle

God's relationship with Israel took place in the messy and often brutal reality of their day-to-day lives, longings and ambitions. And in the ancient Near East, where war and unrestrained violence were commonplace, having a god of power on your side helped justify cruel acts of revenge towards those who wronged you. That is why, if we focus in on individual Old Testament verses and stories, it is easy to fall into the trap of seeing God as a vengeful despot...
Chalk and Mann, the lost message of jesus, p. 49

I called this god of Chalke's and Mann's "the incompetent god", because he was unable to get his real message across to humanity; for example, he was pacifistic, but kept having to send Israel off to war, because he was unable through his divine power to protect them.

McLaren essentially uses "the incompetent god", and adds a bit to it. For unspecified reasons, God cannot make ancient man understand Him, so He's doomed to have his character misrepresented in Scripture, at least until McLaren and other enlightened ones come along to set the record straight.

One of the most distasteful parts of his argument is positing a sort of conflict between God and Jesus. He claims that there are images of God in the Old Testament that were "un-Christlike". He says that we must compare views of God to Jesus, "The images of God that most resemble Jesus, whether they orginate in the Bible or elsewhere, are the more mature and complete images; the ones less similar to the character of Jesus are the more embryonic and incomplete...", p 114. As the quote states, he thinks that one can find 'images of God' outside the Bible, I suppose in other religions, that are better than some one can find in the Bible itself.

I noted before that McLaren seems to put a lot of the Bible on to the fiction shelves of his 'cultural library', and this is more confirmation of that. He pretty blatantly says that Noah is a made-up story, ripped off from another culture. More than that, he strongly implies that almost all of it was somehow made-up--it's a man-made book, not a divine revelation. It's a book of mankind's continual evolution in the understanding of God, and that evolution is still going on, an evolution was can still participate in today.

If McLaren's god didn't destroy the world in Noah's day, what does that do to other times that the Bible records God speaking? Does God not judge Sodom and Gomorrah, because that would be homophobic? What about what God did to Egypt? Did God really tell Israel to conquer Canaan, or was that just Moses and Joshua using god-language in support of their own agenda of conquest? And what about those prophets and all their dire warnings and predictions, did God really tell them to say those things?

In order for McLaren to hold to his positions, he must say that much of the Bible claims to have been spoken by God was not really God speaking. His continual emphasis on "an evolving understanding of God" makes that point as well, and is essentially saying that much of the Bible is simply made-up stories where a character called God is introduced, words put into his mouth, and those words given status as Scripture.

There is someone at the Christianity.com forums where I participate in discussions, who has a quote by Spurgeon in her signature area, which goes something like this: "It is a remarkable fact that all the heresies which have arisen in the Christian Church have had a decided tendency to 'dishonor God and to flatter man." As this seems a reasonable criterion, one can say that McLaren here soundly falls in the heretic category. Not only does he bring down God, he essentially places man, especially ones like himself, in a seat of judgment over God, pronouncing judgments on things God did and said, saying even the sometimes God is "un-Christlike".

Most people who read the Bible would probably agree that there is a sense in which God reveals things about Himself over time. But this is more of a sense of God adding knowledge of Himself to what knowledge was before, rather than "trade-ups" as McLaren posits. There is no sense in, for example, the New Testament that the God of what we call the Old Testament--God in the books of Moses, God in the prophets, God in the recorded history--is being traded out for a new, improved, better God, like an older man divorces his wife for a younger model.

In the end, I think what McLaren is most against is Hell. Instead of seeing Hell as an aspect of the the justice of God, even if a rather harsh and hard-to-understand one, he calls it "torture" several times, as if he's trying to equate Hell with liberal's views of Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. I think McLaren's politics comes into play here.

Finally, McLaren resorts to 'scare tactics' in order to try to make his interpretive method more user-friendly. He essentially says that we much do violence to the message of the Bible for our own good. Like all liberals, he sees people who don't agree with him as simply stupid, brutish, small-minded sheep, motivated only by self-interest. Perhaps because he has dismissed the Fall, he must hold to such a low view of man to explain why he isn't universally accepted.

recognizing a work of genius

Though I doubt Peter Rollins would care much for this parable. For my part, I found it hilarious and pointed.

Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Whole Foods Store: A Parable

ankoc: the authority question

McLaren's plan of attack in "A New Kind of Christianity" has essentially two prongs. One is in the first question, the positing of a Greco-Roman diety named Theos that at some time essentially replaced the God of the Bible. The second is how he claims most people interpret the Bible, how wrong it is (of course), and the way that he claims is 'corrected'. This is pretty much the Authority Question.

As per usual with the great enlightened ones, McLaren says that we simpletons have it all wrong. "There will be no new kind of Christian faith without a new approach to the Bible, because we've gotten ourselves into a mess with the Bible", pp 67-68. Apparently, because there are still Creationists, those who deny global warming, and those who think a good war is better than a bad peace, we just aren't interpreting the Bible rightly.

To prove his point, McLaren digs up some kind of novel from about the time of American Civil War, the early 1860s, a pro-slavery novel. Apparently, because someone tried to use the Bible to defend slavery in the US, we are interpreting the Bible wrong. It's a scare tactic he goes back to a few more times, so I've noticed, in what I've read so far of the book.

He says that we mistakingly read the Bible as a legal constitution, "Like lawyers, we look for precedents in past cases of interpretation, sometimes favoring older interpretations as precedents, sometimes asserting newer ones have rendered the old ones obsolete. We seek to distinguish "spirit" from "letter" and argue the "framer's intent," seldom questioning whether the passage in question was actually intended by the original authors and editors to be a universal, eternally binding law. As a result, we turn our seminaries and denominational bodies into versions of the Supreme Court. At every turn, we approach the biblical text as if it were an annotated code instead of what it actually is: a portable library of poems, prophecies, histories, fables, parables, letters, sage sayings, quarrels, and so on", pp 78-79.

The last part of that quote brings us to how McLaren's says we should see the Bible--as "the library of a culture and community--the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob", p 81. How this works comes back to the emergents' favorite word--conversation. "It's not the solitary scholar with furrowed brow, bent over a book in a library, whose approach best resonates with the Bible as library; rather, it's a community gathering in which people listen to the Bible being read, then respond and interact with it and with one another." p 84

He singles out the book of Job to show how it would work, in a way, I suppose. "God has just told us that a large proportion of what is uttered in the book of Job is false and foolish. Yet we are taught that the book of Job, being part of the Bible, is the Word of God and is inspired by God. Does that mean that God inspired the introduction and conclusion, but not the middle, where the pious blowhard's speak? Or does it mean that God inspired the pious blowhard's false statements? Or that God was pretending to inspire that part, but was crossing the divine fingers behind the divine back, so as to come out later to say, "I was only kidding in that part"? p 89. His conclusion about revelation in Job, and the Bible as a whole, is that "...revelation doesn't simply happen in statements. It happens in conversations and arguemtns that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions acros genertaions. Revelation accumulates in the relationships, interactions, and interplay between statements." p 93.

What is all this about? "But here's what I hope: that his approach will not try to put us under the text, as conservatives tend to do, or lift us over it, as liberals often seem to do. Instead, I hope it will try to put us in the text--in the conversation, in the story, in the current and flow, in the predicament, in the Spirit, in the community of people who keep bumping into the living God in the midst of their experiences of loving God, betraying God, losing God, and being found againd by God." pp 96-97

Some of my thoughts about all this...

In the previous section, McLaren says that he wants look at things in a more Jewish way. But he seems to go against that here, because if I understand these things correctly, the Jews of biblical times viewd "the Law and the Prophets" in a way very like how people in the US view their own Constitution--as the basic laws by which their society is governed and ordered. If anything, the Law of Moses and the words of the prophets would have an even greater authority than the Constituion in the US, because while the Constitution was a document made by a group of men and has been changed or amended over time, the Law and the Prophets were God's own words, and we are given very few cases of God accepting input from people concerning them. He had taken some things into account, much like Jesus said in regards to divorce, but He didn't consult with Moses when He gave him the law, nor did He consult with Isaiah or Jeremiah over what prophetic words He was to give them.

If you read this part, "Like lawyers, we look for precedents in past cases of interpretation, sometimes favoring older interpretations as precedents, sometimes asserting newer ones have rendered the old ones obsolete. We seek to distinguish "spirit" from "letter" and argue the "framer's intent," seldom questioning whether the passage in question was actually intended by the original authors and editors to be a universal, eternally binding law. As a result, we turn our seminaries and denominational bodies into versions of the Supreme Court...", and wondered "Ok, what constitution is he writing about?", perhaps you have an interesting question. Remember, McLaren comes from the Left, in both politics and theology. Perhaps his attempts to make the Bible a kind of 'living document' (I haven't seen those words used the book, but the idea is certainly there), reflect a view he may have that the US Constitution is a 'living document', and neither are to be interpreted in a 'strict constructionist' type of way.

McLaren wants to liken the Bible to a library. Having read a bit in other parts of the book, I've seen that he has some interesting ideas on what sections of the library parts of the Bible would be in. Here's a few..

Science Fiction
(concerning Revelation) "Clearly, this is a work of Jewish apocalyptic literature, which in turn is part of a larger genre known as the literature of the oppressed. These kinds of literature worked in the first century in wasy similar to the way some science fiction works for us today. For example, when we read or watch Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, The Matrix, or Wall-E, we don't think the writers and filmmakers are trying to predict the future. No, we understand they are really talking about the present, and they are doing so in hopes of changing the future." p 123

Fantasy
(concerning Noah and the flood) "In this light, a god who mandates an intentional supernatural disaster leading to unparalleled genocide is hardly worthy of belief, much less worship. How can we ask children--or nonchurch colleagues and neighbors--to honor a diety so uncreative, overreactive, and utterly capricious regarding life?..."

"It's useful to compare the Noah story to the earlier sotry it seeks to adapt and improve upon, the Utnapishtim story (from Tablet 11 of the Epic of Gilgamesh, discovered in the mid-1800s, probably dating back in oral tradition to the second millenium BCE, and recorded in clay in the mid-seventh century BCE)...

"Now remember, in making this contrast, I'm not trying to defend the view of God in the Noah story as morally acceptable, ethically satisfying, and theologically mature. Nor am I trying to make Gilgamesh look bad to make the Bible look good. Instead, I'm simply recommending that we compare the Noah story to its predecessors as well as its successors...I'm acknowledging that, yes, the portrait of God found in the Noah story is far less satisfying in many ways than a portrait that emerges later in the biblical library. Yes we can celebrate it for being a step up from the portraits it was correcting and seeking to replace..."pp 109-110

Given such examples, I think we have the right to ask (if claiming a right isn't 'constitutional') just how much of McLaren's library-bible winds up on the fiction shelves. Since Revelation obviously does so, what about Daniel, and end-times prophecies by Isaiah and Ezekial, and even the sayings of Jesus about the end? Since the story of Noah is (for him) obviously fictional, what about other stories? Is what God did to Egypt early in Exodus unacceptable, making him "hardly worthy of belief, much less worship"? What about the events in Joshua concerning the conquest of Canaan, such as God knocking down the walls of Jericho? What about all the times this god let other nations conquer Israel, even carrying off many of the people into slavery and exile? Was God being "uncreative, overreative, and utterly capricious regarding life" when he did that?

And since McLaren lists such luminaries as Borg and Crossan among those he learned from, they who would toss out pretty much everything the Gospels say about Jesus, perhaps a better question would be "How little of McLaren's library-bible actually makes its way onto the nonfiction sections, if any at all?"

In reading his thoughts on Job, I really have to wonder if McLaren has really ever read a book, let alone the Bible. Only someone who hasn't ever read or heard a story, or who is showing a sense of desperation, could write such a thing expecting people to believe it a good argument. He may as well try to claim that God approved of the words of the serpent in the Garden, because they are recorded in the Bible, event though they are shown to be lies when God speaks. Or that God approved of the murder of Abel by Cain, because it's recorded in the Bible, even though when God speaks to Cain about it, he obviously disapproves. Or maybe that God approved of Pharoah's mistreatment of Israel because it's recorded in Exodus, even though God plainly says he doesn't. It's a weak argument to claim that inspiration means that all that is recorded in the Bible is in there because God approves of it, the mere fact that it records people sinning proves that. Moreover, McLaren would never make such an argument in regards to any other book or writer. Would he claim that Tolkien approved of Boromir's betrayal or Gollum's obsession? Would he claim that Lewis approved of the words and actions of the White Witch?

The last couple of points I've tried to make meet a strange combination here, "...What about God's voice, which we encounter in the introduction, striking rather strange bargains with the Satan, and at the end, flingin questions as a machine gun spits out shells? Can we trust God's voice to be God's voice? Or is even "God" a character int eh story too, no the actual God necesarily, but the imagined God, the author's best sense of God, the fictional character playing God for the sake of this dramatic work of art? This is a powerful and perhaps terrifying question." p 94. He goes on to say that he considers the book of Job to be "a kind of archetypal theological opera" without even the rather weak claim of being 'based on a true story'.

Considering what McLaren writes here about God in Job, and what he wrote God in the account of Noah, we may safely say that pretty often, in McLaren's mind, the God of the Bible is not really God, nor even a good portrayal, but is most often "the imagined God, the author's best sense of God".

One gets the impression McLaren thinks that God should have created McLaren long ago, so He could have him as His PR Manager.

Perhaps the real god who isn't worth believing or worshiping is the one who just couldn't get himself understood by those people long ago, who couldn't help that they kept writing about him killing people, telling to go to war and conquer, while all the time he's just a milquetoast diety who wants people to be good little pacifist. Such a weak character isn't even worthy of respect, let along worship.

I think I'll end this here, though no doubt a lot could be said about his idea of "revelation through conversation". For example, I can only imagine what criterion one must pass in order to qualify for their 'conversation'.

ankoc: the narrative question

In an attempt to every-now-and-then deal more seriously with the contents of McLaren "A New Kind of Christianity", I will do what will likely be a series of posts about it.. The book is helpful, at least in this, in that McLaren has divided the content of it into a set of questions. The first, which will be what this is about, is The Narrative Question. I intent to give a broad overview of his points, reference bits as it may be helpful, respond, and so let the sparks fly from there.

Btw this serious in no way invalidates the use of humor, even mocking, which is itself effective. Just ask Elijah how much fun it was to rip the priests of Baal.

He begins by giving what he considers what we consider to be the basic story line of the Bible--Eden, the Fall, Condemnation (or history), Salvation, with a branching off from Salvation to either Heaven or Hell. He claims that this is not the real story of the Bible, but rather a construction based on the influence of Greco-Roman philosophy some time in the early church. He contends that we get this view by looking back on Jesus through the views of those who came after Him--Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and so on, but that it would look differently if we started with Adam and worked up to Jesus.

He posits that the early church created a Greco-Roman god names Theos, kind of like Zeus, who is the god of this Greco-Roman version of Christianity. This Theos is a god who doesn't like change, doesn't like matter, doesn't like story. This Theos likes unchanging perfection, likes spirit, likes it when things are in a perfect state. This Theos has replaced the Jewish Yahweh in the minds of Western Christians.

In reading the Bible in the way he recommends, from Adam forwards, McLaren claims to see a much different story. Eden is a not a perfect place, but one that is good or very good. It is not a place of static perfection, but of good things that change, and he even brings in the word "evolution". But McLaren plainly states that "It is patently obvious to me that these stories aren't intended to be taken literally...", so the story of Eden is not about a good place God created, but the first few chapters of Genesis are for him a coming-of-age story for humanity.

What this means is that the Fall, where man ate the fruit and sinned, has a different meaning to McLaren. "Rather, it is the first stage of ascent as human beings progress from the life of hunter-gatherers to the life of agriculturalists and beyond". The Fall, then, becomes an ascent, and the stories become an overview of mankind's socio-economic ascent.

From this point, McLaren's politics take over. God likes Abel's more "primitive" life as a herder over Cain's more "advanced" life as a farmer, because it's "not as morally compromised as settle farm life, with it's fenced-in privately owned lands, accumulation of possessions, violent seizure and defense, and related moral entanglements". So, McLaren's god does not like farmers, because they own the land they use to farm with. God punishes Cain by making him a hunter-gatherer. He goes on from there for a while, through Noah and Abraham and Joseph.

With Exodus, he finally tells us that the Bible story has what he calls "three dimensions". The first is "liberation", told through God liberating the oppressed Israelites in Egypt. The second is "internal liberation", which is about personal sins, which is God's dealings with Israel in the wilderness. The third is what he calls "the peaceable kingdom", which seems to take up the rest of the Old Testament. He claims that it reaches a sort of apex with King David, but fizzles out, and the dream changes, and becomes about a time. The prophets, like Isaiah and Joel, speak of coming time when God would set things right with the world--no war, wolves and lambs frolicking together, God will pour out His spirit on all flesh. But we can't interpret these things literally, but rather through the paradigm of his politics--wolves living with lambs means religious pluralism and ecumenism as Christians accept Judaism and Islam as fellow-travelers on the road to god. People keeping their vitality up to and beyond age 100 is about passing Obamacare. Men and women prophesying and knowledge of the Lord filling the would be about "....a deep kind of universal and egalitarian spirituality", which strikes me as being rather New-Agey.

Several things come to mind from all of this.

First, I've no idea where he gets the idea that Christians never view Jesus through the lens of the Old Testament. It's patent nonsense for him to insinuate it. It has been a common contention that the Old Testament points toward Christ; for example, Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac, which God himself commanded and interrupted, points to God's sacrifice of His own son Jesus, a sacrifice God did not interrupt.The Psalmists and Prophets spoke of Christ.

Of course you can contend that there is no Fall in the Bible if you're going to redefine the Fall as an ascension. I've dealing here with the few chapters of the book that are associated with this Narrative Question so far, but if the best McLaren can do to disprove the biblical narrative he so obviously despises is to claim that the something like the Fall was actually an ascension, then only those who are already committed to believing him will continue to believe him. It seems even many who may have liked him in the past are finding his new work off-putting.

When I've heard people speak of the perfection of Eden, I've heard it referred to as "sinless perfection"--that it was perfect in the sense the man had not sinned, and the consequences of sin had not yet entered into the world, consequences like death. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say that Eden was a place where nothing changed.

Concerning his Theos, he does very little, if anything, to actually prove such a concept was ever created. He claims Greco-Romanism, adds a dose of his politics, and claims that almost right off the bat the church began getting the story of the Bible wrong. He makes claims about this Theos, tries to contrast it with Yahweh, and of course thinks Yahweh was much better than Theos. I'm still not convinced Theos isn't a strawman.

Some statements seemed rather incredible. On pages 40 and 41, he says about the Jews, "They (at their best) acknowledge the right of other nations to have their own languages and customs and even religions;...". When was Israel in the Bible ever so ecumenical? Is he really serious in saying that it didn't matter that the other nations are worshiping idols? That the God of Israel is completely ok in the Old Testament with Ba'al, Dagon, Asheroth, and the other gods of the nations around Israel?

On page 57, in dealing with Moses and the freeing of Israel from Egypt, he says that in regards to Pharoah's refusal to let God's people go, "God resonds with a firm but gentle consequence: a plague on the Nile River, which is the lifeblood of the civilization. Ironically, perhaps through a red tide, the Nile turn red like blood". Has McLaren adopted a materialistic view of the Bible? Is he now denying miracles? Does he think that the Egyptians were so stupid that they could not distinguish between a red tide and blood? A page later, in regards to the what happened with Moses and Egypt, "The so-called supernatural, in this way, seems remarkably natural".

Maybe the part that is most outrageous is when he tries to make the Fall, when man rebelled about God and ate the fruit God had forbidden them to eat, into a part of a mere "coming of age" story. Since this is the part that most brings into question his contentions, it's not surprising that McLaren tries to play it down, but his flippancy is distasteful to the extreme.The Bible treats that event very seriously, so for McLaren to treat it like the premise to all too many bad movies, or to try to spin it to fit his socio-economic politics, doesn't hold water. Consider the passages of Scripture...

For as through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall many be made righteous.
Romans 5:19

Therefore as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed upon all man, for that all sinned
Romans 5:12
Verses taken from the book "What the Bible Teaches" by R.A. Torrey

The Bible does not brush aside this event with a flip of the wrist, but deals with it seriously, and sees its consequences through human history.

In regards to his take of the prophecies of a time when God will set things right with the world, let me reference someone else's words, because he says it rather well, I think. "The bottom line was that nothing like what Jesus said was going to happen was really going to happen, but that's okay, He didn't really mean that all that would happen, and besides, it really did happen, but it just wasn't anything like what He said would happen. So it's really all okay."

I can't say as I'm impressed so far.