Eternal Perspectives

Having been to seminary (twice), I understand the importance of knowing what one believes before undertaking a study of any subject or issue. This all-but guarantees that whatever material is selected for the purpose of research will either support or fail to refute one’s predetermined conclusion. It is one of the many valuable things one learns in seminary and why I recommend a rigorous course of seminary studies to everyone.

Wisely, I have learned to generalize my highly-honed approach to learning beyond the Bible to subjects not specifically or exclusively theological. It is for this reason that, before I actually read and studied Brian McLaren (hereafter, BM), I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like him, that his teachings were dangerous and false, and that I should warn others about him. With my position firmly established and made public, I began to study BM for myself.

Before going any further, however, I must confess two things: first, that I had had some exposure to BM prior to reading and studying him in earnest, albeit accidentally. The initial exposure was strictly visual: the ubiquitous photo of him that seems to be lurking everywhere these days. Whether I was physically perusing books at Barnes & Noble or digitally browsing on Amazon, I could not seem to escape BM’s I-know- something-you-don’t-know grin: it was everywhere, peering out at me like a baptized version of Baba Ram Dass. (more…)

Part One
Part Two

(Following is the third and final part of a proposed paper for elder and leadership development and orientation at my friend Butch’s church, Hole-in-the-Wall Church. Feedback is desired.)

5. What does it mean to be a part of a Mission Church?
(more…)

Part One

(Following is the second part of a proposed paper for elder and leadership development and orientation at my friend Butch’s fellowship, Hole-in-the-Wall Church. Feedback is desired.)

3. What is the Gospel of the Mission Church?
(more…)

One of my best friends - I’ll call him Butch - sent me an email that included a document intended for introducing potential elders and leaders to the purpose of his church. My friend is trying to get his church to intentionally do better what it’s already doing very well.

After a couple of back and forths and 60+ comments and emendations from me, I finally decided to re-write the whole thing. I couldn’t bring myself to use the term “missional”: it’s just too trite and trendy.

I’d appreciate any feedback or thoughts you might have on what I’ve written: it may make the paper even better or it may be ignored completely.

Here’s the first of three installments of the proposed paper:

The Mission Statement of Hole-in-the-Wall Church is to build a loving community that follows Christ in order to reach a community that is lost without Him. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on and further delineate how our mission is to be accomplished. (more…)

My posting has been so sparse of late that I feel as though I need to apologize to those readers of Eternal Perspectives that click by to see if I’ve gotten around to anything new. I don’t think my dearth of writing is due to the well being dry but rather to my wondering if I drink from the same well as most Christians in the cyberchurch.

Hear my confession (Part Uno): I get bored - quickly - with vast majority of the so-called discussions that take place online. Take, for example, the current skirmish that could erupt into a genuine massacre at any time. (I say “massacre” not because one side is going to so devastate the other, but because it will be yet another instance of the Name of Christ being sullied as two or more bloggers attempt to tear theological limb from theological limb from one another. Shades of the Black K-nig-it. Not a great testimony to either the love or unity to which we are commanded.)

The simmering feud to which I’m referring, of course, is the “Name-that-Beast of the Week in Revelation” between Tim Challies, Joe Carter, Andy Jackson, and the sometimes-incindiary posts of John Schroeder. Tim says the Roman Church “seems to be,” “might be,” “could be” the Beast, or, uh, antichrist, I mean some metaphorical being from John’s final writings, while Andy says, “no way.” Joe takes Tim to task for being illogical in his post and John faults Tim specifically and generally for hedging his statements behind statements with plausible deniability. iMonk comments that he’s in favor of people saying what they mean and meaning what they say, i.e., speaking dogmatically and not tiptoeing around. This is not surprising coming from Michael, who is anything but hypocritical in this regard and could be the poster boy for straight talking - even if sometimes his message might be a tad bent. Like mine. And yours.

Regardless, I find all of this tediously boring and an utter waste of time and talent. Is this what Paul meant when he told us that we should be “making the most of your time, because the days are evil”? I seriously doubt it.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I have been able to accurately identify the Beast of Revelation. After years to exegetical, historical, and theological work - and also reading the Gnostic gospels and even The Da Vinci Code - I determine that the Beast of Revelation is Alec Baldwin, erstwhile actor and expert on everything.

(Now, I could have picked Ann Coulter except (a) the Beast seems to be male and, unless I need new glasses, there’s not much about Ann that looks masculine, and (b) I like Ann a lot more than I like Alec. I’m also confident that some of you have noticed that I put Alec on the right and Ann on the left: this is what’s known as irony in my own sardonic, iconoclastic mind.)

At any rate, so I determine beyond any doubt that the Beast of Revelation is Alec Baldwin - and maybe even that Ann Coulter is the whore of Babylon. Now what? What do I, as a Christian, do about this amazing discovery? First, of course, being pretribulational in my theology, I have to make some changes to my eschatology. Nothing too earth-shattering about that. I also might have to change my feelings about Ann but, again, it’s not like we exchange Christmas cards or she has me on speed dial.

So what’s the point? Knowing the identity of the Beast or whore doesn’t change my life one bit: I’m no more responsible now than previously to love people, share the gospel, care for the poor and needy, be a faithful steward of creation, and live a holy life. The only benefit, as far as I can tell, is that I have ruled out myself as either the Beast or the whore, along with a lot of others. I suppose I’m freed from having to love Alec or Ann, but - and this is a horrible confession (Part Dos) I am about to make - I really don’t pray for either one of them anyway.

That may make me a horrible Christian but, thanks to my discovery, it doesn’t make me the Beast or the whore.

Whew!

So I languish in my thoughts about whether or not to spend my time trying to talk sense into people who know more than they understand or need to establish an identity by being contrary. I’m not sure that is the wisest investment of my time or a practice of “making the most of” my time during these evil days.

Thus, posting may continue to be sparse. When I do write something, however, I hope it will be something of a reality check for those of you who do read. One of my missions, as described in the header of Eternal Perspectives, is “searching for sanity in a Christian culture gone mad.”

When the patients are running the psych ward, it’s not easy.

Related Tags: Catholic, Beast, Antichrist, Revelation

For the most part, I have stayed out of the fray over the orthodoxy (generous or otherwise) and orthopraxy of Brian D. McLaren for one simple reason: although I’ve read a lot about him, I really haven’t read much of him (only The Church on the Other Side). Most of what I have read about him has seemed polarized: he is either the second-coming of a Minor Prophet or the latest emanation of a False Prophet. Few indeed have been the reasonable voices: Scot McKnight comes to mind but I couldn’t accept all that he had to say, either. That has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me: in my ignorance of McLaren, I didn’t know how to evaluate McKnight’s interaction with and frequent defense of the Emergent contingent. (Finally I emailed him and asked him if he were still orthodox in his beliefs; he assured me he was. I believed him; I still believe him.)

Not much has really changed - I am still ignorant, but slightly less so. I have just finished McLaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus and have found what I believe are some valuable insights and perspectives therein, some of which are intended and at least one that is not.

The purpose of this post is not to provide an apologetic for McLaren nor even to review his book. It is to attempt to shed a wee bit of light on him as an individual and perhaps make him a bit more palatable to some. I fully recognize that there are those among us who will require the Heimlich maneuver for anything not written by their denominational patron saint - Calvin, Luther, Wesley, Darby, Osteen - and I don’t expect to make many converts with them. But hopefully there are others who might benefit from McLaren if he is viewed from a profitable, maybe even biblical perspective.

Having said that, I do not believe that my view is the last word (or even the word after that) on McLaren. It is, however, my word and I think it has some merit, at least for me if no one else. I want to make two points in this post; perhaps, in another post, I’ll provide additional quotes from and comments about his latest book.

First, I think McLaren can be viewed as a prophet but not as a priest. I take my definitions from McLaren:

The best way I’ve found to understand Jewish prophets is to see them in dynamic tension with another important religious community in Judaism: the priests. Priests were responsible for the regular, ongoing, day-to-day and year-to-year, religious life of Judaism - the key words being regularity and its cousin regulations. The priests made sure the traditions and practices of regular religious life went on as they should with holidays and sacrifices, feasts and fasts, Scripture and tradition. In Jesus’ day, priests were closely allied with the scribes - religious scholars who studied and argued about what exactly the rules and regulations of Judaism should be. Together, they constituted what we might call the religious establishment . . .

“There were tensions between Aaron the priest and Moses the prophet, and tensions between priests and prophets continued through the centuries. Priests focused on regularity and tradition, but what happened when people began going through the motions with their bodies, while their hearts and minds were unengaged? . . . In those cases, a prophet would arise and tell the people that God is downright disgusted with external religious observance that rolls along without heartfelt sincerity and without commitment to social justice and practical compassion for the poor and week . . .

“As you’d expect, since their purpose was to disrupt the status quo, their life and rhetoric were necessarily unruly, disturbing, sometimes shocking.” - pp 20-22

I think McLaren has put his finger on something here, and it is - at the very least - himself: McLaren is a brilliant prophetic mind and an alluring prophetic voice in many, many ways. It is impossible for anyone paying attention to the cultural climate of current Christianity to not agree with many of the points he makes. He sees clearly; he knows the emperor is naked and is not hesitant to say so.

Consider, for example, McLaren’s statements about the conspiracy of religious and political leaders to crucify Jesus Christ, thus bringing His ministry to what appears to be a tragic, failed end:

This is the scandal of the message of Jesus. The kingdom of God does fail. It is weak. It is crushed. When its message of love, peace, justice, and truth meets the principalities and powers of government and religion armed with spears and swords and crosses, they unleash their hate, force, manipulation, and propaganda. Like those defenseless students standing before tanks and machine guns in Tiananmen Square, the resistance movement known as the kingdom of God is crushed.

“But what is the alternative? We really must consider this question. Could the kingdom of God come with bigger weapons, sharper swords, more clever political organizing? Could the kingdom of God be a matter of what is often called redemptive violence? Or would that methodology corrupt the kingdom of God so it would stop being ‘of God’ at all and instead become just another earthly (and perhaps in some sense demonic) principality or power? . . .

“What if the only way for the kingdom of God to come in its true form - as a kingdom ‘not of this world’ - is through weakness and vulnerability, sacrifice and love?” - p 69

Powerful and timely words, these are, and McLaren is speaking them at a point in American history when Christianity is becoming so politicized as to be rejected more for its politics than for its message of salvation.

On the other hand, and by his own admission, McLaren is not a priest, i.e., he is not one who is a biblical scholar or skilled in discerning what biblical teachings are timeless and those that are culturally influenced. As a result, he sometimes makes statements that are unnecessary and/or untenable. Touching on the matter of future things, he says,

Others - and I am among them, although I was born and thoroughly indoctrinated into the former approach - believe that neither the Bible nor the teachings of Jesus are intended to give us a timeline of the future. In our view, God intended to create our universe the way parents give birth to a child: the child is given limits and guidance, but she also has freedom to live her own life. That means that the future of the universe is not determined as if it were a movie that’s already been filmed and is just being shown to us. Nor is it completely left to chance like dice cast on a table. Rather, God’s creation is maturing with both freedom and limits under the watchful eye of a caring parent. So what we find in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus are not determining prognostications or schematic diagrams of the future but instead something far more valuable: warnings and promises.”

Certainly there is much truth in what he has said here, but there is also much that has been ignored or left unexplained. When McLaren attempts to turn theologian or exegete, he is out of his depth. He is more philosophical than theological, more esoteric than exegetic. This is not a character flaw or a reason to dismiss everything he says; it is a reason to read his writings with discernment, rejecting his misconceptions (not deceptions) and profiting from his legitimate exhortations.

Which leads to my second point and one which, unintentionally and unconsciously, McLaren makes himself. The second point is that McLaren is an old wineskin. He grew up in the church - a fundamentalist church, as he says - and was innoculated as a child to the variant strains of Christianity spreading like hearty viruses throughout the Christendom of his youth. As he grew older, however, the innoculation seemed to lose its effectiveness: he jettisoned the fundamentalist mentality and set off to find a new and better way.

Therein lies the problem: there is obviously a bad taste in McLaren’s mouth about his early, fundamentalist upbringing; he is so soured on the old that he too often unnecessarily and mistakenly rejects what is good and true. So strong is his dislike and distrust of anything remotely “fundamentalist” that he could be considered “fundaphobic” - if there were such a thing.

Though being an “old wineskin,” McLaren does not burst but he cannot help but distort the flavor of the fresh, new wine he seeks to serve to others. It does not seem possible for him to achieve a rapprochement between what fundamentalism had right and what he now rightly proclaims.

The fault is in his shortcomings as a priest - or, more accurately, as a scribe, a biblical scholar who is able to “rightly divide the word of truth.” He is a poor theologian at many points and exegetically completely dependent upon the expertise of others; the “expertise” of others is determined by whether or not they support and agree with his position. (He is hardly alone in that proclivity.)

It would not be a mistake, perhaps, to reject or ignore McLaren totally: the church is not dependent on any one individual for its continuance or health. But it would be, I think, unprofitable to reject or ignore him completely. It requires discernment and careful reading to gather his roses without being pricked by his thorns, but he is - in his prophetic role - a voice with much to say for those who have ears discerning ears to hear.

I am not posting today because it is 06.06.06 and, as you should already know, the world has ended and I am no longer here.

Thank you for your understanding on this matter.

Sincerely,

The Dead Guy