More from Brian McLaren’s ‘A Generous Orthodoxy’:

14. WHY I AM METHODIST

The Protestants –  Luther and Calvin –  created intellectual systems. But nobody before the Methodists seriously developed a system of spiritual formation to replace the Catholic system of spirituality. They did for spiritual formation what Luther and Calvin did for doctrine (the latter seemed to suppose that right thinking = right behavior; more biblical content = better Christians. But as Dallas Willard, Larry Crabb, Richard Foster and others have observed, systematic theologies don’t necessarily produce personal transformation. Wesleyan Methodism does not focus on fill-in-the-blank answers, but on queries/questions which make one reflect, think, take stock, and pay attention to what’s going on in one’s soul. May God save us from orthodoxy which has lost touch with orthopraxy (right practice), which will make it ungenerous and eventually unorthodox, too.

15. WHY I AM CATHOLIC

Generous orthodoxy presumes that the divisions between groups of Christians, though tragic, are superficial compared to Christianity’s deep, though often unappreciated, unity.

‘Holy’ means devoted to a sacred purpose – ‘Apostolic’ means missional – [Let us] place less emphasis on whose lineage, rites, doctrines, structures, and terminology are ‘right’ and more emphasis on whose actions, service, outreach, kindness and effectiveness are ‘good’.

Since Vatican II ‘separated brethren’ are at least brethren, a higher status than some Protestant denominations will grant Catholics!

Let’s be ‘catholic’ –  an accepting, welcoming church for everyone, not just an exclusive, elite few.  This doesn’t mean we lower our standards of authentic discipleship, rather we raise our standards of Christ-like acceptance.

How many sacraments? I care little for arguments about how many (though I tend to prefer longer lists than shorter ones).

The Protestant Reformation separated two brothers –  Scripture and tradition.

Catholics know how to party. Chesterton: ‘These [Catholic] countries are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and colored dresses and art in the open air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls, but they are the walls of a playground’.

16. WHY I AM GREEN

The standard, stagnant theology of creation/fall is giving way to a more vigorous theology of continual creation.  So we are looking to the Eastern Orthodox tradition and to emerging narrative theologies where creation is still seen as sacred, ‘good’, ‘very good’, and, in fact, ongoing.

‘To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.’ (Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 120).

Apart from a miracle I see no human power capable of standing up to the expanding empire of global consumerism (‘theocapitalism’ as Tom Beaudoin calls it).

What kind of world do we want to bequeath to those downstream from us in time?

17.WHY I AM INCARNATIONAL

Confession: Almost every time I tune in to religious radio or TV, I want to change my religion – to become Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu  – anything but what I’m hearing.

‘Jesus didn’t want to create an in-group which could banish others to an out-group; Jesus wanted to create a come-on-in group, one that sought and welcomed everyone’ (Nigel Livingstone).

I am not saying all religions are the same, it doesn’t matter what you believe, truth is relative, blah, blah, blah. I am not advocating a kind of “everybody-is-okay/all-religions-are-equally-true relativist/pluralist tolerance. I am saying that because we follow Jesus, because we believe Jesus is true, and because Jesus moves toward all people in love and kindness and grace, we do the same.

Pharisees were the elect and elite among the elect and elite. They wouldn’t eat with non-Jews; they wouldn’t greet them, embrace them, marry them, or even help them if they found them beaten and left to die on the road. Pharisees didn’t understand the difference between love/acceptance and approval, so lest they be accused of approving of other religions, they refrained from loving or accepting people who were part of other religions (as well as subpar members of their own).

To show love and acceptance toward people is not to approve all they believe or do, as any parent knows. To show disapproval of divergent beliefs by withholding love and acceptance may be orthodox Phariseeism, and it may be orthodox modern, Western, colonial Christianity, but it is not the generous orthodoxy of Jesus Christ.

According to Macquarrie (quoted in Transforming Mission, 483), there are seven formative factors in theology: experience, revelation, Scripture, tradition, culture, reason  -and dialogue with other religions. (We must retain the good Protestant, evangelical, and biblical instinct to allow Scripture to critique tradition  – including our dominant and most recent tradition… ). Re dialogue with other religions: as a generously orthodox Christian I consider myself not above Buddhists and Muslims and others, but below them as a servant. Better, I consider myself with them as a neighbour and brother.

Jesus didn’t come merely to start another religion to compete in the marketplace of other religions. If anything, I believe he came to end standard competitive religion (which Paul called ‘the law’) by fulfilling it. Not, like too many religions, a place of fear and exclusion, but a place where everyone can find a home in the embrace of God.

18. WHY I AM DEPRESSED  – YET HOPEFUL

Something is rotten in the state of our religion. We need to say, as the people did in Nehemiah’s day, that we are no better than our fathers (Nehemiah 9).

The dangers of the human heart: of principalities and powers; of unholy alliances between spirit and money or God-talk and guns – of fat and missionless religious bureaucracies; of both repressed and unrestrained sexuality; of subtle idolatries, including the worship of our concepts or feelings about God rather than God; of wealth and comfort; and of so much more.

19.WHY I AM EMERGENT

Emergence is what happens when the whole is smarter than the sum of its parts. (We’re more used to thinking of ourselves in the neoplatonic and Cartesian ghost-in-a-machine model, where the body is the bigger machine and the soul is a little disassociated tenant, fluttering around in the machine like a tiny moth in a tin can).

True prophets (those who bring a new word from God to assist in the current process of emergence) are crucified; false prophets (those who promise shortcuts that will cause regression or stagnation) are made rich and famous. A generous orthodoxy is an emerging orthodoxy, never complete until we arrive at our final home in God.

We aren’t ‘for’ pluralistic relativism, but we see it as a kind of needed chemotherapy. We see modernity with its absolutisms and colonialisms and totalitarianisms as a kind of static dream, a desire to abide in timeless abstractions, and extract humanity from the ongoing flow of history and emergence, a naive hope to make ‘now’ the end of history.

It is possible that the way ahead is not to stop short of a pluralistic phase, but rather to go through it and pass beyond it, emerging into something beyond and better. Do you see why words like postmodern, post-liberal and post-conservative keep coming up  – why the word ‘beyond’ is so prevalent these days? The ‘above and beyond’ is, I believe, the way of Jesus, which is the way of love and the way of embrace. It is what I believe Jesus means by ‘the kingdom of God,’ a reality into which we have been emerging through the centuries, which is bigger than whatever we generally mean by ‘Christianity’.

20.WHY I AM UNFINISHED

The great narrative theologian James William McClendon wrote a three-volume work entitled Systematic Theology. Remarkably, he begins with Ethics  – humility, compassion, spirituality and love  – which develop only in community. Then he engages Doctrine, and finally, a community practicing love and the pursuit of understanding is ready to engage in Mission (‘witness’ for McClendon). So orthodoxy isn’t a destination, it’s a ‘way’ even if one in his life never arrives (as Paul put it in Philippians 3:12-13).

My favorite musician is Bruce Cockburn, and my favorite line (from “Understanding Nothing” is ‘All these years of thinking ended up like this –  in front of all this beauty, understanding nothing.’ … One never ‘gets’ beauty  – one stands (or falls) in front of it astonished, amazed, open-mouthed, speechless, and humbled.

Perhaps we will believe again that the meek will inherit the earth and truth is a treasure not best found or held through coercion and threat or competition and dominance, but by humble seeking, sincere faith, resilient hope, patient love.

A final word from Vincent Donovan: ‘The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all’ (Christianity Rediscovered, 146).

Brian D McLaren

http://www.anewkindofchristian.com <http://www.anewkindofchristian.com/> http://www.emergentvillage.com <http://www.emergentvillage.com/> http://www.crec.org <http://www.crec.org/>

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