Notes of a study led by Janice Newham on chapters 10 & 11 of Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity

Wednesday Koinonia:  26 sept 2012

How do you feel about those bible texts which present God as a destroyer of his enemies, violent and even genocidal? Have we wondered about a God who would wipe out all living things except one boatload of refugee humans and animals? From our reading of the bible, are we supposed to think that God will crush Satan – along with our enemies – under our feet (Rom 16:20)? How, instead, can faith become a force for peace and reconciliation rather than elitism, division and violence? It all depends how we read the bible, says McLaren. He suggests the bible be seen as an inspired cultural library rather than a rule book or legal constitution. What does he mean by this… Is it a valid way to treat the bible, and how would it help?

How black and white the OT seems to us…

Brian McLaren would have us use our brains. Sometimes the way we’ve been taught is not tried and true but mistaken and oppressive.

If God reveal anything to you by any other instruments of his, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from his holy word.

~~ Pastor John Robinson, in the year 1620, speaking to his group of English pilgrims about to board the Mayflower in Holland and sail for the New World.

You recall that for McLaren, the god of the Greco-Roman way of seeing the biblical story is called Theos. Theos views an ideal state of perfection and banishes or destroys anyone or anything that has fallen from this ideal. In the end, he will destroy all matter because it has fallen from the ideal, condemned to absolute perfect torment. Only the (platonic notion of) soul or spirit will enjoy perfect peace.

But is Theos, the god of the philosophers, the God of Jesus, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? The goodness of the biblical Elohim is in contrast with the unbending, perfectionist and tyrannical nature of Theos. Creation and the activities of creation are celebrated, not as an unchanging state but as a delightful process of progress. Even the misbehaviour of Adam and Eve leads to the fulfilment of God’s purposes – to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Later on, goodness triumphs (God as creator and reconciler) over the evil motives and jealous actions of the people (eg Joseph’s story). The unfolding drama is the story of God’s faithfulness in response to human foolishness. God sides with the oppressed and downtrodden in Egypt. God is liberator, who continually frees the people from external and internal oppression (their own fears etc) and re-forms them. Then he gives them a new vision of a future where peace and justice will reign. The kingdom of ‘shalom’. The temple is re-built, but becomes a symbol of God’s dwelling over the whole earth.

McLaren then moves to ask: how should the bible be interpreted? And suggests that it should be seen as an inspired cultural library meant to be read and valued by a community, not a legal constitution. The use of the bible to justify slavery is presented as an example. On p 103 he asks how should we treat our enemies? And finds a heap of contradictory texts. Not neat with internal consistency but messy with internal tension.

(Illustration: The dog and cat diaries are funny but what if they are talking about the SAME FAMILY?)

The killings and evil in the OT, even if God is apparently a part of them, do not solve anything. David’s kingdom ended up being split and overtaken.

Maybe God’s intervention in calamities isn’t needed now we have advances in science and technology?

McLaren then deals with a problematic book, Job. What role does God play in Job’s calamities? Who is Satan? At the end of the book the deal with Satan is never explained. So reading the bible as ‘plain words’ just doesn’t work here. Revelation through conversation might be a better way to look at the inspiration of this book. The tension of the argument plays an important part in revelation to the reader. Not even reference to Deuteronomy finishes the argument. All the different voices in Job, and throughout the bible, play a part in involving us in the conversation. What, then, if the bible’s purpose is to provide a cultural library sufficient to enable us to encounter the living God? A way to put us not UNDER the text, not OVER the text, but IN the text? In the community, in the Spirit, in the conversation, in the story…

Next comes the God question. Even with the Theos concept removed, there is still a problem with the way that the biblical God behaves sometimes.

McLaren notices that the images and understandings our ancestors held of God evolve and mature through the years. In Ex 6:3 God tells Moses that the mysterious divine name The LORD had been intentionally withheld from Abraham. Jesus in John 15:1 implies that more truth would be revealed later when the disciples were able to bear it. Also, the disciples had known Jesus as Master but would now be called his friends. Similar evolving understandings occurred in:

Evolving understandings of God in the Bible

• uniqueness – from foremost among many gods to the only God
• ethics – from concerns about religious fidelity to social justice
• universality – from tribal to the God who benefits all
• agency – from magically interventionist and hyper-present, and conversely sometimes distant or absent, to God as guide and empowerer for the greater good
• character – from a vengeful, retaliatory and capricious God who has favourites, to a compassionate and forgiving God of grace.

Fundamentalism usually has difficulties with progressions within the text and tends to eliminate the tensions that are there. The fundamentalist God is deterministic, exacting, exclusive and perfectionistic. Rigorous understandings are preferred to what is seen as compromised and liberal.

McLaren makes clear he is NOT saying that God has matured and weakened but that the bible communicates our ancestors’ understandings of God. An example of a progression in understanding comes from arithmetic: “You cannot subtract a larger number from a smaller number”. So, what if polytheistic peoples needed to learn that God was superior to other gods before finding out that there is only one God? What if a God of social justice had to first teach them that God could be pleased and displeased? What if, to communicate global solidarity, God first taught he was the God of their tribe, then extended the concept to the God of our brothers then to the God of our enemies? Likewise, does God begin with a concept of violent defeat of injustice and later move to a non violent passion for social justice?

Does this explain the different kinds of faith communities – some where we feel we have outgrown what they teach, and others which seem to be over our heads? Clearly, the process of maturing and interpreting is not finished for us.

McLaren then poses a way to move from violent tribal God to a Christlike God. He begins with the disturbing story of Noah’s flood, when God wipes out all living things except one boatload of refugee humans and animals – a story we were trained to read as a story of salvation. Does this story justify ethnic cleansing in our day? Is this what Judaism and Christianity are about? This genocide didn’t even work – the so-called good guys soon messed up their lives again.

Look at the antecedents to the flood story. The epic of Gilgamesh with its flood story could be said to have been amended by the biblical flood story. Instead of unruly gods whose haphazard geocidal actions caused problems even for themselves, Noah’s flood was caused by one God with a character which included aspects of justice and mercy (though not as much mercy as we would like today).

And what about the descendants of the flood story, eg baby Moses floating in theNile. Was this a commentary on the flood story, with God now identifying with one who might be drowned? In the NT, Jesus acts to offer mercy to enemies – ‘the other’ – who previously were not shown mercy in the book of Joshua. Another example of evolutionary thought concerns the intolerance of idols among the Jews. Today, our idols are housed not in temples but in theological colleges where our partially developed understandings have been frozen into printed images on paper and computer disks. A constitutional approach to the bible can camouflage that kind of conceptual idolatry.

McLaren finishes the chapter by showing how we might guard against choosing a poorer, more backward image of God instead of the more evolved one. And how to avoid drifting in a theological sea – accusations that will come from our gatekeepers. God’s character is never fully revealed at any point in the story; revelation requires a cumulative reading of the whole narrative, the trajectory of the past, and needs to be viewed in the light of Jesus. Jesus explodes pre-determined categories. For the Christian, Jesus is not like God; God is like Jesus. “The Son is the image of the invisible God…” (Col1:15ff)

McLaren wishes to remind us that it is NOT the bible that is the image of God, nor is it the revelation of God. It is Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life. Christ is the hinge of the biblical story, the spine or the backbone of the narrative, the peak of the story to which the OT ascends and points and the NT flows in vigour and vitality.