|
7801c74
|
I've come to see that just as the Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify white Christian supremacy and the exploitation of nonwhites and non-Christians, the "doctrine of dominion" (Genesis 1:28) is still being used to justify human supremacy and the exploitation of the earth and all its creatures. Aided and abetted by harmful doctrines about the future (especially "left behind" dispensationalist eschatology), industrial-era Christians ha..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
64207df
|
In case after case in the past, there is a kind of Bible-quoting intoxication under the influence of which we religious people lose the ability to distinguish between what God says and what we say God says.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
170562c
|
The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
46bbd8c
|
There's one thing worse than a failed old religion: a naive and arrogant new one.
|
|
religion
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
275ad81
|
In religion as in parenthood, uncritical loyalty to our ancestors may implicate us in an injustice against our descendants: imprisoning them in the errors of our ancestors.
|
|
religion
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
eea8531
|
Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy--Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human--are deeply embedded not just in Christian history but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous viruses often lie hidden, malware that must be identified an..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
60ada73
|
Jesus faithfully and courageously represented the nonviolent and loving heart of God. Jesus and his way of nonviolent, self-giving love, the text suggests, will earn the trust of all humanity. We will ultimately migrate, in other words, toward the way of Jesus.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
01c3031
|
Such a possibility raises a question: if one dares to let one's traditional and inherited "Christian" understanding of God be converted under the influence of Jesus, can one still be considered a Christian? Or, conversely, if one refuses to let one's traditional understanding be converted under the influence of Jesus, can one still be considered a Christian? Be that as it may, growing numbers of us are coming to realize this simple truth: f..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
e01b929
|
To everyone, Jesus issues an invitation to abandon the story they will lose themselves in, and instead, to enter the story they will find themselves in.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
18ac57f
|
Sometimes, we become so familiar with the primal sacred story of the Bible that we need some fresh takes on it, telling us the same thing in different ways, or giving us some new vantage points to see what was always there, things we'd missed before.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
10344a1
|
Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
d2c5e9b
|
As I said before, evolution doesn't bother me. If you tell me that God created the earth "by hand" in six days some thousands of years ago, I am impressed. If you tell me instead that God set a whole cosmos in motion some billions of years ago, a cosmos perfectly calibrated within the narrowest of margins to produce at least one planet where life would be developed through cause-effect chains that were designed into it by a purposeful Desig..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
a02e1ea
|
In the story of the Good Samaritan,] everybody knows the robber is bad--but doesn't Jesus also imply an indictment on the priest and Levite? . . . The priest and Levite are over here. They are 'righteous' in a superficial way. They don't rob anybody. They're not like that lousy criminal who is over here, on the bad end of the line. Do you see it? That's the line we modern Christians try to live on the right end of it . . . The Samaritan tra..
|
|
righteousness
goodness
righteous
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
60ef4fe
|
To be truly good means more than not robbing people . . . To be truly good means more than being righteously religious . . . To be truly good means being a good neighbor. . . . And to be a good neighbor means recognizing that there are ultimately no strangers. . . . Everybody is my neighbor! . . . Everybody is my brother! . . . There are no isolated monads wounded on the other side of the street! . . . We're all connected.
|
|
righteousness
goodness
neighbor
good-samaritan
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
d341921
|
Because if anything is clear in the aftermath of the Reformation, it has to be this: we human beings can interpret the Bible to say and mean an awful lot of different things. We can very easily confuse "The Bible says" with "I say the Bible says," which we can then equate with "God says."
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
839dd5c
|
Can you imagine Jesus saying, "Believe that I am the only way. Why? Because I said so, that's why! And if you don't believe, then you're going straight to hell!" But isn't that how we present him through our slogans?"
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
dea5827
|
What is the most significant conversation you have every day?" People would respond piously, "Your conversation with God, of course." "No," Lewis would reply. "It's the conversation you have with yourself before you speak to God, because in that conversation with yourself, you decide whether you are going to be honest and authentic with God, or whether you are going to meet God with a false face, a mask, an act, a pretense."
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
006922a
|
what today throws at you will force you to become better or bitter for tomorrow; it will push you toward breakdown or breakthrough...
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
12bc31a
|
Who do we think we are -- we small creatures with three-pound brains, a few limited senses, and life spans barely long enough to get to know our neighborhood, much less the planet, and much less the galaxy, and much less the universe, and much less still its creator! Who do we think we are to be able to define or even describe the creator of DNA, galaxies, dust mites, blue whales, the carbon cycle, light, and a billion other realities we ha..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
56cec22
|
Spiritual practices are ways of becoming awake and staying awake to God.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
f794a2a
|
In other words, when the community of faith gathers, its purpose is to equip its members for a life of love and good deeds when the community scatters.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
3e4a20c
|
If I could seriously ponder ending my life, then I can do anything. I can change anything in my life. So instead of ending my life altogether, I'll end my life as I've been living it and start a new kind of life. I can now see a third alternative to the status quo and suicide.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
9e9cca7
|
When would-be reformers arise, they are rejected as heretics, turncoats, troublemakers, disturbers of the peace, traitors, and enemies.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
e64afd5
|
Spiritual] Practices are not for know-it-alls. Practices are for those who feel the need for change, growth, development, learning. Practices are for disciples.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
78e7af4
|
The life-and-death question for each of our churches and denominations may boil down to this: are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way?
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
75a381e
|
He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou... ("Footnote to All Prayers") Lewis proceeds to acknowledge that when he says the Name of God, his best thoughts are mere fancies and symbols, which he knows "cannot be the thing thou art." Then with postmodern sensitivity, Lewis ponders the inadequacy of human language and perspective: And all men are idolators, crying unheard To a deaf idol, if Th..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
6fca4d8
|
Postmoderns are not less interested in religion than ever before. Indeed, they are exploring new religious experiences like never before. The church has simply given them a less interesting religion than ever before. Leonard Sweet, Quantum Spirituality: A Postmodern Apologetic
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
b8d3e80
|
Don't we need some "secular" social space where diverse people of faith can encounter one another with some level of privacy and anonymity? Isn't the real scandal not that our religious leaders might be imagined walking across a road or talking as friends together in a bar, but rather that their followers are found speaking against one another as enemies, day after day in situation after situation? Questions like these have always mattered...
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
f07e3d7
|
Growing numbers of us are acknowledging with grief that many forms of supremacy--Christian, white, male, heterosexual, and human--are deeply embedded not just in Christian history, but also in Christian theology. We are coming to see that in hallowed words like almighty, sovereignty, kingdom, dominion, supreme, elect, chosen, clean, remnant, sacrifice, lord, and even God, dangerous vices often lie hidden. . . . We are coming to see in the l..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
d9ba4c8
|
globalism (for better or worse) transforms personal and ethnic identities, creating hyphenated and cosmopolitan identities--in which people consider themselves first and foremost citizens of the earth and members of the earth's ecosystem more than as citizens of a nation or members of a religion. This identity disruption creates fissures and fractures among existing elites who are still managing parochial national, cultural, ethnic, or reli..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
21ba55c
|
If, for you, orthodox means finally "getting it right" or "getting it straight," mine is a pretty disappointing, curvy orthodoxy. But if, for you, orthodoxy isn't a list of correct doctrines, but rather the doxa in orthodoxy, which means "thinking" or "opinion," then the lifelong pursuit of expanding thinking and deepening, broadening opinions about God sounds like a delight, a joy."
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
6e65310
|
The new dimensions of the message are examples of the Spirit of truth doing what Jesus promised he would do: continuing
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
c12d540
|
I have a confession to make.121 Almost every time I tune in to religious radio or TV, I want to change my religion. I
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
e4c9d43
|
Because I follow Jesus, then, I am bound to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, atheists, New Agers, everyone (even religious broadcasters, I was just reminded by a still, small voice). Not only am I bound to them in love, but I am also actually called to, in some real sense (please don't minimize this before you qualify it), become one of them, to enter their world and be with them in it.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
917ce81
|
there is no way to peace, but rather peace itself is the way to life in God's kingdom. (This
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
c0aaf4a
|
He creates a new kind of hero: not warriors, corporate executives, or politicians, but brave and determined activists for preemptive peace, willing to suffer with Him in the prophetic tradition of justice.
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
d10e7ca
|
We must, therefore, never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God--whether in prose or in poetry. Romano
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
4372c90
|
A generous orthodoxy is like that. It acknowledges that we're all a mess. It sees in our worst failures the possibility of our deepest repentance and God's opening for our most profound healing. It remembers Jesus' parable that wherever God sows good seed, "an enemy" will sow weed seeds. It realizes that you can't pull up the bad without uprooting the good too, and so it refrains from judging. It just rejoices wherever good seed grows."
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
0bb4537
|
Here's the papal proclamation of 1455 that empowered the Christian kings of Europe to enslave, plunder, and slaughter in the name of discovery: invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their pers..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
861699e
|
Surely many courageous Christians spoke out against the savagery of their so-called civilized fellow Christians? And surely many compassionate Christians spoke out for the humanity of the so-called savages? Sadly, very, very few actually did, notable among them a Dominican friar, Bartolome de las Casas. His
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
4738ea0
|
With my own eyes I saw Spaniards cut off the nose, hands, and ears of Indians, male and female, without provocation, merely because it pleased them to do it....Likewise, I saw how they summoned the caciques and the chief rulers to come, assuring them safety, and when they peacefully came, they were taken captive and burned....They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill ..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
8ef816e
|
Oddly, I've never heard of a church or denomination that asked people to affirm a doctrinal statement like this: The purpose of Scripture is to equip God's people for good works. Shouldn't a simple statement like this be far more important than statements with words foreign to the Bible's vocabulary about itself (inerrant, authoritative, literal, revelatory, objective, absolute, propositional, etc.)?
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
6881a15
|
The surface causes of environmental carelessness among conservative Christians are legion, including subcontracting the evangelical mind out to right-wing politicians and greedy business interests. Too often we put the gospel of Jesus through the strainer of consumerist-capitalism and retain only the thin broth that this modern-day Caesar lets pass through. We often display a reactionary tendency to be against whatever "liberals" are for. T..
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |
|
32d1297
|
The wise preacher of Ecclesiastes might say, "There is a time for everything--a time to be laid-back and a time to be outraged; a time to be tolerant and a time to stand up and say, 'I'm not going to take this anymore.'" The challenge for all fighters, of course, is to be sure they find out what is now truly worth fighting against, and then to be sure they have something that is truly worth fighting for."
|
|
|
Brian D. McLaren |