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The popular and domesticated Jesus, who has become little more than a chrome-plated hood ornament on the guzzling Hummer of Western civilization, can thus be replaced with a more radical, saving, and, I believe, real Jesus.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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And we are coming to see that this repentance and conversion do not express infidelity to Christ, but fidelity, because we are coming to see in the life and teaching of Christ, and especially in the cross and resurrection of Christ, a radical rejection of dominating supremacy in all its forms.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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In Christ, God is supreme, but not in the old discredited paradigm of supremacy: God is the supreme healer, the supreme friend, the supreme lover, the supreme life-giver who self-empties in gracious love for all. The king of kings and lord of lords is the servant of all and the friend of sinners. The so-called weakness and foolishness of God are greater than the so-called power and wisdom of human regimes.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Motivated thus by their beliefs in God and their lust for gold--as dangerous a cocktail today as then--the Spanish Christians ravaged Latin America, as did their Portuguese counterparts. Bartolome concludes, "We can estimate very truly and truthfully that in the forty years that have passed, with the infernal actions of the Christians, there have been unjustly slain more than twelve million men, women, and children. In truth, I believe with..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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In the aftermath of Jesus and his cross, we should never again define God's sovereignty or supremacy by analogy to the kings of this world who dominate, oppress, subordinate, exploit, scapegoat and marginalize.3 Instead, we have migrated to an entirely new universe, or, as Paul says, "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) in which old ideas of supremacy are subverted. If this is true, to follow Jesus is to change one's understanding of God. ..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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We might say that two thousand years ago, Jesus inserted into the human imagination a radical new vision of God--nondominating, nonviolent, supreme in service, and self-giving. That vision was so radically new and different that we have predictably spent our first two thousand years trying to reconcile it with the old visions of God that it challenged. Maybe only now, as we acknowledge Christianity to be, in light of our history, what the n..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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a64c23c
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Community has become a buzzword in the church in recent years. Overbusy individuals hope they can cram it into their overstuffed schedules like their membership to a health and fitness club (which they never have time to use). Churches hope they can conjure it with candles, programs, or training videos. Anabaptists know that community is far more costly than that: one cannot add it to anything, rather one must begin with it in order to ente..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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The statement serves as the basis for what is commonly called the Doctrine of Discovery, the teaching that whatever Christians "discover," they can take and use as they wish. It is breathtaking in its theological horror. Muslims (then called Saracens) and all other non-Christians are reduced to "enemies of Christ." Christians, even as they plunder, enslave, and kill, count themselves friends of Christ by contrast. Christian global mission i..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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This papal document--which has not yet been repudiated by the Catholic Church--was the basis for the Christian justification of colonialism and the building of competitive Spanish, Portuguese, British, Dutch, French, Belgian, German, and other Euro-Christian empires that spanned the world.13 It was the genocide card that was given to every white Christian nation.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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b1b935a
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Schoolchildren don't normally learn this poem about Columbus's second voyage to Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic today): "In fourteen hundred and ninety-five, sixteen hundred people he kidnapped alive." Columbus"
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Columbus wrote this of his dehumanized "cargo": "It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell....Here there are so many of these slaves...although they are living things they are as good as gold." Columbus gave permission to his crew who remained in Hispaniola to enslave the native Taino people "in the amount desired." Columbus awarded a teenage Taino girl to one of his crew, Miguel ..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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One might conclude that these were a few rogue rotten Spanish apples, acting in opposition to their faith. But notice the religious motivation for the cruelty described by Bartolome: They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there,..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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was the identity of all non-Christians as "offspring of the devil" that allowed these acts "in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles," not in spite of Christianity, but because of it. Bartolome, of course, knew that there were other motivations as well: Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches i..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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I am convinced that Jesus didn't come to start a new religion; he came to proclaim a new kingdom.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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And in 1513, the Spanish government created a kind of Miranda rights-style document that was to be read (in Spanish--incomprehensible to the indigenous peoples!) to those about to be conquered. It was the summary of the Gospel as they understood it; it was their core message, their "good news," the metanarrative that legitimized their white Christian supremacy: On the part of the King, Don Fernando, and of Dona Juana I, his daughter, Queen ..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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The people of Hispaniola had their lives unjustly and savagely taken by professed Jesus followers, and they were not, as we all know, the only ones to meet such a fate. Millions of their Indigenous sisters and brothers on Turtle Island were killed at the hands of other Europeans, as nation after imperial nation, bearing Christ on their lips and crosses on their military standards, followed suit.21
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Brian D. McLaren |
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As the Navajo and Christian activist Mark Charles explains, when citizens of the thirteen British colonies composed the Declaration of Independence, among their complaints against King George was that he didn't allow them to apply the Doctrine of Discovery to the people of the lands to their west.22 The Declaration described the indigenous peoples as "merciless Indian savages," clearly not counted among the "all men" whom God supposedly "cr..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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When physical genocide ran its course, cultural genocide followed, reflected in the "compassionate" counsel of Captain Richard Henry Pratt: "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man." Then"
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Americans until 1924. States like Arizona and New Mexico found ways to continue restricting voting rights until 1948, just as several southern states continue to do in this century to African Americans.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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If more Christians today summon the courage to take seriously the dark sides of our history, we will wake up to the degree to which our religion still interprets the Bible exactly as our misguided ancestors did.28 (No, we don't draw exactly the same conclusions, but we have neither acknowledged nor rejected the method of reading the Bible that made those unacceptable interpretations acceptable.) If we face our past, we will see how many pow..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Fasting is] a way of making sure we haven't let the rhythms of the everyday put us to sleep, a way to make sure that our habits have not become addictions...
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Some people--and I pray I will be one of them--never forget what it was like, which enables them to mentor people of any age.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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the kind of person who wants to participate in the healing of the world is very different from the kind of person who wants to leave this world behind so she can go to a better one.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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I'm raising the question of whether focusing on the afterlife beyond history can unintentionally but tragically lead to the abandonment of this earth and this life.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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So if God is forgotten, we want to join God in being forgotten. So if God is rejected and opposed and misunderstood and misrepresented, we want to suffer each indignity and sorrow with God.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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We hate those times of weakness, but I can see why life would be engineered to bring us to them; without them, we might never learn what faith is at all. Someone has said that you never know if your faith is real until it is all you have left.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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our relationships with God go through similar phases sometimes. We aren't comfortable with each other. The conversation doesn't flow as well. We aren't sure we can trust as before -- or we aren't sure we can be trusted as before. At those tough times, I have learned that there is a lot to be said for just hanging in there. For keeping on going to church. For saying your prayers. For keeping the communication lines open. For sustaining your ..
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Brian D. McLaren |
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With Sir Isaac Newton's laws of physics, and God being seen as the powerful machine operator who perfectly controls the machine through these orderly laws, we end up with the opposite problem, the very opposite of the ancient situation. Now, instead of chaos reigning and us wondering if there's any order, order reigns supreme, and we wonder if there's any freedom.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Enter faith, and a whole new factor enters the equation. Words like "impossible" seem out of place. Despair and cynicism feel like insults to God. Hope grows, and love, and therefore motivation to care, to give, to act, to try, to dream, to risk."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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I do know this about pride: pride is tiring, a cruel task-master, a complicator, a destroyer. Humility, in contrast, relaxes, refreshes, relieves, simplifies, renews. To the degree that becoming childlike includes becoming humble, humility releases childlike play, laughter, sleep, smiles, fun. Our pride forces us to take ourselves so seriously, which leads us to take others less seriously and God less seriously still.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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2baa2b1
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Being able to know and feel what Karl knows and feels... that no matter what, I am God's, and God is mine... that we have a connection; we have a relationship. Faith in your life brings God in your life.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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God unleashes history in the beginning. God helps the baby to stand in the beginning. But God is also out ahead, calling history homeward across the field or across the room. God doesn't force it. Sometimes history responds, or some parts of history respond, but others resist or rebel. But God keeps calling.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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seeing history in this new way-not just being pushed from the past, or even engineered in the present, but being pulled, invited, called, into the future, which keeps coming to us as a gift.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Cause-effect looks back and asks, "What caused this?" Purpose looks up or ahead, and asks, "And why was it caused? For what purpose? For what end?" Cause-effect looks for a force pushing events from behind. Purpose looks for a pattern or design or intention or meaning pulling events from ahead, guiding them from above, enriching them from within."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Roman throats like the Zealots. Instead, if a Roman soldier backhands you with a blow
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Brian D. McLaren |
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Instead, it was a Christianity engaged with modernity (and postmodernity) -- grappling with its issues, sensitive to its questions and concerns, aware of its spiritual vacuum, in vital dialogue with its artistic and intellectual leaders. It was a "third-way" faith seeking to steer a course that would avoid defensive retreat and isolation on the one hand and capitulation and sellout on the other."
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Brian D. McLaren |
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I don't think we should give up on ritual. I don't think we should give up on any possible means of experiencing God.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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We are not scholars researching an ancient Chinese emperor -- a matter of objectivity and disinterestedness; we are sons and daughters who want to get to know our father -- someone with whom we have an essential relationship.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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My concern is that by making heaven after this life the destination of our way, we are spiritually forming people who run away from fire, disease, and the violence of our world.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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He had what we often lack -- the maturity to see that faith isn't something you either have or don't have, but something that ebbs and flows in the life and soul of every individual. Doubt isn't the opposite of faith. It is an element of faith. Where there is absolute certainty, there can be no room for faith.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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he encouraged them to explore their doubts, ask their questions, and express themselves honestly. Many people crave certainty. They don't want to have to think, agonize, or grapple with life's difficult questions for themselves. Instead they want dogma. They want guaranteed answers.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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I so wish people had seen it your way, but I think too many of us have read the story to say it gives European white males carte blanche to play God over creation; so `having dominion' gives them a license to pollute and exploit.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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These emerging Christian leaders realize that if their message isn't good news for the poor, a message of liberation for the oppressed, it isn't the same message Jesus proclaimed.
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Brian D. McLaren |
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For me, Carol, we can't be faithful to God unless we're faithful to the facts, faithful to the data if you will. And so, instead of hiding from evolution, I think we'd be more faithful to God to look it right in the eye and learn from it.
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Brian D. McLaren |