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A new kind of Christian & The story we find ourselves in

You don’t need to believe anything you don’t like?

A NEW KIND OF CHRISTIAN
Jossey-Bass, 2001. 192 pages. $21.95
ISBN 0 7879 5599 X

THE STORY WE FIND OURSELVES IN
Jossey-Bass, 2003. 224 pages. $21.95
ISBN 0 7879 6387 9

Both by Brian D. McLaren

These books will appeal to anyone who is disillusioned with their experience of ‘evangelical’ churches or is looking for something new to re-invigorate their Christian lives and are likely to have a wide readership with their story format and engaging characters.

They are written by Brian McLaren, a pastor/writer who is not yet widely known outside the USA. He calls the first book ‘a tale of spiritual renewal for those who thought they’d given up on church’.

Pastor in crisis

The books describe the interaction between two characters. Dan, a depressed over-worked pastor, has growing reservations about orthodox Christianity and thinks about leaving the ministry, feeling that his legalistic, traditionalist congregation resists change and constantly criticises. He approaches Neo to talk about ‘learning to be a Christian in a new way’. Neo, an ex-pastor now teaching science and soccer, is ‘a new kind of Christian’ — engaging, thoughtful, lively, charismatic (with a small ‘c’).

In A New Kind of Christian Neo argues that the church and Christianity today are products of a modernist worldview which needs to be dropped.

Some examples: he views the sovereignty or control of God as a mechanistic modern view, not a biblical one; the kingdom or rule of God is better viewed as ‘the enterprise of God, the web of God, the network of God, the music of God’; ‘there really isn’t such a thing as the Christian worldview’; ‘we need to let go of the Bible as a modern book (‘God’s encyclopaedia, God’s answer or rule book’). The modern mind only discusses ideas at the level of text and authority — what is right or wrong; we need to break away from this’.

Rather, he argues, we need to live Christianity at a mysterious ‘higher level’. ‘That’s the revolution: moving to the higher level with Jesus’. ‘What a relief — to read the Bible as a pre-modern text emerging from a people who believe that truth is best embodied in story and art and human flesh, rather than abstractions or outline or moralism’.

Postmodern gospel

The Story We Find Ourselves In sets out this postmodern gospel, introducing a third character, Kerry, a scientist at the Charles Darwin Research Centre in the Galapagos Islands. Neo meets her when he goes on a world tour. As the friendship develops, he tells his version of the biblical story. Some examples:

* ‘Evolution is one of God’s coolest creations’. The universe was created good but not perfect, so that evolution and progress can continue. This shows a very na•ve view of science; evolution is the archetypal modern theory, yet he does not seem to have considered the entirely naturalist assumptions on which it is based.
* There was no fall in the biblical sense, rather an ‘avalanche of crises, relating to the disintegration of the primal harmony and innocence of creation’.
* On sovereignty: ‘Conversation makes sense. It’s a better word than control. I just can’t buy into the idea of a controlling God, with people being like chess pieces. . . God is really more of a companion, a conversation partner with people, guiding them, but not manipulating them’. McLaren seems to think that if God is in control, then we must be reduced to robots; so God is reduced to pleading or persuading.
During this dialogue, Kerry develops cancer and is moved to the USA, where Dan, his wife and Neo make her welcome.
* Christ’s substitution is regarded as ‘cosmic child abuse’. God has no right to be angry and no need to be just, all he needs to do is to absorb. McLaren finds ‘mystery’’in the wrong places; to him, for example, the cross is a mystery, even though the Bible is totally clear on what the cross achieved and how. He neglects the fact that the true mystery is why God should ever love us at all.
* Christ’s ransom is defined as a ‘deal with Satan’, with the aside that ‘maybe it is no sin to think of Satan as a metaphor’. McLaren’s views lead to a new view of salvation. As weakness rather than rebellion is the problem, we need encouragement, sympathy or example rather than rescue.
As Kerry now knows she is going to die, Neo tells her that…
* ‘Judgement doesn’t just mean condemnation, it means perfect assessment. Well done, you have lived well. You helped the story advance towards my creative dreams’. ‘All the guilt and regret and shame of that judgement are absorbed into God’s pain, the pain made visible on the cross.’

Unthinking?

All this amounts to ‘reconfiguring the pattern of belief . . . [because] God gives some flexibility and freedom so that we can adjust the patterns over time’. ‘When you [Neo] tell the story, I feel like the other elements move towards the centre, like spiritual formation, mission, justice. They don’t crowd out the sin issue, but everything looks so different when you reconfigure the pattern’.

McLaren is right to warn against the dangers of unthinking faith being captured by the prevailing culture. But then he falls into the trap himself, by failing to see that his ‘new kind’ of faith is captive to and reflective of today’s culture.

The books are very readable and clever; the narrative sweeps the reader along. But his claim to introduce a ‘new kind’ or ‘higher level’ of Christian sounds remarkably like a new version of the old heresy that salvation comes through ‘special knowledge’ — with Neo as its initiating high priest.

So is ‘a new kind of Christian’ the same as ‘a New Testament kind of Christian’? When he trims from the faith what is unpalatable to the culture, the answer must be in doubt. It seems that you don’t need to believe anything you don’t like. The sad thing is that so many are willing to follow him in this ‘new’ path. What lessons does that have for historic biblical Christianity and the way our churches present it?

Tim Horn