-
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 -
Confessions: What if we wrote new creeds that put love in the spotlight? Imagine if, instead of reciting a statement of beliefs, we spoke confessions of love, beginning with “We love” rather than “We believe.
Brian D. McLaren
-
Roman throats like the Zealots. Instead, if a Roman soldier backhands you with a blow...
Brian D. McLaren -
If you don't want to worship a guy you can beat up, then I might humbly suggest you reconsider Caesar and the Greco-Roman narrative. It sounds like 'Christ and him crucified' is not for you. At least not yet.
Brian D. McLaren -
We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.
Brian D. McLaren -
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 -
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 -
You might tell me that you have been engaging in some deep questioning and theological rethinking. You can no longer live with the faith you inherited from your parents or constructed earlier in your life. As you sort through your dogma and doctrine, you’ve found yourself praying less, less thrilled about worship, scripture, or church attendance. You’ve been so focused on sorting and purging your theological theories that you’ve lost track of the spiritual practices that sustain an actual relationship with God. You may even wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like you.
Brian D. McLaren
-
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 -
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 -
Trying to stop people from learning, sharing, and loving is a losing game because it means working against God and the plotline of God's universe.
Brian D. McLaren -
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.
Brian D. McLaren -
The romance of Creator and creation is far more wonderful and profound than anyone can ever capture in words.
Brian D. McLaren -
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.
Brian D. McLaren
-
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.
Brian D. McLaren -
Frankly, our music has too often been shallow, discordant, or played with a wooden concern for technical correctness but without feeling and passion.
Brian D. McLaren -
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.
Brian D. McLaren -
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.
Brian D. McLaren -
Comfort and power can become great enemies of true spirituality, which explains why we often say that the prophets come not only to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable.
Brian D. McLaren -
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
-
I have a confession to make. Almost every time I tune in to religious radio or TV, I want to change my religion.
Brian D. McLaren -
I have no doubt that Jesus would actually practice the neighborliness he preached rather than following our example of religious supremacy, hostility, fear, isolation, misinformation, exclusion, or demonization.
Brian D. McLaren -
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?
Brian D. McLaren -
In an age of religious violence like ours, people care much less about what you believe, and much more about whether you will kill for what you believe. So if you haven’t figured out what you’re going to do with passages like Deuteronomy 7 and 1 Samuel 15 and Psalms 137:9, you still have some important work to do.3 If you haven’t grappled with these passages and others like them, your Bible is like a loaded gun and your theology is like a license to kill. You have to find a way to disarm your faith as a potential instrument of hate and convert it into an instrument of love.4 You have to convert Christianity from a warrior religion to a reconciling religion. Otherwise, your neighbors around this seminary will tolerate you the way they might tolerate a chemical plant that could at any moment blow up and kill them all.
Brian D. McLaren