Introduction and Question 1

Session 1: Introduction and the First Question

A. Who is Brian McLaren—

Brian McLaren, M.A., is a nationally known author, speaker, activist, and networker among innovative Christian leaders. He has an M.A. in English literature from the University of Maryland, left teaching and founded a “transdenominational church” in the Baltimore-Washington area where he remained pastor until 2006. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver. His many publications are foundational for the emerging church movement, including A Generous Orthodoxy, and Everything Must Change. His website is www.brianmclaren.net. He is married to Grace and has four adult children.

B. He is motivated by his experience talking to Christian leaders and discovering that “the Christian Faith in all its forms is in trouble..[and] is pregnant with new possibilities.” He wants to help the Christian faith be reborn in this new generation.

So in the womb of the Christian faith in all its wild diversity, I see a new generation of Christian disciples being formed, coming alive and coming of age, disciples who hold amazing promise, even as they face huge challenges (not the least of which are misunderstanding and criticism from some of their elders).

He became pastor of what started as a house church, and it got a reputation as a place for people to go who had questions, weren’t sure, or were addicts or broken people. Their questions led him to seek for honesty, authenticity and a faith that made more sense to him and to others.

Now I have to tell you that some of what disturbed him was the alignment of church leaders with “a neoconservative political ideology…” that was promulgated by radio and television talk show hosts. It took him five years to work through this to develop what he calls “a new way of believing.” At first, he felt all alone, but after his first book, people came out of the woodwork to tell him they were so glad they were not the only ones having these thoughts and questions. McLaren found organizations, too, grappling with these issues, including the Center for Action and Contemplation, whose founder is Rev. Richard Rohr.

Historic denominations were losing people dramatically: Episcopalians, according to one study some years ago, were losing the equivalent of a diocese a year; the average age of church goers in the U.S. was 62 although the average age of Americans was 32. One Catholic sociologist is quoted as saying: “We have largely lost the generations between 18 and 55.” Even the conservative Evangelicals were losing people.

What he and others came to is that “something is not working in the way we’re doing Christianity,” and so we need to keep talking and searching together in a “quest for a new kind of Christianity.”

McLaren objects to the “codified belief that is a means of social control” that arose after the alliance of Christianity with the emperor [but his implied dates for the inquisition are wrong; it didn’t start right after Charlemagne, as far as I know, but in the 13th century.]

He places himself in the company of others feeling the emergence of something new: Harvey Cox’s Age of the Spirit; Phyllis Tickle’s Great Emergence; Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones; Generative Christianity with church historian Diana Butler Bass or emerging mission with Marcus Borg; Hans Frei or Rene Padilla.

C. Organization of the book: the first five questions are meant to raise the possibility of freeing ourselves from an old paradigm about Christianity so we can be open to new possibilities. The second set of five questions is controversial and most people can’t explore them until they have been freed from the old mind sets. The goal is to free ourselves to answer other urgent questions beyond these ten. He is not looking for a new set of beliefs, but for a new direction, a new way of believing.

This course is about questions, questions that we still have, that have NOT been answered by our past encounters with religion or by our reading of scripture or by the sermons we have listened to. Take a minute to think: what are your questions? [Jot one or two down and hand them in].

The First Question: The Narrative Question [he has responses, NOT answers].

“What is the Overarching Story Line of the Bible?” He discovered after a LOT of digging and thinking that since the fifth or sixth century, to be a Christian meant to believe in a very specific story line from the Bible “by which we assess all of history, all of human experience, all of our own experience.” Can you guess what this line of thought is, beginning with Genesis? It looks something like this: [See diagram on page 34 of the text. It contains these elements: Eden-->Fall-->Condemnation-->Hell OR Salvation-->Heaven].

McLaren asks: “Wouldn’t it have been better if this story had never begun?” The biblical writer has God asking the same question before the Flood.
McLaren knows this diagram has been tweaked by numerous scholars and preachers, but he wants to ask if the whole thing is really in the Bible and is it believable. Did Abraham or Moses, or even Jesus hold to these ‘truths’ and teach them? And does believing it lead to a better relationship with God and love of neighbor?

McLaren does not reject this as a true image from the Bible; he rejects that it could even COME from the Bible. McLaren tries to understand Jesus—not from the viewpoint of those who came AFTER him and interpreted his life and words, but from those who went BEFORE him, like Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, the Prophets and John the Baptist. None of these people talked about the Fall, Original Sin, total depravity or “eternal conscious torment.” It came from Plato’s story of the cave and was emphasized by the “social and political narrative of the Roman Empire….”

McLaren summarizes the Greco-mind as being: (1) dualistic (e.g. matter vs. spirit); (2) imbued with feelings of superiority in their material and intellectual accomplishments (felt they had absolute truth); (3) resulting in a social superiority, and “us” vs. “them”; in-group vs. out-group. All other cultures were of minimal importance. The others were barbarians, compared to the unchanging Pax Romana. Only Roman citizens counted; slaves, Jews and Christians were on the barbarian side of this equation.

But then Christians began to assimilate this Greco-Roman philosophy and become a “third race.” The Platonic Eden is no longer a story, but a STATE of perfect, unchanging innocence. The fall catapulted people into the changeable Aristotelian story, cave, decaying world.

McLaren names the God of this Greco-Roman world “Theos,” and says he is far different from the Jewish Elohim of Genesis. Theos hates matter and becoming and wants to destroy it, …”to purge all that is imperfect, so only perfect purified being remains.” Theos figures out a way to save this detestable creation, by which he means to liberate them and raise them to the “timeless plane of perfect Platonic being, so the creatures in question can be loved by Theos again.” They will be in heaven where “nothing will ever happen again.”

As for the rest, since humans can’t ultimately be destroyed, they must be consigned to the Greek Hades and the earth (universe?) must be destroyed. Hades has imagery borrowed from Zoroaster and Jesus; since it’s a state, no one can change and get out of it. They will be in perfect torment, experiencing the unchanging hate of Theos. And this is the “Good News!”

McLaren wants to find the “other God,” The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and not the one of the Greek philosophers. And so he starts the story from Genesis and what he finds there is not a static world of perfection, but the creative chaos of becoming. The world is not pronounced “perfect” by Elohim, but “very good.” It has room for reproduction and development. The humans in it create art, music, culture, even theology. But there is also darkness, unpredictability, danger. McLaren writes: “…it is agonizingly difficult for us to recapture the wild, dynamic, story-unleashing goodness of Elohim, a goodness that differs so starkly, so radically, from the domesticated, static, controlled perfection of Theos.”

These stories are NOT to be taken literally, but taken “seriously.” They use mythic language and coalesce rich meaning. And it is Elohim’s story. He doesn’t “pronounce the perfect state ruined and the planet destined for geocide.” McLaren tells a “coming of age” parable to illustrate God’s care for us.

Then he takes us through the actual Genesis story: the only consequence threatened by God is that they will die (and die on the day they eat the fruit on the forbidden tree). But God doesn’t kill them, he makes clothes for them! They no longer have access to the tree of life, and begin to live as hunter-gatherers. Then they proceed to nomadic herders, agriculturalists, city dwellers, and empire dwellers. But this ascent is accompanied by a fall into shame and fear, murder, corruption and violence, and oppression and genocide. Each advance socially and technologically prepares the possibility of a new descent into evil. But look at God’s treatment of Cain! He warns him, then he protects him with a sign on his forehead.

He continues this story with the crimes of the cities founded by Cain, God’s thought to destroy it all, then his noticing of Noah, and the reconstituting of the human race and His promise to be faithful despite human sinfulness. This continues through Babel, Sodom, and Joseph’s sale into captivity in Egypt.