Generous Orthodoxy

I have been off of the blog scene for a couple months now. I have still been lurking and occasionally even dropping a mini post. But whenever I try to sit down and really write a post I have been unable to adequately articulate what I am feeling.

You see I Recently read the book “Generous Orthodoxy” by Brian McLaren. This book made me angry, happy, excited and confused all at the same time and I am confident that this is absolutely the authors intent. I have tried to use my blog as a forum to respond to this book but every time I try I get so caught up on one aspect or another of the book that I was unable to say what it is inside me that I feel needs to be said in response to this “literary meany” . This time I have put the book away and I am going to generalize and respond that I believe is the main thrust of McLaren’s message. However, I will no0t use the book as a reference because that just distracts me.

McLaren argues that Christians have become so fractured and that we have in many cases missed the point as Christians. Now he doesn’t identify one point that is being missed but rather that most of “our” pet points really belong on the periphery and not the center of our spiritual lives.

He does point out three things that all Christians should strive for. (these are not in a particular order they are just all important themes in the book)

Christians should be “missional” (missional as in acting in such away as to be consistent with or further the mission of God. Not necessarily the traditional evangelism exclusive understanding of the word.)

Christians should strive to Truly Love their Neighbors

Unity among all Christians is essential.

All three of these things are things that I whole heartly agree with what has me so disturbed is the plan he describes to achieving them. My big concern is this.

Mclaren would have us down play our doctrinal distinctive in an effort to achieve unity: While it is important to be generous regarding orthodoxy. I believe that none of us have the answer but simply accepting that truth and simply focusing on the “non negotionables of our faith sounds a lot like throwing in the towel, with regard to understanding the complexities of God just because we never will understand God fully is not an excuse not to look into the subtleties of our creator.

The fact is I have some Truth as a Salvationist that a Baptist doesn’t have but he also has an import lesson to teach me and if we can truly love each other first than we should be able to enter into a dialogue with our Christian brothers and sisters and celebrate a unity with our diversity.

Once again I believe if we could learn to really love the way Christ wanted us to most of our other problems would be a lot easier to figure out.