I don’t know what I believe about God. I know a few things that I think about God, about who He is and why He does things, but I wouldn’t say I know much more than that. I want to know more though. I want to know the whys and the hows and all that stuff. I’ve also struggled with much of what I feel is the “common knowledge” of God, and how so often I’m content with that surface level kind of knowledge.
I had been looking for a scholarly but accessible systematic theology for some time. These two qualifications made it rather hard to find what I was looking for. Either a book (or collection of books) would be far too scholarly with footnotes outnumbering actual text, or it would seem to be a “My First Bible: Theology Edition” kind of book. While not really a systematic theology by definition, Brian McLaren’s “A Generous Orthodoxy” provided me much of what I was hoping to find in a book devoted to the study of who God is.
However, while I had been looking for an easier to read, laid out plan of who God is and how He operates, reading McLaren’s book challenged my faith and trust of any such all encompassing encyclopedia of theological matters. In his closing chapter he quotes Vincent Donovan:
“The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all (emphasis mine)” (Christianity Rediscovered, 146).
Without knowing it, I was actually desiring that which Donovan describes as the “greatest mistake of all.” Whoops. Close one. This is not a new struggle for me though, and I also assume, for many others. Who doesn’t want a nicely packaged version of who God is? Who wouldn’t spend a few days reading a book if upon completion, the reader suddenly “knew God through and through.” This was what I had been seeking and what Donovan warned against.
McLaren is the first to admit that he doesn’t have it all together. In fact, he readily admits to knowing that his own orthodoxy is probably as off the mark as any one else’s. This isn’t because he believes that he is wrong as much as he knows the total indescribability of that which we seek to observe, learn about, label and keep in a box. God is beyond systematic theologies. His will is beyond orthodoxy. He is beyond any attempt we make to describe or learn about His true ways and being. Because of this, any attempt we make to nail down an attribute of our Holy Father (including referring to Him with names such as “Holy Father”) falls drastically short of reality.
However, this does not mean that we do not try. And in this book McLaren seeks to understand and apply many of the common interpretations of orthodoxy that populate the minds of people worldwide regarding our Creator and His will for our lives. This is why the subtitle to his book reads as follows:
“WHY I AM A missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN.”
Now, I am not going to give my thoughts on the entire book. McLaren simply covers more than I want to re-hash here. Instead I am going to look at a few of what I felt were his most compelling chapters, the ones that stand out to me above the rest, challenged my thinking the most, and made me stretch my perception of who God is and how I relate to him.
1 comment:
McLaren's writings, on the whole, have been a breath of fresh air for me. The main criticism by most Christians have been that he is doubting & questioning too much, that he's unorthodox. But from what I can tell, he honestly wants to love God and his neighbor, so he's on the right track. Perhaps the track is what's important, what direction we're heading, not necessarily where we're at or even looking for a place to finally "arrive". (I have, of course, just echoed and reformed his words in that sentence.
Anyway, as I was once told, doubt is a pathway to faith, not necessarily on obstacle. There needs to be someone to give voice to the doubts and misgivings of the many, to put an arm around them, and walk with them in the right direction, rather than just tell them they're wrong and provide the answers.
Post a Comment