Gospel Prism

Sometimes I don’t know what makes something popular, the idea itself or the controversy and responses to an idea. In many ways, Gamaliel was truly wise when he said that if Christianity was a real movement it would continue despite their outcry. But if they left it alone, it would die out if it was stemming only from man’s constant love of controversy and opposition. Brian McLaren is in the news again, this time in the Washington Post. It seems more and more of the non-Christian world is curious because you have “environmental activists” like Lyndsay Moseley going to church. And they fit right at home with Brian McLaren and the Emerging movement.

As usual, the media tends to report such matters, focusing on the conflict and adversarial nature of things. But from such an article, it seems that this is more a political issue than a theological one. It seems that there are two camps in the church, not the sheep and goats, but rather, Republicans and Democrats. Caryle Murphy writes:

Along with such other progressive evangelicals as Washington-based anti-poverty activist Jim Wallis and educator Tony Campolo, McLaren is openly critical of the conservative political agenda favored by many evangelicals.

“When we present Jesus as a pro-war, anti-poor, anti-homosexual, anti-environment, pro-nuclear weapons authority figure draped in an American flag, I think we are making a travesty of the portrait of Jesus we find in the gospels,” McLaren said in a recent interview.

If Brian McLaren is opting for this fight, then he and so many like him on both sides have truly missed the boat. I know this is one article, but judging from other things that Brian McLaren has written, this statement describes his thinking:

McLaren, who never attended seminary or divinity school, said his congregants’ questions made him realize that the old answers no longer worked. “I remember thinking these are a different kind of question, and I didn’t have good answers,” he said. “I went through a real period of doubt . . . about the form of Christianity that I’d inherited. . . . In many ways, that struggle is what gave birth to my first book.”

I wish Brian McLaren had heard some old answers that were also good answers. And the Christianity that he had inherited was probably not a Gospel-centric one. If he had fully embraced the whole depth of the riches of the Gospel, maybe instead of writing “emergently,” he would have written alongside Paul:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith–that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:14-19)