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My McLaren Colloquy: 4. The Faithful Remnant

23 Saturday Dec 2006

Posted by in Brian McLaren, Emergent Conversation, eschatology, orthodoxy, remnant

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Conversing with his friend Samir Vesna on pp 129-130 of A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren writes,

Restorationists… often refer to themselves, Samir says, as a remnant…. “We’re not small because we’re ineffective, or lazy, or ingrown, or otherwise unattractive; we’re small because we’re a faithful remnant! Everone else has compromised…. We’re the few, the committed, the faithful, the proud. (Oops.)…Samir has seen a lot of this remnant thinking in restorationist territory; he sees how destructive it is.”

McLaren goes on to mention how Samir preached about Moses, who was essentially offered the status of remnant by God when the nation of Israel lapsed into idolatry. Moses didn’t take the bait, but pleaded with God to preserve and continue investing in Israel, rather than starting over with Moses as a new patriarch. Moses, who really was a faithful remnant kind of guy, set an example for all who wish to be similarly faithful by showing a willingness to be sacrificial in his love, and eager to bless even the errant members of God’s heritage. McLaren concludes:

Samir asked his friends with a remnant mentality: what is a truly faithful remnant like? Its members do not turn inward in elite self-congratulation…. No, the faithful remnant “after God’s own heart” turns its heart others-wise, outward, toward the unfaithful, in loyalty and love. True faithfulness bonds the hearts of the faithful to their unfaithful neighbors.

If Christ’s faithful church is a “remnant”, it has been learning not to subscribe to the destructive, oppressive orthodoxy of earlier times. It has been “a generous orthodoxy” which is patient under injustice, hopeful that in due time God would bring justice; like Jesus, encouraging the bruised reeds and smoking flaxes of the world; — and pre-occupied with trying to get its own actions brought into harmony with God’s word and spirit.

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My McLaren Colloquy: 3. New fields of opportunity

21 Thursday Dec 2006

Posted by in Brian McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, orthodoxy

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On page 140 of A Generous Orthodoxy Brian McLaren writes:

When I imagine what a generous orthodoxy can become, I realize I must seek to honor both conservative and liberal heroism. And when I do, I want to consider myself both liberal and conservative. I must learn from their mistakes, and when I do, I don’t want to be boxed in either category. Instead they can look up for a higher way and look ahead to the new fields of opportunity and challenge that stretch from here to the horizon….

In my own journey I was once characterized as a liberal, and my response was that I am only liberal if one takes a rather narrow slice of conservatism.
That is the trouble with labels — they are snapshots taken by someone else, usually with a macro lens and with a specific point of view. And yet labels are the stuff that Protestantism consists of.

So I greatly appreciate, and strive to copy in my own ministry, the inclusive, kind, non-polemical, post-protestant spirit I observe in Brian, in Jim Henderson, and in other “Revolutionaries” I am meeting.

Where are these attitudes taking us? As Brian put it, into new fields of opportunity. New fields that were anticipated, as usual, by the Master himself.

Matthew records a most amazing promise, a signed blank check that empowers all followers of Jesus, whatever label they answer to:

And Jesus said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings out of his treasure things new and old

To me this means that any scribe or writer/teacher of the Word — (greek, grammateus) — is like a steward who is empowered to bring from the storehouse both old things and new. The old things, it seems to me, are what the Bible says directly, what we learn from the text itself … things that all disciples of Christ have seen more or less clearly. The new things, to my way of thinking, could be realizations about spiritual truths, about the fulfillment of prophecy in our own time, and insights into the character of God that come from our personal walk — meditations, interactions with others, etc. There is room here for the rational as well as the mystical/poetical insights that Brian writes about in the next chapter of AGO.

Knowing God is the very fountain and purpose of eternal life, and all who have experience with God, as students of his word, are enriched and empowered to record meaningful insights along their way. These are the sources of one type of the heroisms, plural, that Brian refers to (it seems to me), coming from both sides of the spiritual aisle.
Think of all the scribes, past and present, who have recorded their insights and yet whose works are lost to us because they were not part of our particular ism.

It is for this reason that I feel called to disregard sectarian fences and to pray to God for the strength to make the assembly and compilation and comparison of all these different heroic threads — writings from every Christian stream of thought — for the edification of the present and future generations of disciples. That is what my dream of the Grammateus Institute is all about.

For me, this is one of the great, new, fields of opportunity created by the convergence of Web 2.0 technology and an Emergent, Revolutionary ethos among Christian brothers and sisters.

My McLaren Colloquy: 2. Restorationism

20 Wednesday Dec 2006

Posted by in Brian McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, restorationism

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One of the most fascinating and vigorous sectors of protesting Protestanism has been “restorationism” — a belief held by a succession of groups through church history that, by finally getting the last or lost detail right, they now represent a full-fledged restoration of “New Testament Christianity.” – A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 128

Like Brian, I was raised with such an ethos. And my experience jives with his: “if you are part of a restorationist group, the group dynamics of your group will be nearly identical to those of every other restorationist group.” And while I no longer identify with the “group dynamics” of my spiritual heritage, I appreciate and share the kind sentiments with which McLaren describes the individual Christians within it:

Fortunately, beneath these squabbles over distinctives, one nearly always finds an idealism among restorationists, a belief that Christianity should be and can be better than its common manifestations. This is a good thing, and needed….One often finds a beautiful, sincere, childlike desire to follow Jesus whatever the cost and however lonely the road.

I am not sure where Brian is headed with his search, now that he appreciates the strengths and weaknesses of many different spiritual streams. At times he seems to envision a sort of ecumenical fusion — gaining a kind of institutional strength from many people who, it would seem, would have to miraculously lay down their points of difference and grow silent on the areas that up till now have been their sources of identity.

For myself, I think the model will be more like WIKI — devoid of institutional frameworks and fully free to embrace individual distinctions of thought and action.

I agree with McLaren, though, that the revolution must embody kindness, not as a surface gloss but as a defining, foundational principle. And in so doing it will radically depart from constant “protest”-isms.

Thus I expect that the Lord’s people who Barna says are now leaving the institutional church in droves will gather around Jesus, will sense the spirit of Christ in each other, and will be driven by humility rather than sectarian pride toward common understandings of the kindness of God and his happy plans for the human race.

It seems to me that the processes which will serve this gathering will incorporate both the rational, evidential tradition of Protestantism and the poetic, visionary disposition that is emerging through post-modern influences. Both isms are dangerous and extreme. But we do not need to choose either extreme, or lukewarmness either. We can, in Brian’s gracious words, find a balance that through generosity and humility walks that edgy middle road of Christlikeness — and honors what has been good in both the orthodox and heterodox thinking of preceding generations.

The only restorationist movement that will ever work is the inclusive, broadminded, and kindly one that God fuses together from every corner of His world.