I was reading a friend's blog yesterday and noticed an article about an article about Brian McLaren. Confusing, yes, but it's an even more confusing article. Confusing, and upsetting. In fact, I share his sentiments: "I really am a bit tired of this offensive pig-headed, lame brained nonsense."
I'm not much of aMcLaren fan, but the article pissed me off. When it comes down to it, McLaren's just another guy trying to find his way in the world, trying to figure out the truth of things, and while he can be a bit bull-headed about it (he tends to advocate swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, despite his declared intentions of finding middle ground), he's not trying to destroy or worse, mislead God's church, as the article seems to imply. He's entitled to his opinion, to his "binding and loosing" of scripture (Rob Bell's terminology).
As are the authors of the article and its comments. But just because someone has an opinion, it doesn't make them right. I could be wrong as I write, and so could McLaren, and so could *gasp* the authors of the article.
No. Freakin. Way.
It's true. And funny enough, that's something McLaren points out in most of his books - he's not entirely sure WHAT is true, aside from Jesus. If Jesus is THE truth, THE way, and THE life, then that means that Brian or Chris or anyone else is NOT. Which means we could be wrong. Which means that we have to take a certain humility in approaching what we say is truth; we could be wrong.
I love what Scott Adams has to say on this: he often enough will put the acronym "BOCTAOE" at the end of a sentence, which stands for "But Of Course There Are Obvious Exceptions." Mostly because he's not entirely sure that what he's just said is pure truth; it's his perspective.
We'd all do well to keep that in mind.
I'm not much of aMcLaren fan, but the article pissed me off. When it comes down to it, McLaren's just another guy trying to find his way in the world, trying to figure out the truth of things, and while he can be a bit bull-headed about it (he tends to advocate swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, despite his declared intentions of finding middle ground), he's not trying to destroy or worse, mislead God's church, as the article seems to imply. He's entitled to his opinion, to his "binding and loosing" of scripture (Rob Bell's terminology).
As are the authors of the article and its comments. But just because someone has an opinion, it doesn't make them right. I could be wrong as I write, and so could McLaren, and so could *gasp* the authors of the article.
No. Freakin. Way.
It's true. And funny enough, that's something McLaren points out in most of his books - he's not entirely sure WHAT is true, aside from Jesus. If Jesus is THE truth, THE way, and THE life, then that means that Brian or Chris or anyone else is NOT. Which means we could be wrong. Which means that we have to take a certain humility in approaching what we say is truth; we could be wrong.
I love what Scott Adams has to say on this: he often enough will put the acronym "BOCTAOE" at the end of a sentence, which stands for "But Of Course There Are Obvious Exceptions." Mostly because he's not entirely sure that what he's just said is pure truth; it's his perspective.
We'd all do well to keep that in mind.
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