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A review by pattydsf
The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World's Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian by Brian D. McLaren
4.0
“Christianity, we might say, is driving around with a loaded gun in its glove compartment, and that loaded gun is its violent image of God. It’s driving around with a license to kill, and that license is its Bible, read uncritically. Along with its loaded gun and license to kill, it’s driving around with a sense of entitlement derived from a set of beliefs with a long, ugly, and largely unacknowledged history.”
“Confession: Imagine if love, not law, was the standard by which we learned to examine ourselves and confess our sins against God, neighbor, and the earth we share. Imagine if each week we were guided into the kind of self-examination that helped us name and turn from our unloving acts in recent days. And imagine if, along with confessing our sins, we confessed or named our hurts, the places where others have wounded us, so that we could process our pain and then respond in a way that doesn’t give in to resentment or revenge.”
Although I only have two other books listed here on Goodreads, I have been reading McLaren for many years. I refer to him as a Christian gadfly. McLaren seems to be always pushing Christians to be better to actually read the Bible and follow Jesus. He is often critical and that is why I use the term gadfly. I hope that he would take that as a compliment.
My husband and I went to hear McLaren speak at January Adventure (http://www.januaryadventure.org/). This was my first time at that event and I think McLaren and his co-speaker, Dr. Wil Gafney, were a good introduction to this program. It is a series of lectures – all of which were interesting and thought provoking. I wish we had gone with others so we could have had more of a discussion.
This book elicits some consideration of where we Christians are and where we should be. For too long, in McLaren’s mind, Christianity has used law rather than love to encourage people to join the faith. If that ever worked well, it certainly isn’t working now. The world does not need violence, it needs grace, compassion, mercy and love.
I appreciate McLaren’s words and will try to take them to heart.
“Confession: Imagine if love, not law, was the standard by which we learned to examine ourselves and confess our sins against God, neighbor, and the earth we share. Imagine if each week we were guided into the kind of self-examination that helped us name and turn from our unloving acts in recent days. And imagine if, along with confessing our sins, we confessed or named our hurts, the places where others have wounded us, so that we could process our pain and then respond in a way that doesn’t give in to resentment or revenge.”
Although I only have two other books listed here on Goodreads, I have been reading McLaren for many years. I refer to him as a Christian gadfly. McLaren seems to be always pushing Christians to be better to actually read the Bible and follow Jesus. He is often critical and that is why I use the term gadfly. I hope that he would take that as a compliment.
My husband and I went to hear McLaren speak at January Adventure (http://www.januaryadventure.org/). This was my first time at that event and I think McLaren and his co-speaker, Dr. Wil Gafney, were a good introduction to this program. It is a series of lectures – all of which were interesting and thought provoking. I wish we had gone with others so we could have had more of a discussion.
This book elicits some consideration of where we Christians are and where we should be. For too long, in McLaren’s mind, Christianity has used law rather than love to encourage people to join the faith. If that ever worked well, it certainly isn’t working now. The world does not need violence, it needs grace, compassion, mercy and love.
I appreciate McLaren’s words and will try to take them to heart.