Comments on: Review: A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren

By: Another Tim

Another Tim — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:49:35 +0000

Another Tim: Shhhh! (spoken in a whisper) You’re suggesting that “believing” is overrated

Eavesdropping person: What’s that?

Another Tim: Nothing, nothing, say no more

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:31:00 +0000

If there is agreement on the points of this list, then why does it matter what one does or does not believe about god or Jesus?

By: Mary Beth

Mary Beth — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:34:46 +0000

The other thought I’ve had (not just recently) is as follows. I assume that God exists and he wants to communicate with people through Jesus. Now I’d like to put myself in God’s shoes for a minute (all humour aside). If I’m God, and “text” and getting “text” right is so important, by golly I’m going to wait until at least the 20th century to introduce Jesus. In fact, by then, we have multimedia to capture everything Jesus ever said or did — literally, word for word. All that’s left up for grabs is interpretation, because we’ll know exactly what he said

Someone might say, Well, God didn’t want to wait/couldn’t wait another 2000 years. I might say, He waited at least that long before he introduced Jesus! Surely He could have waited longer if he wanted to and needed to. Imgagine….the disciples following Jesus around with laptops, cameras, cellphones, capturing everything word for word, blogging it real-time, multicasting it real-time. The text would be 100 percent accurate. No debate there.

I’ve also thought this way: What if “text” weren’t written words. What if it were pictures, or sound, or….whatever. The list could go on and on. Just where did this darn insistence on the written word = truth come into play?

I struggle with that one. It seems like we (humanity) placed this construct called The Written Word over Truth, like a cloak, and said The Only Way To Truth Is This Darn Written Word. Ugh, it feels very narrow to me.

By: Mary Beth

Mary Beth — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 10:18:13 +0000

John Crossan does this very well, IMO. His stuff is really thick to get through — it’s written for mainstream but really can get bogged down academically. But it is the most balanced study I’ve seen, using the approach you describe, Kevin.

By: Helen

Helen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:03:22 +0000

Thanks Kevin. I think that's an interesting way to study the gospels too: comparing what's in one and not the others. I also noticed Matthew does seem to use phrases about hell the other gospels don't use. What really stood out to me when I studied the hell passages in Matthew, Mark and Luke nine years ago was that it was designated as the place for evildoers, rather than unbelievers.