Book Review: A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren
Publisher: HarperOne, 2010

In past reviews of Brian McLaren’s books I have always attempted to hold my criticism back a little. This is due in large part to not wanting to harshly judge a fellow Christian in a public forum. After reading A New Kind Christianity I am no longer concerned with holding back. I suppose this is because McLaren is also no longer concerned with holding back. In the past, McLaren has always been hard to pin down.  His opinions are vague because he will never make a claim of truth in what he writes. He has said that what he writes is merely a contribution to the ongoing “conversation” we humans are invited to engage in about God and seems to think that the moment someone claims an actual truth regarding God the conversation is muffled. The problem is that McLaren seems to apply his relativist outlook to the rock solid truths of the Bible leaving us all swimming around in a sea of uncertainty.

In A New Kind of Christianity McLaren comes as close as he ever has to showing his cards. In this book he denies hell, the fall of man, human depravity, and seems to think the greatest Christian minds throughout history have all been reading the Bible in the wrong way. McLaren submits that for millennia Christians have been reading the Bible through a faulty Greco-Roman world view. He claims that this worldview has led us all to come to fundamentally wrong conclusions concerning Jesus’ role in our lives. Thank goodness McLaren has come along to save us from the false teachings of the greatest minds the world has ever known. While McLaren doesn’t explicitly state it, if he is correct concerning the things he writes, than the likes of the apostle Paul, Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and C.S. Lewis have all been wrong. McLaren’s claims reek of arrogance.

Rather than reading the Bible through our faulty Greco-Roman reading glasses (according to the author, these glasses lead us to read the Bible as a constitution that reveals too much truth), McLaren suggest we should read it as an ongoing conversation. The most attracting aspect of this “conversation” is no doubt that it will never lead us to a certain or definite conclusion. What McClaren has done is invent a new way to read Scripture due to his inability to juxtapose the God of the Old Testament with the Savior of the New Testament. McLaren submits that the Bible is evidence of the evolution of mankind’s thought processes. In the Old Testament, when man’s thoughts were the most primitive, God was painted as a violent and cruel God that no savvy Christian such as McLaren could ever worship. After a few thousand years, Jesus was portrayed in a much different light because thought had evolved to the point that mankind could imagine a God that was closer to the truth. McLaren takes this theory far enough to imagine a future where Christians will imagine a God that is even more perfect than Christ. In his future, Christians (and God) are vegetarian, earth worshiping pacifists who throw up in their mouth a little when they remember those barbaric Christians who laid the foundation of the church. It seemed to me that McLaren’s God of the future is very much like McLaren himself. McLaren’s book is one of the grossest forms of idolatry I have ever witnessed another Christian commit. Because he is unable (or unwilling) to accept God as He is revealed to us in Scripture, McLaren resorts to recreating Him in his own image. It is the ultimate form of humanism and arrogance.

Personally, I’ll join the early church fathers and fundamental Christians over the last two millennia who wished to understand the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as revealed by God Himself in the Holy Scriptures. McLaren’s teaching in this book are so far removed from traditional fundamental Christianity that it is virtually indistinguishable from atheism.

Christ taught that the world would hate us because of Him. This was evidenced in the church fathers who gave their lives to promote the Gospel. It is witnessed to today in various parts of the world where Christians are persecuted and killed for their beliefs.

In this book, McLaren spits on the memories and sacrifices of those Christians and sides with the world. He disregards the revelation of God Almighty and creates a disgusting idol.

Hope as it turns out is a cheap slut, or so my current situation would lead me to believe.  Allow me to explain…  I awoke this morning to find a situation that looked very promising in my email.  A company that I submitted a resume to for a completely different job, (for which I was absolutely unqualified), had done something very interesting.  Rather than toss my resume, they compared it to their other openings, and contacted me regarding a possible match.  In the preliminary discussions everything looked hopeful.  I dared to believe that this was THE ONE, that this was a providential opportunity that was going to lead to gainful employment.  I dared to hope.  I dared to believe.

It seemed like everything was going well.  I updated my resume as requested by the human resources staff at the company.  I asked for prayer from the people closest to me.  And everything looked like it was going to work out.  Until all hope was extinguished when the person I had been dealing with asked for more detailed revisions to my resume, and included the resumes of the other candidates in the process to show me what he was looking for.  It was at this point that hope fled like the virtue of a prom queen after the prom is over.  And I was left with an unbelievable situation and I was surely stunned.  The other candidates completely blew me out of the water in terms of qualifications, experience, training, and job knowledge.  They had advanced degrees, and decades of experience I could only wish to have.  One was even on the development team for the most current release of the product this job entails supporting.

And so I gave in to the dark despair that lurks in the recesses of my spirit.  I was left with a number of questions regarding the quality and nature of my faith.  The Bible says in many places that God cares for all of his creation.   Jesus himself repeats this theme in his ministry also.  I believe this to be true, and yet I wonder about God’s provision in my immediate context.  I am fearful about the future.  I accept the Bible at face value that God has a plan for my life, and yet I am frightened about its timing and implementation.

I wonder if I am a liar when I say that I believe in God’s word on this subject, yet reside in such a dark and despairing place.  I wonder if it is sinful to be fearful that God won’t fulfill his promises.  Am I a hypocrite when I exhort others to believe in God, when my faith seems to be so shallow?  Am I the wrong man for anything God may have planned for the future, when I am compelled to ask these questions?  Should I just accept the counsel of Job’s wife and ‘curse God and die’?

And yet in my darkest times I was reminded that God is sovereign.  I was reminded that despite my circumstances, God still sits on the throne.  I was uplifted to know that in spite of all the wind and rain that is buffeting my situation the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being that created the universe by the simple spoken declaration of his will still exists.  The power to confirm all that he has promised still resides in his spirit. 

If I do nothing more than retain the belief in those things, I will have succeeded in surviving the test of this moment, for surely it must have been a test.  I was compelled to remember always, that my timing isn’t his timing.  I was encouraged to remain steadfast in accepting that God pays for what he orders in our lives.  He protects all that creates with the same power that said, ‘let there be light’.  Those that God has entrusted into the care of my life, matter to almighty God.  I matter to him at the same time.

This moment might seem to some to have been trivial.  It might seem like much ado about nothing.  I assure you that it wasn’t.  The substance of my very soul was tested this morning.  I was weighed on the scales.  I can only pray that I didn’t come to the place of remembrance too late.  I can only wish that my despair wasn’t as costly to me in the long term as I fear it might be.  The path out of despair this morning was painful and difficult, but I came out of the place.  And I know I didn’t reside there or walk out of there alone.  The spirit of God was there trying to comfort the whole time.  It was this same spirit that provided timely remembrances of God’s word and promises.  And it was this same spirit that carried me out of the land of despair when it was time, my feelings regarding hope notwithstanding.

Okay … the Center for Inquiry recently sponsored one of the dumbest competitions I have ever seen. To enter, a contestant needed to create a statement, phrase, or poem that would normally be considered blasphemous. The competition was a part of Blasphemy Day 2009. Normally, I try to ignore stupidity on both sides of the spectrum; however, this one has me fired up for some reason. The Center of Inquiry is an organization that hopes to foster in a world, “devoted to promoting science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.”  In other words, a world of free-thinkers, provided you aren’t thinking about God or religion.

I’m all for free-thinking and I am fairly certain God is as well. My common response to the question of why a good God would allow anyone to go to Hell is that He obviously thinks it is important for people to be free to reject Him. I believe that free-thinking is an inalienable, God-given right. I also believe that stupidity of this nature should be exposed and confronted.

One of the goals of the Center for Inquiry as presented on their website is to end the stigma attached to being a nonbeliever. I’m all for that goal as stated. I believe that atheists are every bit a creation of God as I am; however, I believe that competitions such as the “blasphemy challenge” reveal more about the organization than they will ever admit. I suspect their real goals are less about ending the stigma attached to nonbelievers and more about reattaching that stigma to Christians. The competition is unproductive, divisive and should be an insult to all free-thinkers … religious or not.