Frog has posted a really interesting commentary on some of Brian McLaren’s latest thinking. I’m quite relieved that I’m not the only evangelical who thinks that McLaren isn’t the best thing since sliced bread!
Of course Christianity needs to be relevant, and preaching hell, fire & brimstone isn’t giving a true picture of what our faith is all about. I agree that how the church presents the Gospel must be relevant and accessible. The delivery style & media needs to change, but the message must be a constant.
Alister McGrath gives an excellent statement in his foreword to The Responsive Church: “If the Gospel is proclaimed in a language that our culture cannot understand through a medium it cannot access, then the church has failed in its mission.”
What I can’t get my head around is the likes of McLaren and Rob Bell trying to say that the Gospel needs to change. OK, they don’t quite put it like that, but they say that the traditional understanding we’ve put on the Gospel isn’t actually Biblical, but comes from other people’s interpretations or that the real message is clouded by a certain world view. This suggests that they happen to know the true meaning of the Gospel, which obviously isn’t clouded by their own background, beliefs or world view. How come? Do they have some special secret knowledge we don’t? How do we get this secret knowledge? Sounds like verging on Gnosticism to me!
hmm interesting thoughts. i don’t know that i would compare bell and mclaren to gnosticism but i do agree that postmodernism has led to some interesting ideas.