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I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet.I don’t think the liberals have it right. But I don’t think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy.

Brian D. McLaren

The Bible is not considered an accurate, absolute, authoritative, or authoritarian source but a book to be experienced and one experience can be as valid as any other can.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Book Feelings Leader
At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Community Religious Spiritual
We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Christian God Humble Poetry
A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn’t claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Admit Christian Claim Orthodixes
I googled some pictures of sundials to check that it was the tall shadow casting bit (it is) and then discovered that Saint Sulpice in Paris has a rather fascinating large gnomon- which I shall endeavour to see on my next visit to that fair city. Thanks for such a great word, which I shall try to remember.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Country Discovered Gnomon Shadow Sundials
To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Christian Wall Way
Seventh-Gay Adventists isn’t just a helpful movie, important for the way it can help congregations of any denomination deal graciously and truthfully with the issue of homosexuality.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Art Gay Issues Truthfully
To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Generously Mounted Truth Wall
The Church has little idea how unorthodox it is at any given moment. If a church can’t yet be perfectly orthodox, it can, with the Holy Spirit’s help and by the grace of God, be perpetually reformable.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Church Grace Ideas
The thing I love about The Beatitudes Society is they represent faith and intelligence on fire and there’s enthusiasm and passion and a realization that a more open and progressive approach to faith is something to celebrate.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Intelligence Progressive Realization Thing
Sometimes I have experienced God in extraordinary ways – in dramatic surprises or soul-expanding insights or unexplainable mystical encounters.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Encouragement Inspiration Spiritual
I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet.I don’t think the liberals have it right. But I don’t think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Liberal Orthodoxy Right Thinking
I think it changes everything. You can say the same creed that you said before, but now it’s not a creed that grasps God in the fist of the words, but it’s a creed that points up to a beauty that’s beyond anybody’s grasp.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Anybody Beauty Change Everything Grasp
A sacred and almost unspeakable pleasure, but the consumer wrongly thinks that one finds this pleasure by having more and more possessions instead of possessing them more truly through grateful contemplation. And here we are, living in an economy that perpetuates this tragedy.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

More Pleasure Possessions Scared Thing
The scarily brilliant Romantic poet and visionary William Blake dared to say what many of us have perhaps thought but kept to ourselves: “A good local pub has much in common with a church, except that a pub is warmer, and there’s more conversation.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Brilliant Church Good Visionaries
I was relaxing in my parents’ swimming pool with my brother, Peter. I asked him how the engineering business was going, and he reciprocated: ‘How’s the ministry world going?’
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Couple Jesus Swimming
Too often we see the Bible through whatever lens we get from our culture.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Bible Biblical Lenses
A friend of mine says that in the world of religion we often have ignorance on fire and intelligence on ice.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Fire Ignorance Passion
So we must realize this: the suicidal framing story that dominates our world today has no power except the power we give it by believing it. Similarly, believing an alternative and transforming framing story may turn out to be the most radical thing any of us can ever do.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Believe Our Suicidal World
I have a problem when they ask me this question because it assumes that the primary purpose of Jesus’ coming and the primary message of Jesus was a message about how to get to heaven.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Heaven Message Primarily Purpose
And what if, instead of arguing about which form is correct and legitimate, we were to honor, appreciate, and validate one another and see ourselves as servants of one grander mission, apostles of one greater message, seekers on one ultimate quest?
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Appreciate Granger Legitimate Mission
Ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope’s, whoever’s) is orthodox, meaning true, and here’s my honest answer: a little, but not yet.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Christian Couple Wall
One of the things that’s happening to a lot of us is that there’s this vision of the beauty of God that transports us and that takes us to a new depth and a new height. It’s one of those things about beauty.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Humble Thinking Vision
…the tragedy of consumerism: one acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus one never truly enjoys them. One has without truly having. The consumer is right-there is pleasure to be had in good things.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Grateful Thinking Tragedy
Joyfully celebrating the killing of a killer who joyfully celebrated killing carries an irony that I hope will not be lost on us. Are we learning anything, or simply spinning harder in the cycle of violence?
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Killers Spinning Violence
The cross is almost a distraction and false advertisement for God.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Advertisements Crosses Distraction
I had to face the possibility that the art of living in the way of Jesus was no longer carried on in a holistic way by any single tradition.
BRIAN D. MCLAREN

Art Faces Jesus

I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet.I don’t think the liberals have it right. But I don’t think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy.

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I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet.I don’t think the liberals have it right. But I don’t think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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