Our networks of dialogue and action thus extend beyond Christian communities to persons of all faiths, as well as to communities that are not themselves faith-based. We welcome allies and allegiances wherever we find common cause.
BRIAN D. MCLARENWe 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.
More Brian D. McLaren Quotes
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You can’t capture it in a word or a formula. When you get to that humble place where the beauty of God has overwhelmed you,
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Too often we see the Bible through whatever lens we get from our culture.
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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.
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When any sector of the Church stops learning, God simply overflows the structures that are in the way and works outside them with those willing to learn.
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To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall.
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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.
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We should consider the possibility that many, and perhaps even all of Jesus’ hell-fire or end-of-the-universe statements refer not to postmortem [after death] judgment but to the very historic consequences of rejecting his kingdom message of reconciliation and peacemaking.
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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?
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…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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?’
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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.
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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