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. MCLARENSo 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.
More Brian D. McLaren Quotes
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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.
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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?
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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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You are cleansed from guilt, and you are becoming a cleaner, healthier, more whole person.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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…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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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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The cross is almost a distraction and false advertisement for God.
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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






