On Saturday afternoon I had an excellent time hanging out with my wife Vicky and our friends Justin, Elisha, Clint and Christel. Justin came by our place and picked Vicky and I up and we drove out to Marcello's Italian restaurant. There we met up with Elisha, Clint and Christel for a night out. We had an excellent dinner (I highly recommend Marcello's) and fellowship. I had thin-crust Italian pizza - fabulous! After the meal we all drove over to Richview Baptist Church on Kipling to hear Brian McLaren, the emerging church guru, who was offering a period of question and answer. The following are some brief thoughts on the event. All in all I came away from the evening saddened by what McLaren had to say - or not say as it turned out. I really didn't expect much else, but it would have been a pleasant surprise if he'd shattered my low expectations. Earlier on my blog I mentioned a quote by my friend Julian who had said, "It will be a time of question and non-answer." Truly that is what it was. For instance, a question was raised about the atonement. The questioner was faced in his life with an unbeliever who had been challenging him on the "barbarity" of the atonement. He asked McLaren how to handle the situation. Instead of providing a solid answer, McLaren outlined various views of the atonement throughout history and left it at that. He didn't give any indication about which view was the most biblical, nor did he point out problems with others. The only recommendation he made was for a book on the atonement where the doctrine of penal substitution was denied!
As an aside, it was interesting to note that McLaren really did have a good grasp of theology, considering that he outlined the different atonement theories well. It proves that he does know his faith - unfortunately he can't plead ignorance when he comes before the Lord to give an account. Even on an irrelevant question such as church architecture McLaren couldn't give his questioner a firm answer. Instead he erroneously argued that there was no intent or purpose when the Protestants built and arranged their churches during the Reformation, contra the Roman Catholic Church. It was surprising that McLaren didn't mention that the Protestants intentionally placed the pulpit at the centre of t he church and the communion table off to the side to highlight the importance of preaching over the eucharist. He also didn't mention that stain glass windows were removed so that light would flood into the church allowing the congregants to read their bibles. This was unnecessary for the Roman Church because the people weren't supposed to read their bibles anyway.
Probably the lowest part of the night for me was when a young man raised his hand and explained that he had read a good number of McLaren's books. He said that he was at a point in his walk that had brought him to a period of doubting everything. Even his own faith he was beginning to doubt. Instead of offering pastoral insight based on the Scriptures and Christian experience, McLaren encouraged the doubter in his perplexity. I thought this was an absolute travesty. I wanted to raise my hand and offer my own advice for doubtfulness. When I'm in a period of doubting the Lord's promises to me, or even His very existence (!) it's because I'm going through a period of disobedience. The greatest cure for my doubting is the mortification of sin, the return to Scriptures, prayer before the Lord and fellowship with Christians who keep me accountable. Doubt is not a good thing, and it was a crying shame that Brian McLaren would encourage it. This same young man asked Brian McLaren about the future of the emerging church and how they will handle the "traditionalists" who believe that homosexuality is sin. McLaren responded, after explaining an instance in his church when he was confronted with this issue, that one hundred years from now there will be many churches who still hold to their current view (presumably an anti-homosexual view). But the majority of churches will have gone through the pain and struggle of coming to grips with homosexuality - and that is a good thing. My friend Elisha leaned over a whispered that McLaren had just confirmed for her what she had feared. McLaren was open to the gay agenda in Christian churches. I don't have much time to continue on with my thoughts. I always promise to keep writing blogs about various issues and then never get around to it, so I won't promise that I'll blog more on the emerging church. Hopefully I will, we'll see! I will say, however, that Paul Martin's paper at FRPS this morning was an excellent, even handed and fair critique of the emerging church. I really appreciate his irenic spirit and his ability to pinpoint the significant problems with the emerging church.
You can check out Paul's blog for his thoughts on Saturday at Kerux Noemata. My friend Christel has a very thoughtful post on Brian McLaren's talk called "What Brian McLaren's Friends Say..." that I think everyone should read. Her husband Clint has two posts on his thoughts one called "In Praise of Christian Agnosticism," and the other is a poem called "Lost At The North Pole." I should also highlight the blog of a guy named Nathan who was an organizer for Brian McLaren's talk at Tyndale College and who also at Richview on Saturday night. It was good to see him at FRPS to hear Paul this morning. I "borrowed" his pictures you see in this post! I'm looking forward to reading more discussion on this issue. (Oh yeah, I also wanted to mention that I had the opportunity to finally meet Tim Challies which was a treat - he posted his thoughts here). |
