Adventures in Missing the Point

I just finished reading a book by Brian McLaren.

Yes, yes, I know. Many of my old friends and acquaintances have long thought that I was sliding into apostasy, and now their suspicions are confirmed.

So since there is no chance of persuading them otherwise, let me go further and make another confession: I not only read the book; I enjoyed it.

As long as I’m making confessions (this feels good to get some of this off my chest), I might as well come out with all of it. I read the book, I enjoyed the book, and (gasp) I agreed with much of what McLaren said!

I even cried at one point, and reread the chapter – out loud – to my wife!

Oh, and I guess that leads me to another confession, this one directed to Brian. I am sorry that in the past, I condemned you and your writings as “heresy” without ever actually reading or listening to anything you wrote or said, or trying to understand your views. That was wrong of me. I am planning on obtaining and reading more of your books, because even though I may not agree with everything, I like to read books that challenge me to think. Your books certainly do that.

The book I read was Adventures in Missing the Pointby Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo. The book contains individual chapters on various topics, such as salvation, the Bible, evangelism, seminary, homosexuality, environmentalism, worship, sin, and postmodernism. Brian and Tony argue that many of us Christians approach these topics in the wrong way, and are therefore neutering the gospel of much of it’s redemptive power.

Aside from the fact that the book makes you think about these topics, one nice feature of the book is that the authors give you permission to disagree with them. They want the reader to think through the traditional views on these topics in a new light, so that we hold our views more lightly, with humility and grace. They help the reader do this through the format of the book. Each topic is assigned to one author, but the chapter concludes with a response from the other author. On nearly every topic, the two authors disagree with each other in some way, but they do so with gentleness and respect.

Christians are never going to universally agree on how to approach the “hot topics.” Personally, I am not sure that in this life, 100% agreement would be glorifying to God. What if God purposefully left things vague in Scripture and in life for a purpose? Maybe if we can learn to disagree in love, to maintain unity despite differences of opinion, to discuss tough issues with humility and grace, then we will no longer be “missing the point.”

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