Book Review: A New Kind of Christian, by Brian McLaren

A New Kind of Christian is a story of a pastor who is beginning to question the current way of doing things, and his new friend, who is a human encyclopedia about church history and church issues. Together, the friends discuss how the church can become something new.

For the sake of making things easier, I will refer to the characters by their first names. The pastor's name is Dan. The new friend is named Neo.

Pastor Dan's problem in particular is he is becoming detached from what is expected of him. He explains to Neo, "It's not just burnout. It's more like I'm losing my faith - well, not exactly that, but I fell that I'm losing the whole framework for my faith. I keep pushing things into....the little systems I got in seminary and even before that....But life is too messy to fit"

I love Neo's response. "Daniel, I think you're suffering from an immigration problem...You have a modern faith you have developed in your homeland of modernity. But you're immigrating to a new land, a postmodern world. You feel like you don't fit in either world. You can't decide whether to settle in a little ghetto or to move out into the new land. But you can't make the transition to the other side alone"



In their next meeting, over coffee, Neo explains that the Modern era began around 1500, and Neo claims that era is ending and being replaced by postmodernism. Some characteristics of the modern age are secular science, objectivity, analysis, machines, individualism, consumerism.

After this meeting, Dan writes in his diary that the phrase "God is in control" must have meant something completely different before the age of complex machines. He writes "we run the risk of importing and imposing our modern conceptions of clockwork, operation, mechanism onto [God]"

Christianity has interpreted the Bible in a scientific, mechanistic way, as if it is "God's encyclopedia, God's rule book, God's answer book". Neo summarizes "I think when you let go of the Bible as God's answer book, you get it back as something so much better....it tells the family story...a book that tells us who we are and what story we find ourselves in so that we know what to do and how to live". "I wonder what would happen if we honestly listened to the story and put ourselves under its spell, so to speak, not using it to get all of our questions about God answered..."

More profound thoughts from Neo
About sharing the gospel: "If Christians would take all the energy we put into proving we're right and others are wrong and invested that energy in pursuing and doing good, somehow I think that more people would believe we are right" A memorable section that I can't find relates that being friends with someone just to share Christ is not real friendship, and ultimately cheapens us and our message.

About other religions: "I'd have to say that the world is better off for having these religions than having no religions at all, or just one, even if it were ours. I wonder if these other religions might have a role much like Paul described for the Old Testament law back in Galatians - they serve as tutors or caretakers that preserve a culture until Christ can come to it with his good news. They aren't the enemy of the gospel, in my mind, any more that Christianity is the enemy - though of course, sometimes it is" (If you don't get this point, talk to me. Most people my age understand this concept of Christianity getting in the way of Christ.)

The rest of the book is not necessarily as captivating; it was perhaps written for people further along than me in thinking about these things. It's a good book - I want to read it again sometime. It was Courtney's birthday book to me, meaning that she gave it to me on her birthday for me to read. Her previous birthday books have scored #1 and #2 on my Best of the Year Lists.