Brian McLaren and Process Theology
Imagine that you are an evangelical Christian undergoing a bit of an identity crisis. You’ve given your life to Jesus; you read and love the Bible; you belong to a small “house church;” and you give time, energy, and money to helping those in need. You find yourself at odds with a consumer culture that takes the ego as its central organizing principle. You are trying to center your life in Christ. You want to be a more loving person.
Still, you’re having lots of doubts about calling yourself an evangelical because, so often, the word evokes images of smug self-righteousness, intolerance of diversity, a worship of the Bible, a tendency to think of God as a dominating ruler but not a friend, and an identification of "evangelical" with right-wing politics. Some of the evangelicals you know seem more interested in right ideology than right practice; and in building walls between themselves and the rest of the world. Sometimes you find yourself much more at home with people of other faiths and even with those whom evangelicals call ‘liberals,’ than with your own evangelical flock. You don’t want to let go of Jesus, but you want to find a way of being Christian that is generously orthodox.
You are a college student, and one of your teachers is a Christian process theologian. You'd never heard of it until she lectured on it one day in class called Contemporary Christian Options.
You wanted to know more, so you visited with her after class. She's explained to you that, today, there are complementary forms of process theology: Jewish (Rabbi Bradley Artson), Muslim (Farhan Shah), Hindu (Jeffery Long). Bahai (Roland Faber) and Daoist (Meijun Fan, Zhihe Wang). You're intrigued by the fact that it offers a shared vocabulary to support different religious paths.
Nevertheless, in your case, it is the Christian form that especially interests you, so you study it on the side. You like the way process theologians understand God as a deeply loving presence. It seems to you that they imagine God as Jesus did: a loving Abba not a tyrannical king. You also like process theology’s emphasis on beauty as one of God’s holiest names, and its respect for the earth and all forms of life. It interests you that it even as a kind of Logos Christology.
But process theology often comes across as a bit too mind-centered for you, and also a bit too white and middle class. It seems all about worldview but not enough about heart-view and daily life practices. You miss the emotions, a concern with personal relationships, storytelling, sensitivity to art and music, a sense of prayerfulness and mystery. Maybe even a sense of liturgy. When it comes to theology, you're looking for more than good ideas. You're looking for help in following Jesus inwardly and outwardly.
You explain this to your teacher, and she gets it right away. She says “I miss that, too.” She suggests some writers for you to read - writers who present she calls the spirit of process theology without calling it, or needing to call it, process theology. She adds: "Process theology is simply a means to the end of love, not love itself. Take from it only what you find helpful and read lots of other people as well. Keep reading the Bible, too. Don't make a god of it, but let it be one of your best friends."
One of the writers she recommends is Brian McLaren. Here are some of the lessons you learn. They all sound like process theology, but articulated so much more engagingly, personally, and beautifully.
Still, you’re having lots of doubts about calling yourself an evangelical because, so often, the word evokes images of smug self-righteousness, intolerance of diversity, a worship of the Bible, a tendency to think of God as a dominating ruler but not a friend, and an identification of "evangelical" with right-wing politics. Some of the evangelicals you know seem more interested in right ideology than right practice; and in building walls between themselves and the rest of the world. Sometimes you find yourself much more at home with people of other faiths and even with those whom evangelicals call ‘liberals,’ than with your own evangelical flock. You don’t want to let go of Jesus, but you want to find a way of being Christian that is generously orthodox.
You are a college student, and one of your teachers is a Christian process theologian. You'd never heard of it until she lectured on it one day in class called Contemporary Christian Options.
You wanted to know more, so you visited with her after class. She's explained to you that, today, there are complementary forms of process theology: Jewish (Rabbi Bradley Artson), Muslim (Farhan Shah), Hindu (Jeffery Long). Bahai (Roland Faber) and Daoist (Meijun Fan, Zhihe Wang). You're intrigued by the fact that it offers a shared vocabulary to support different religious paths.
Nevertheless, in your case, it is the Christian form that especially interests you, so you study it on the side. You like the way process theologians understand God as a deeply loving presence. It seems to you that they imagine God as Jesus did: a loving Abba not a tyrannical king. You also like process theology’s emphasis on beauty as one of God’s holiest names, and its respect for the earth and all forms of life. It interests you that it even as a kind of Logos Christology.
But process theology often comes across as a bit too mind-centered for you, and also a bit too white and middle class. It seems all about worldview but not enough about heart-view and daily life practices. You miss the emotions, a concern with personal relationships, storytelling, sensitivity to art and music, a sense of prayerfulness and mystery. Maybe even a sense of liturgy. When it comes to theology, you're looking for more than good ideas. You're looking for help in following Jesus inwardly and outwardly.
You explain this to your teacher, and she gets it right away. She says “I miss that, too.” She suggests some writers for you to read - writers who present she calls the spirit of process theology without calling it, or needing to call it, process theology. She adds: "Process theology is simply a means to the end of love, not love itself. Take from it only what you find helpful and read lots of other people as well. Keep reading the Bible, too. Don't make a god of it, but let it be one of your best friends."
One of the writers she recommends is Brian McLaren. Here are some of the lessons you learn. They all sound like process theology, but articulated so much more engagingly, personally, and beautifully.
Seven Lessons from Brian McLaren
1. We can move past the image of God as a cosmic moralist into the image of God as Christ-like."I was brought up with this idea that you have a pre-existing definition of God and to be a Christian is to lift Jesus up and fit Jesus into that pre-existing definition. What's happened to me really in the last 15 or 20 years is that I've come to say no. Jesus does something far more radical than that. When you really encounter Jesus, you are forced to redefine God. And to me, this is very hard to explain reality, but it's something I've experienced." (Brian McLaren in interview with Krista Tippett)
3. We can recognize that the Spirit is in all places and not just in Christianity."If the Holy Spirit is indeed ubiquitous and secular, active in all creation, not just the church, and if everyone in creation can’t avoid encountering the Holy Spirit, and if all of our religions potentially contain localized, particular responses to the Holy Spirit9 (along with lots of other components, such as expressions of rivalry and fear), and if each religion has treasures to give and treasures to receive from the others, then we would expect the Holy Spirit to be moving people in each religion to offer their good gifts to others, and to receive the good gifts offered by others. In other words, we would expect the one Holy Spirit to be moving, working, “hovering” over each religion—and also in the space between religions, inviting people into conversation, exchange, even communion, across the boundaries that have in the past separated them." (Brian McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Muhammad Cross the Road?)
5. We can enter more deeply into the sacramental side of Christianity, including the eucharist."Jesus did for us all. In this way, we die with Jesus to the ways of this world—hostility, oppression, violence, hate. And we rise with Jesus as well, to “walk in newness of life,” to live in the ways of love, liberation, reconciliation, and human-kindness. So the world for us is no longer a battleground; our identity is no longer as warriors fighting with “us” against “them.” No: in the eucharist we bond to the good news that life is a table, a feast, a banquet, and we are a family, a circle of friends, being nourished together by God’s bounty, the fruit of the vine and the grain of the field, all in a spirit of love, mutual service, and unity."
7. We can recognize that life in Christ is an ongoing process that is nourished, not depleted, by relations with other people and the natural world.But according to Jesus, the genuine encounter with God never ends there. It always leads to a fresh encounter with the other as well. So our proclamation isn’t simply a matter of pointing others to God: it is about inviting others on a shared journey to and through God to the neighbor, the other, the enemy—and, we might add, to all living creatures and the creation that sustains them. In this way, the old language of saving souls grows more meaningful than ever: it is our mission to save souls from the dehumanizing effects of hostility to God and other; souls, yes, and the bodies on which souls depend. And the human societies on which bodies and souls depend. And the natural ecosystems on which bodies, souls, and societies depend. And this precious planet on which everything depends. So more than ever, we are engaged in the sacred mission of salvation—including salvation from the disastrous effects of misguided, distorted, dysfunctional religion, beginning with our own. This saving mission calls every individual—each soul, if you will—to make a saving decision: the choice to live. (Brian McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Muhammad Cross the Road?)
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2. We can recognize that Beauty is a pathway to God, and that beauty is beyond anybody's grasp."And I think 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. 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, 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." (Brian McLaren in interview with Krista Tippett)
4. We can do our best to live from the Spirit ourselves."So I invite you to feel and enjoy the wind of the Spirit that flows around and within you at this very moment. I urge you to unfurl your sails and welcome the Spirit’s power in your life. I bid you rejoice that the wind of the Spirit blows everywhere and can’t be contained in anyone’s box, no matter how big or small, old or new. And I point you to Jesus, this strong and kind Galilean man who was filled with the Spirit, who walked the way of peace and bids us to follow. Let us who identify ourselves as Christians boldly follow Jesus into new territory to explore new possibilities we have never even dreamed of before. Let us, with him, cross the road in order to encounter the other, and in so doing, encounter the Other." (Brian McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Muhammad Cross the Road?)
6. We can abandon the idea of religious supremacy and "evangelize" for shared listening, justice, and joy. "This shared journey is not the call to convert from your religion to mine. It is, rather, the invitation for both of us to seek a deeper conversion that begins in our deepest religious identity and transforms all of life. Whatever our religion, this conversion transforms the way we see us-ness and otherness. We still cherish our distinctive religious identity, but we abandon what my friend Samir Selmanovic calls religious supremacy. We are converted from hostility, from seeing the other as a threat to be feared, pitied, eliminated, or refashioned into our image. We are converted into hosts and guests, practicing and receiving hospitality, sharing our treasures as gifts. Karen Armstrong said it well:6 Sometimes it’s the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn’t belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.
The shared escape from “habitual selfishness” and this shared listening for “sacred otherness” is not a claim by or for any religious institution or tradition, including one called Christianity. Instead, it makes a proposal to members of each religious tradition, inviting them to turn away from all hostile identities and turn toward God and neighbor, stranger, outcast, outsider, and enemy. In so doing, this proposal celebrates a joyous opportunity for everyone, whatever their religious affiliation: the opportunity to encounter the God who loves everyone and every created thing." (Brian McLaren, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Muhammad Cross the Road?) |
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Photos by Thomas J. Oord
"Yes, but what about the Cross?"
It doesn't change God's heart, says Brian McLaren, it changes ours.
Brian McLaren is often asked this question. Here is a response he offers on his blog to an evangelical who raised the question.
"Because you and I come from a similar background that installed a similar “inner fundamentalist” inside us, we both know that for many people, to say Christianity revolves around the cross actually means it revolves around an atonement theory … a theory (penal substitutionary atonement) about what the cross is and does.
In that view, the cross is central because it somehow changes God’s heart toward us. God’s wrath (as a popular song says it) is “satisfied” by being poured out or vented upon Jesus. We were both brought up being told that was the heart or gospel of Christianity.
A much better understanding of the cross arises when we ask this question: is the problem between us and God on God’s side or our side? Is God’s heart hard toward us, or is ours hard toward God? If God’s heart is by definition OK – always loving, always just – then the problem must be on our side.
Which raises the question on this Good Friday … if we ponder “the sacred head now wounded,” if we meditate on the “wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died,” if we open our hearts to the great suffering of Jesus, from mocking and scourging to crucifixion and stabbing … what effect does it have on us?
Does it reveal to us that God loves us with a love that is willing to suffer and forgive rather than inflict revenge? Does it reveal to us the ugliness of human violence – and the ease with which religious and political institutions unleash violence on innocent people like Jesus? And does that dual realization (again, in the words of a beautiful hymn) inspire awe in our hearts at “the wonders of redeeming love” and “our unworthiness”?
If the cross works on us that way, then the cross is indeed central to our faith. But it is not central in a way that marginalizes Jesus’ resurrection, or Jesus’ teaching, or Jesus’ way of life from day to day. Rather, cross/resurrection/teaching/way of life are all bound together in a powerful revelation of what God is like … and what we can aspire to imitate as image-bearers of God."
"Because you and I come from a similar background that installed a similar “inner fundamentalist” inside us, we both know that for many people, to say Christianity revolves around the cross actually means it revolves around an atonement theory … a theory (penal substitutionary atonement) about what the cross is and does.
In that view, the cross is central because it somehow changes God’s heart toward us. God’s wrath (as a popular song says it) is “satisfied” by being poured out or vented upon Jesus. We were both brought up being told that was the heart or gospel of Christianity.
A much better understanding of the cross arises when we ask this question: is the problem between us and God on God’s side or our side? Is God’s heart hard toward us, or is ours hard toward God? If God’s heart is by definition OK – always loving, always just – then the problem must be on our side.
Which raises the question on this Good Friday … if we ponder “the sacred head now wounded,” if we meditate on the “wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died,” if we open our hearts to the great suffering of Jesus, from mocking and scourging to crucifixion and stabbing … what effect does it have on us?
Does it reveal to us that God loves us with a love that is willing to suffer and forgive rather than inflict revenge? Does it reveal to us the ugliness of human violence – and the ease with which religious and political institutions unleash violence on innocent people like Jesus? And does that dual realization (again, in the words of a beautiful hymn) inspire awe in our hearts at “the wonders of redeeming love” and “our unworthiness”?
If the cross works on us that way, then the cross is indeed central to our faith. But it is not central in a way that marginalizes Jesus’ resurrection, or Jesus’ teaching, or Jesus’ way of life from day to day. Rather, cross/resurrection/teaching/way of life are all bound together in a powerful revelation of what God is like … and what we can aspire to imitate as image-bearers of God."
Addendum: Confessions of a Post-Evangelical
by Jay McDaniel
For about a year of my life, when I was about twenty-five years old, I was an evangelical Christian. I had asked Jesus into my life, wanting him to be my lord and savior, and, to the best of my knowledge, he accepted the invitation. If this is what it means to be an evangelical, then I am an evangelical Christian even today. Jesus is still the morning star of my life; I want to share in his journey and live in his spirit. I am drawn to him like a moth to flame; he is alive to me, not simply as an idea or image, but as a person. I feel that I can talk to him as I might talk to a friend, and that he is listening.
I am grateful for this friendship. He has saved me many times from sins that I would otherwise commit: jealously, greed, callousness, arrogance. His death is likewise a window to God for me, showing that even the mystery at the heart of the universe -- even God -- is vulnerable and compassionate, sharing in the sins and the suffering, and the pain, of the world. His resurrection reveals to me the possibility of new life, here and now as well as later, which is my deepest hope, not for me alone, but for everyone. And his healing ministry -- his call to justice -- forever beckons me to side the the outsider, the forsaken, the forgotten. This does not mean that I always respond to the call. I am very much among those of whom he said: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." Still, as I see things, Jesus love me, this I know, and not simply because the Bible tells me so, but because he speaks directly to the heart.
Moreover, and importantly, I want to be in touch with the God in whom Jesus placed his trust. I want to share in his faith. I say that Jesus is a window to God, but I do not think of him as identical with God. Nor, apparently, did he. "Not my will by thy will, O Lord." As I see thing, he is akin to a living pane of glass through which holy light shines, but there is more to the light than Jesus. He placed his faith in a creative companion beyond himself whom he named Abba; but he did not imagine Abba as a bully in the sky, but rather as a tender, eternal Companion. Perhaps sometimes he, too, struggled with images of God. He was human. Still I get the feeling that, for him, at least some of the time. the motivating force for faith was not fear but rather intimacy, and that he hoped others might have faith in Abba. In inviting Jesus into my life I want to accept his invitation to live from Abba and Abba's spirit, not social convention or the whims of my own ego. (See God as Abba: John Cobb's Proposal.) I do not worship Jesus, but I love him.
*
All of this may sound somewhat evangelical to some Christians, albeit without an emphasis on biblical authority that is so important to some Christians. But something in me was not at home in the evangelical world I knew at age twenty five. It was too arrogant, too presumptuous. And too prone to put Jesus and the spirit of Christ in a box and make a God of Christianity itself. Too oriented toward dividing the world into "us" versus "them."
Brian McLaren confesses that, in his fundamentalist days, he had a hidden agenda in meeting people of other religions and no religion. He wanted to make friends with them, but primarily for the purpose of having them convert to Christianity. In his words, this impulse to convert put "static" in every relationship he had with other people.
When I was an evangelical,I felt this static. There was something in evangelicalism that could not accept other people on their own terms, for their own sakes, in loving ways. I missed a softness, a generosity, a capacity for deep listening, an appreciation of ambiguity, a tenderness. It just wasn't right for me. God was calling me in a different direction.
After leaving evangelicalism, my own life was shaped by the more mystical writings of Thomas Merton and by the example of my major professor, John Cobb, than by evangelical traditions. And, to make matters even more complex, I was the English teacher for a Zen Buddhist master. Thus, today, I speak of myself as a Christian influenced by Buddhism. See Can a Christian be a Buddhist, Too?No evangelical would claim me.
However, things have changed. Today some of the best and kindest people I know are evangelicals, and I am often humbled by the way that they live their Christian lives. I now realize that the evangelical world is much more pluralistic, and much more beautiful, than I then knew. And if being a Christian has anything to do with sharing in Jesus' journey in a courageous way, I know that they are much better Christians than I. And more loving! I want to learn from my evangelical friends.
On the other hand, I know that many evangelicals struggle with a side of evangelicalism that is dogmatic and insensitive, reluctant to learn from others. And they, like me, cringe when they hear "Christianity" presented in fundamentalist, nationalist, interfaith-antagonist terms. They suffer from Religious Identity Conflict Syndrome: wanting to claim Christianity and disclaim it at the same time. It can be tough to be an evangelical today.
What to do? If we have been shaped by harder sides of evangelical Christianity, either in the past or in the present, I want to recommend the writings of Brian McLaren. Indeed, I recommend them for non-evangelicals, too, including myself. McLaren shows that there are at least seven steps that you -- we -- can take to grow into a deeper, kinder Christianity. None of them require that we relinquish your focus on Jesus or our impulse to evangelize. But we will come to think of evangelism differently and take Jesus more seriously.
by Jay McDaniel
For about a year of my life, when I was about twenty-five years old, I was an evangelical Christian. I had asked Jesus into my life, wanting him to be my lord and savior, and, to the best of my knowledge, he accepted the invitation. If this is what it means to be an evangelical, then I am an evangelical Christian even today. Jesus is still the morning star of my life; I want to share in his journey and live in his spirit. I am drawn to him like a moth to flame; he is alive to me, not simply as an idea or image, but as a person. I feel that I can talk to him as I might talk to a friend, and that he is listening.
I am grateful for this friendship. He has saved me many times from sins that I would otherwise commit: jealously, greed, callousness, arrogance. His death is likewise a window to God for me, showing that even the mystery at the heart of the universe -- even God -- is vulnerable and compassionate, sharing in the sins and the suffering, and the pain, of the world. His resurrection reveals to me the possibility of new life, here and now as well as later, which is my deepest hope, not for me alone, but for everyone. And his healing ministry -- his call to justice -- forever beckons me to side the the outsider, the forsaken, the forgotten. This does not mean that I always respond to the call. I am very much among those of whom he said: "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." Still, as I see things, Jesus love me, this I know, and not simply because the Bible tells me so, but because he speaks directly to the heart.
Moreover, and importantly, I want to be in touch with the God in whom Jesus placed his trust. I want to share in his faith. I say that Jesus is a window to God, but I do not think of him as identical with God. Nor, apparently, did he. "Not my will by thy will, O Lord." As I see thing, he is akin to a living pane of glass through which holy light shines, but there is more to the light than Jesus. He placed his faith in a creative companion beyond himself whom he named Abba; but he did not imagine Abba as a bully in the sky, but rather as a tender, eternal Companion. Perhaps sometimes he, too, struggled with images of God. He was human. Still I get the feeling that, for him, at least some of the time. the motivating force for faith was not fear but rather intimacy, and that he hoped others might have faith in Abba. In inviting Jesus into my life I want to accept his invitation to live from Abba and Abba's spirit, not social convention or the whims of my own ego. (See God as Abba: John Cobb's Proposal.) I do not worship Jesus, but I love him.
*
All of this may sound somewhat evangelical to some Christians, albeit without an emphasis on biblical authority that is so important to some Christians. But something in me was not at home in the evangelical world I knew at age twenty five. It was too arrogant, too presumptuous. And too prone to put Jesus and the spirit of Christ in a box and make a God of Christianity itself. Too oriented toward dividing the world into "us" versus "them."
Brian McLaren confesses that, in his fundamentalist days, he had a hidden agenda in meeting people of other religions and no religion. He wanted to make friends with them, but primarily for the purpose of having them convert to Christianity. In his words, this impulse to convert put "static" in every relationship he had with other people.
When I was an evangelical,I felt this static. There was something in evangelicalism that could not accept other people on their own terms, for their own sakes, in loving ways. I missed a softness, a generosity, a capacity for deep listening, an appreciation of ambiguity, a tenderness. It just wasn't right for me. God was calling me in a different direction.
After leaving evangelicalism, my own life was shaped by the more mystical writings of Thomas Merton and by the example of my major professor, John Cobb, than by evangelical traditions. And, to make matters even more complex, I was the English teacher for a Zen Buddhist master. Thus, today, I speak of myself as a Christian influenced by Buddhism. See Can a Christian be a Buddhist, Too?No evangelical would claim me.
However, things have changed. Today some of the best and kindest people I know are evangelicals, and I am often humbled by the way that they live their Christian lives. I now realize that the evangelical world is much more pluralistic, and much more beautiful, than I then knew. And if being a Christian has anything to do with sharing in Jesus' journey in a courageous way, I know that they are much better Christians than I. And more loving! I want to learn from my evangelical friends.
On the other hand, I know that many evangelicals struggle with a side of evangelicalism that is dogmatic and insensitive, reluctant to learn from others. And they, like me, cringe when they hear "Christianity" presented in fundamentalist, nationalist, interfaith-antagonist terms. They suffer from Religious Identity Conflict Syndrome: wanting to claim Christianity and disclaim it at the same time. It can be tough to be an evangelical today.
What to do? If we have been shaped by harder sides of evangelical Christianity, either in the past or in the present, I want to recommend the writings of Brian McLaren. Indeed, I recommend them for non-evangelicals, too, including myself. McLaren shows that there are at least seven steps that you -- we -- can take to grow into a deeper, kinder Christianity. None of them require that we relinquish your focus on Jesus or our impulse to evangelize. But we will come to think of evangelism differently and take Jesus more seriously.