A little boy with his loyalties intact is one who might think his sister is ugly, but he will not countenance any other boy outside the family saying so. McLaren has this backwards. Whenever outsiders are around, he has a desperate need to put distance between himself and his people, and this is the chapter where it all comes out. “Almost every time I tune in to religious radio or TV, I want to change my religion” (p. 245). Listening to his evangelical brethren on the radio makes him “want to become Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu — anything but what I’m hearing” (p. 245). Now to be honest, what I hear on Christian radio might make me want to change the station, but to change my religion?
What doesn’t McLaren like? I mostly don’t like the tinkley pianos and prevailing smarminess, but McLaren doesn’t like the one good thing about Christian radio — its role in mobilizing Christians against the merchants of cultural fruitlessness. “They are then begged to help fight against ‘the homosexual agenda’ or ‘secular humanism’ or postmodernism’ or ‘terrorism’ or some other real or imagined bugaboo” (p. 246). McLaren dismisses all this as fear-mongering and worries about the safety of said homosexuals, or secularists, or postmodernists. He worries especially for the safety of “those who have been characterized as threats” (p. 246). This, on the same page where he airily dismissed the fears of a young man from the “religous right.” In the world inhabited by McLaren, conservatives are by definition the threat, and therefore they can never be the threatened. By definition.
McLaren then moves to his standard concerns about in-grouping and out-grouping. “The word orthodoxy, so central to the title of this book, is often one of the prime weapons of exclusion, conjuring inquisitions and throwing around damning labels like heretic and infidel” (p. 247). He moves on to quote a friend favorably, saying that “Jesus didn’t want to create an in-group which would banish others to an out-group; Jesus wanted to create a come-on in group, one that sought and welcomed everyone” (p. 247). This is why Jesus talked so much about people being bound hand and foot, and thrown into the “come-on-in darkness.” Where the worm is friendly, and the fire cozy.
The “inclusiveness” that McLaren has been peddling throughout this book does not jump the tracks in this chapter. Rather, he has stayed right on track, and it should now be apparent to virtually everyone what his destination has been the entire time. “Just as Jesus’ incarnation bound him, not just to the Jewish people, but to all humanity, his incarnation links his followers to all people — including . . . people of other religions” (p. 249). The incarnation of Jesus, for McLaren, was not the means whereby He gathered all nations unto Himself. The incarnation is the word he invokes to justify all religions co-opting Jesus for themselves, on their own terms.
McLaren again: “I originally titled this chapter, ‘Why I Am Buddhist/Muslim/Hindu/Jewish,’ seeking to echo — provocatively — Crawford’s words about being linked to all people. The original title proved excessively provocative, however, if not downright misleading. So the current, less-provocative title emerged . . .” (p. 249). So he bured the provocative sentiment in the text of the chapter, and tried to claim he was not saying what he manifestly is saying. The original title was not really misleading.
Worse, McLaren tries to enlist the apostle Paul in this effort. Quoting Paul’s great passage on how he became as a Jew to win the Jews, to the weak, weak, to those without the law, without the law, etc. (1 Cor. 9:20-23), McLaren completely misses the point. “Can you feel the immense, shocking, almost heretical potency of these words?” (p. 250). Well, no. The words are immense, and shocking. But almost heretical? Only to those who don’t want the Scriptures to speak a final word to them.
The obvious conclusion to draw from what McLaren is saying is that religious pluralism is in fact correct. So McLaren tries to wave this off. “And again, neither is it a kind of ‘everybody-is-okay/all-religions-are-equally-true’ relativist/pluralist tolerance” (p. 251). So McLaren is not saying that religious pluralism is correct. Rather, he is saying that religious pluralism can be correct, because of Jesus.
McLaren thinks that it has worked before, kind of. Western Europeans kept their “heritage” and everything, which McLaren found out about through some homeschooling materials. He noticed that Christians taught their classical past to their kids, all about Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Pan, and others. They “weren’t demons to be feared or idols to be destroyed — they were part of our heritage to be redeemed, with rich symbolism and profound meaning for Christians today” (p. 252). But of course they were demons, not to be feared, but cast out. And of course they were idols to be cast down. Why do we still talk about them? For the same reason your grandfather tells stories about the Battle of Midway. That’s where “we beat them, and turned them back.” The fact that I still schedule meetings with people on Thursday (Thor’s Day) is not an example of us redeeming our Norse heritage. It is a pagan scalp hanging inside the Christian mead hall.
As an aside, in a footnote, McLaren takes a shot at Christians who still believe the Bible simpliciter. “It may be worth noting that many Christians have an understanding (dictation theory) of their sacred text that is more Islamic than truly Christian” (p. 253). The reason I think he is talking about the many Christians who still believe the Bible is as follows. I have been in conservative, Bible-believing circles my entire life, and the only times I have ever heard the dictation theory of inspiration mentioned, it is in order to deny it. So who is he talking about? I conclude he must mean anyone who believes that God inspired the Scriptures down to the jots and tittles. Like Jesus did. But belief in verbal inspiration is not the same thing as dictation theory.
McLaren consistently confounds categories. “The fact is, all religions of the world are under threat — from fundamentalist Islam, but more, from the McDonaldization and Wal-Martization of the world” (p. 254). Yes, indeed, all peoples of faith are under siege. The peoples of faith from across the world must band together to face their common and deadly foes, to wit, people of airliner-into-skyscraper faith, the best French fries anywhere, and lower prices on plastic household goods.
The schmoozefest is almost at its zenith now. “No. The Christian faith, I am proposing, should become (in the name of Jesus Christ) a welcome friend to other religions of the world, not a threat” (p. 254). Note that he is not saying that we should be a potent threat to other religions because of the “way of love and self-sacrifice.” No, he is saying that we should be “not a threat.” “We must accept the coexistence of different faiths in our world willingly, not begrudgingly” (p. 256). He says all these things, waving his hand magically over his Christian commitments, trying to make them stay (pp. 258-9). But they don’t, because they can’t. “We must realize that each religion is its own world, requiring very different responses from Christians” (p. 260, emphasis mine). Each new religion requires “new learnings and new openness” from us (p. 260). Given the epistemology of the emergents, which we have chainsawed in an earlier post, we have to remember that for pomos, all knowledge is localized. That is what lies under his phrase that “each religion is its own world.”
But McLaren still wants to be evangelicalish, and he keeps this sensation up by emphasizing the need to make disciples. But his idea of making disciples is to require no one to give up anything of any substance at all, including their old religion. “I must add, though, that I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts. This will be hard, you say, and I agree. But frankly, it’s not at all easy to be a follower of Jesus in many ‘Christian’ religious contexts, either” (p. 260). Note the residual “conservatism.” This course of action is advisable for many (but not all!). The fact that it may be advisable for even some Buddhists (not most!) to leave their faith in order to follow Jesus is McLaren’s idea of being rock-ribbed. Evidentally, some people, somewhere, might have to give up something, and there is a cost of discipleship around here somewhere.
“In this light, although I don’t hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel so called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus” (p. 264). Even within Buddhism there is no demand to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ, no apostolic command for all men everywhere to repent. This path of McLaren’s is only for those who “feel so called.” And this, in a book where he has repeatedly inveighed against “consumerism.” He doesn’t want Buddhist shopping at WalMart because it multiplies consumer choices in the world of housewares. But they can shop for whatever religion suits them, including any kind of eclectic combination, and that suits McLaren.
I don’t want to insult the reader’s intelligence by pointing out (too simplistically) what is going on here. But at the same time, it is clear that McLaren has a hearing, and many people in evangelical circles are paying attention to him. But because his liberalism and unbelief are so transparent, the fact that otherwise intelligent people are being taken in by him shows that this is a spiritual matter, and not a question of IQ. In the Bible, folly is a moral category, not an intelligence category. This means that anyone who thinks McLaren is “just great” needs to stop puzzling over all this stuff as though it were a geometry problem. Just repent. Tell God you’re sorry. Humble yourself. Stop staring at the pig food. Just go home.