A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [152]
33. In this context I recall a footnote, hidden away in The Divine Conspiracy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), in which Dallas Willard speaks of “vampire Christians” who want Jesus for his blood and little else.
Chapter 20: How Can We Translate Our Quest into Action?
1. Jesus himself seemed nervous about hype, frequently telling people who had experienced miracles that they should keep quiet about them. Imagine that!
2. This is a theme of my book Everything Must Change (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2007).
3. Here are Luther’s famous words: “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and by plain reason and not by Popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves, my conscience is captive to the word of God. To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I cannot and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”
4. Here’s how Luther recounted his conversion experience: “Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience…. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God…. Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience…. At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night…I began to understand that the righteous ness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely, by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteous ness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteous ness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’ Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scripture from memory. I also found in other terms an analogy, as, the work of God, that is what God does in us, the power of God, with which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God” (see http://homepage.mac.com/shanerosenthal/reformationink/mlconversion.htm).
5. For scholars who see church history in this dynamic way, see Diana Butler Bass, A People’s History of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009); Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003) and Translating the Message (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008); David Bosch, Transforming Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991); and Harvey Cox, The Future of Faith (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009). My book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2008) also explores this theme of continuity with a deep tradition.
6. One of the most stimulating and provocative examples of macrohistory, in my opinion, is Ken Wilber’s A Theory of Everything (Boston: Shambhala, 2001). His insights are seeded throughout this chapter. Resonant with Wilber’s work, as I understand both, is Huston Smith’s, especially as seen in Beyond the Postmodern Mind (Wheaton, IL: Quest, 2003). Also see Jared Diamond’s work, beginning with Guns, Germs and Steel (New York: Norton, 2005), and Karen Armstrong’s A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994). The theme of this chapter clearly echoes her subtitle, The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
7. This schema is a version of another schema called spiral dynamics, which uses different colors for the parallel stages: beige, purple, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. My ordering of the colors here (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) follows the spectrum, so I think it will be a little easier to remember.
8. By emergent conversation, I mean one small node in