A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [58]
This represents what we could call a flat reading. In this approach, Jesus is simply in the middle of the book, flesh made words, on par with all the other words, simply the source of a few more articles in an inspired constitution.6
Next, I elevate the first half of the Bible so the open book slants downward:
Here the Hebrew Scriptures are the summit, describing the problem that Jesus and the New Testament are meant to solve or creating the boundary conditions in which they must work. This reading favors the Law.
Then, I elevate the second half of the Bible so the open book slants upward, showing a progressive revelation that passes to and through Jesus to find its summit in Paul and perhaps John (in Revelation) as well. This reading favors the Letters:
Finally, angle both covers downward, so the spine is at the summit, the top of an inverted “V”:
This, I suggest, represents seeing Christ as the hinge of the biblical story, the spine or backbone of the narrative, the climax and focal point toward which the Old Testament points and ascends and the peak from which the vigor and vitality of the New Testament flow. This is how Jesus can be seen, for Christians, as the supreme and ultimate revelation of God, with the Old and New Testaments pointing to him like dual spotlights.
The character of God, seen in Jesus, is not violent and tribal. The living God is not the kind of deity who decrees ethnic cleansing, genocide, racism, slavery, sexism, homophobia, war, religious supremacy, or eternal conscious torment. Instead, the character of the living God is like the character of Jesus. Don’t simply look at the Bible, I am suggesting; look through the Bible to look at Jesus, and you will see the character of God shining radiant and full. Don’t simply look at the many versions of Christian faith (or other religions), for they are full of distortions; look through even the best of our religious communities, and beyond them see Jesus. When you see him, you are getting the best view afforded to humans of the character of God. That profoundly important insight, of course, carries us to the next question in our quest.
PART IV:
THE JESUS QUESTION
12
Who Is Jesus and Why Is He Important?
When I celebrate Jesus as the Word of God as I did in the previous chapter, some folks get upset—and for opposite reasons. I’ve acknowledged some of these reasons in my previous books, and I will address some of them in upcoming chapters as well.1 But before going any farther, I need to acknowledge that just saying the name “Jesus” doesn’t mean much until we make clear which Jesus we are talking about. We must face the fact that many different saviors can be smuggled in under the name “Jesus,” just as many different deities can be disguised under the term “God” and vastly different ways of living can be promoted under the name “Christianity.” Jesus can be a victim of identity theft, and people can say and do things with and in his name that he would never ever do. Nobody has helped me see this more clearly than one of my most loyal and dedicated critics.
He was being interviewed a couple years ago about some of my friends and me, whom he described as “some emergent types.” He claimed that my friends and I want:
to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes.
Quite a way with words! The characterization of my friends and me was nothing, though, compared to his characterization