Book Review: a Generous Orthodoxy

So, I've been curious to read this book since it came out four years ago. In various reviews, I've read a lot of backlash, and had mentally placed this book in the 'books I SHOULD read but am putting off until I've read everything else on my bookshelf first' category.

Well, I finally got around to reading the book and was amazed at how much I enjoyed it! I just couldn't put it down. For a girl from a mostly non-denominational Christian background, I found McLaren's descriptions of various streams of faith to be fascinating.

Critics accuse him of attempting to piece-meal a post-modern version of Christianity "with an eccentric mix of theological elements pieced together from main denominations and even many different religions", or that "he embraces relativism at the cost of clarity in matters of truth and intends to redefine Christianity for this new age, largely in terms of an eccentric mixture of elements he would take from virtually every theological position and variant."

Yet, I didn't come away feeling that McLaren was trying to impose a new, mish-mashed form of Christianity upon the rest of us. Rather, he holds to light the pearls of truth that were the impetus for each of many different Christian traditions (even while acknowledging how many have since lost sight of their honorable beginnings).

To better understand how other traditions are attempting to sincerely live out their faith, and to learn and draw from other's strengths can only help us be more loving and unified as the worldwide body of Christ, regardless of denomination. McLaren addresses the unity of the church this way, in my favorite passage of the book:

"We believe in one... church," the [Nicene] creed says, and that's no easy to swallow statement because we're surrounded by denominations, divisions, arguments, grand polemics, and petty squabbles. That's where the "we believe" part comes in: you can only know the unity of the church by believing it, not by seeing it. When you believe it, you can see through the surface dirt and cracks to the beauty and unity shining beneath. Generous orthodoxy presumes that the divisions, though tragic, are superficial compared to Christianity's deep, though often unappreciated, unity. Perhaps the more we believe in and perceive that unity, the easier it will be to grow beyond the disunity." p. 250

The church, not the building, but the family of God's adopted children, should indeed be radiantly beautiful. Let's spend a little less time taking sides and articulating our differences, and focus more on how amazing and merciful our loving God is to each of us. Sounds pretty generous to me.

The Youth of a Nation

As part of what I consider “youth ministry research”, I just read an interesting article on the “Millennial” generation, looking at the 13-20 year old demographic in America. These youth are growing up in an extremely fast-paced, technologically based society, and researchers are finding that this environment is actually nurturing them to think and respond differently than previous generations.

With countless products, services, and rapid technological developments aimed directly at them, this generation expects interactivity and to have multiple choices at their fingertips. Generational differences are not limited to expectations, but are actually reflected in personality.

Millennials were found to differ significantly from Gen X medical students in 10 of 16 traits on a standard personality test. Millennials scored higher on warmth, abstract reasoning, emotional stability, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, apprehension, openness to change and perfectionism. Gen X'ers scored higher on self-reliance.

It also seems there is a cultural rebound from the intensely career-driven, one-size-fits-all goal-focused lifestyle of the Gen X'ers.

"They [millennials] have no need to conform to a generational norm. They're very independent in their consumer habits." … "The trend is that there isn't a trend. This generation is all about choice -- being able to find something and make it your own."

With a world that is constantly shifting around them, how will this millennial generation respond to a God who never changes? Will they regard Him as stiff, archaic and irrelevant, or, will they choose to hold onto Him as a rock in the midst of the storm raging around them? My heart believes the latter, that today’s youth are eager to find solid truth, a consistency they can depend on, even as the world flies by.

Caught in the Middle

Part of doing any kind of ministry is to understand the culture you are ministering to. As a youth worker, I have been interested in familiarizing myself with the emergence of postmodernism in America: the reality is, the students I teach are growing up in a very different cultural environment than I did just fifteen years ago.

There is a growing movement, calling themselves ‘emergent’ or ‘the emerging church’ that is seeking to evaluate the changing culture, and examine how ‘church’ as we currently know it will relate and function in a postmodern world. Concepts such as absolute truth, identity, personal experience, and spirituality are being held up to the light and examined on all sides.

The emergent church describes itself as in pursuit of a conversation, not a theology; and though I don’t necessarily agree with all the answers, I appreciate the questions they are asking. I am currently reading a book, handed me by a fellow youth pastor, called “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church”, by D.A. Carson. I loved this quote, as I found it an interesting summary of some of the differences between modernism and postmodernism:

Modernism is often pictured as pursuing truth, absolutism, linear thinking, rationalism, certainty, the cerebral as opposed to the affective – which in turn breeds arrogance, inflexibility, a lust to be right, the desire to control. Postmodernism, by contrast, recognizes how much of what we “know” is shaped by the culture in which we live, is controlled by emotions and aesthetics and heritage, and in fact can only be intelligently held as part of a common tradition, without overbearing claims to being true or right.

Modernism tries to find unquestioned foundations on which to build the edifice of knowledge and then proceeds with methodological rigor; postmodernism denies that such foundations exist (it is “antifoundational”) and insists that we come to “know” things in many ways, not a few of them lacking in rigor.

Modernism is hard-edged and, in the domain of religion, focuses on truth versus error, right belief, confessionalism; postmodernism is gentle and, in the domain of religion, focuses on relationships, love, shared tradition, integrity in discussion.

I really see myself in this passage as one of the ‘moderns’. I love the black and white, truth is truth, take it or leave it. But I see people around me, my age and younger, (especially those who did not grow up in the church) really resonating with the postmodern view. I see hunger for a spiritual experience, not just knowledge. And while yes, knowledge and truth are important, didn’t Jesus come to Earth so that we could have a relationship with God? This stuff challenges me, moves me from thinking about the importance of memorizing scripture to the necessity of living it. After all, what I know is not the sum of who I am.