Book Review: A Generous Orthodoxy Part 14 of ?? With Graphic!
Biblical - (narrative)
McLaren writes, "The more I learn from Jesus, the more I cringe when I read passages in Exodus or Joshua where the God of love and universal compassion to whom Jesus has introduced me allegedly commands what today would be called brutality, chauvinism, ethnic cleansing, or holocaust."
These commands jump out to some of McLaren's non-Christian friends, and they wonder how a "nice guy" like him could be so excited over what seems to them to be a "barbaric" book. He tries to point out to them that the problem isn't the Bible, but with modern interpretive approaches towards it.
McLaren's idea is that we need to reclaim the Bible as narrative. The Bible is not "a look-it-up encyclopedia of timeless moral truths, but the unfolding narrative of God at work in a violent, sinful world, calling people, beginning with Abraham into a new way of life." The idea here is that history is real and not "a chess game in which God plays both sides." Therefore if God wants to enter into a relationship with people, He has to work with them where they're at in their "individual and cultural moral development."
This is perhaps why God ordered the Israelites to destroy Canaan, as a wandering tribe in the Bronze Age; they didn’t really have a whole lot of choice if they were to survive. It's interesting to note that while God was commanding the Israelites to conquer Canaan, He also gave them laws that would make them a nation that would be ethically a step above other nations (commands to treat neighbors and aliens with kindness). Later, Jesus came and basically bumped the ethical level up another notch (love even your enemies, etc.). McLaren writes that perhaps Jesus' teaching couldn't come until the earlier step in ethics had been taken.
McLaren gives a hypothetical example of this type of ethical improvement. What if a thousand years from now people look back at this time and consider it the most destructive in history (with it's fossil fuel pollution, destruction of rain forests, wars, etc.)? Might people think that God's blessing on us was a sign of approval of our actions? McLaren's idea is that it isn't; rather, it is something like God working with us where we're at, just like God did with the Israelites.
This graphic might help (my poor reproduction of a graphic in the book):
Things that might have been acceptable for the Israelites aren't necessarily acceptable for us today, because we have a higher ethical standard. I think this is interesting, because in some ways, we really do have a more ethical society (for instance, no slavery in many places), but some people see ethics only as getting worse. Abuses of Jesus' ethical standard, for example some of the negative aspects of the colonial period (which saw exploitation of native peoples by Western powers), were/are in some ways a return to the lower ethical standard the Israelites had (which isn't good of course).
McLaren writes, "The more I learn from Jesus, the more I cringe when I read passages in Exodus or Joshua where the God of love and universal compassion to whom Jesus has introduced me allegedly commands what today would be called brutality, chauvinism, ethnic cleansing, or holocaust."
These commands jump out to some of McLaren's non-Christian friends, and they wonder how a "nice guy" like him could be so excited over what seems to them to be a "barbaric" book. He tries to point out to them that the problem isn't the Bible, but with modern interpretive approaches towards it.
McLaren's idea is that we need to reclaim the Bible as narrative. The Bible is not "a look-it-up encyclopedia of timeless moral truths, but the unfolding narrative of God at work in a violent, sinful world, calling people, beginning with Abraham into a new way of life." The idea here is that history is real and not "a chess game in which God plays both sides." Therefore if God wants to enter into a relationship with people, He has to work with them where they're at in their "individual and cultural moral development."
This is perhaps why God ordered the Israelites to destroy Canaan, as a wandering tribe in the Bronze Age; they didn’t really have a whole lot of choice if they were to survive. It's interesting to note that while God was commanding the Israelites to conquer Canaan, He also gave them laws that would make them a nation that would be ethically a step above other nations (commands to treat neighbors and aliens with kindness). Later, Jesus came and basically bumped the ethical level up another notch (love even your enemies, etc.). McLaren writes that perhaps Jesus' teaching couldn't come until the earlier step in ethics had been taken.
McLaren gives a hypothetical example of this type of ethical improvement. What if a thousand years from now people look back at this time and consider it the most destructive in history (with it's fossil fuel pollution, destruction of rain forests, wars, etc.)? Might people think that God's blessing on us was a sign of approval of our actions? McLaren's idea is that it isn't; rather, it is something like God working with us where we're at, just like God did with the Israelites.
This graphic might help (my poor reproduction of a graphic in the book):
Things that might have been acceptable for the Israelites aren't necessarily acceptable for us today, because we have a higher ethical standard. I think this is interesting, because in some ways, we really do have a more ethical society (for instance, no slavery in many places), but some people see ethics only as getting worse. Abuses of Jesus' ethical standard, for example some of the negative aspects of the colonial period (which saw exploitation of native peoples by Western powers), were/are in some ways a return to the lower ethical standard the Israelites had (which isn't good of course).
posted by Freethinker at 11:31:00 AM
3 Comments:
Well, i've finally read all of your stuff. It's been a pretty interesting review. i've found it more fair to McLaren's beliefs than the reviews over at challies.
Thanks, I'm just trying to summarize the views expressed in the book the best I can.
I think I can treat views I disagree with alot more fairly then some people can, although to be fair, I haven't disagreed with very much of what I have reviewed from McLaren's book so far.
Lol, I just noticed the green underlining.
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