Confronting Life After Doom with Resilience

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog are likely aware that I am a big “fan” of Brian McLaren. In a March 2017 blog post, I placed him on my list of “Ten Most Admired Contemporary Christians,” and he is on my list of “Top Ten” theologians and/or philosophers by whom I have been influenced.*¹

Beginning with McLaren’s book A New Kind of Christian (2002), the first of a trilogy that was significant theology written as novels, I have read many of McLaren’s fifteen sole-authored books and learned much from them.

In a March 2018 blog post, I made extensive reference to his 2006 book, The Secret Message of Jesus, in which he emphasized that the Kingdom of God is more about society than about individuals.*²

That emphasis on the Kingdom of God being primarily about human society in the present world rather than the heavenly realm where individuals are transported upon death is a major reason many contemporary conservative Christians do not regard McLaren highly.

Brian (b. 1956) first wrote about the growing global ecological crisis in Everything Must Change, his 2007 book which I finished reading in June 2008. I thought it was so significant that in 2020 I placed it on the list of my favorite non-fiction 21st-century books.*³

Since I don’t include more than one book by the same author in my list of favorite books, I have replaced McLaren’s previous books in the list just mentioned with Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart, which was published the middle of last month.

McLaren’s Life After Doom is essential reading for all of us who know about and care about the future of life on planet Earth. On the dust jacket, environmentalist Bill McKibben says this book is as “rich and thoughtful as all of Brian McLaren's work, but with a particular urgency!” I fully agree.

Early in “Welcome to Reality,” the second chapter, McLaren succinctly sets forth the diagnosis of the predicament he examines throughout the book: “Our global civilization as currently structured is unstable and unsustainable” (p. 23).

Some scientists and eco-theologians, especially William Catton, Jr., and Michael Dowd, have made this same diagnosis.*⁴ But this is the first time a major Christian writer has analyzed that predicament so thoroughly and so clearly—and with a pastor’s heart.

Throughout this challenging book, McLaren explores four possible scenarios for the years ahead. In the second chapter, he calls those scenarios 1) “Collapse Avoidance,” 2) “Collapse/Rebirth,” 3) “Collapse/Survival,” and 4) “Collapse/Extinction.”

Since it is clear that he thinks only the last three are feasible, at the end of the first chapter he warned his readers that the following chapter would be “rough sledding.” Then chapters three and four are “pastoral” in nature: he helps his readers face the fearful future in ways that are not debilitating.

How can/should we live life after doom? In the fourth/last part of his book, McLaren elucidates what he calls “a path of agile engagement.” Michael Dowd’s emphasis on “post doom, no gloom” provided helpful light for these dark times. McLaren’s last chapters are even more beneficial and encouraging.

In chapter 17, Brian repeatedly stresses that despite all the ugliness, “beauty abounds.” In the next chapter, he cites and heartily agrees with the words, “It is a magnificent thing to be alive in a moment that matters so much” (p. 224).

Chapter 19 emphasizes the need to live with the dream of the kingdom of God which is “not a destination after death: it is the higher, bigger, vaster, deeper way of life here and now” (p. 236).

The following chapter is “Find Your Light and Shine It.” If we do that, even in this time of doom, we can have “an abundant life, a meaningful life, abounding with beauty … whatever the future may hold” (p. 249).

“Whatever you do, it matters.” Those words (on p. 253) are the crux of McLaren's final chapter, which closes with 15 numbered paragraphs expounding that basic assertion.

So, even if we are—or because we are(!)—living life after doom, let’s live resiliently, not giving up, giving in, or giving out. Paraphrasing Maya Angelou, let’s do the best we can until we know better—and then, let’s do better!

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*¹ I first published that list in my book subtitled The Story of My Life from Birth until My 82^nd Birthday (2020).

*² That emphasis was also the title of  #7 in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2019).

*³ In the 2023 updated version of my life story book, I replaced McLaren’s 2007 book with Do I Stay Christian? which was published in 2022.

*⁴ In Appendix 1, McLaren lists what he considers the five best books dealing with “our predicament.” The first is William Catton’s Overshoot (1982)—and “The Most Important Book You’ve Never Read,” my 2/23/23 blog post, is about Catton’s book. Then McLaren gives Michael Dowd’s videos as the first of the five best video/audio resources. Many of you will remember that I have written about Dowd several times, the first being in my 1/25/22 blog post. McLaren mentions that Dowd was his friend who died while he (Brian) was writing this book.

 

What about Hell? In Memory of Jitsuo Morikawa

Most of you likely have never heard of Jitsuo Morikawa, a Japanese American who was born 110 years ago and died on July 20, 1987.

It was about 25 years before his death that I heard Morikawa speak for the first time—and the main thing I remember from that occasion is what he said about hell. 

Jitsuo Morikawa was born in British Columbia, Canada, in 1912. His Japanese parents were Buddhists, but when he was 16, Jitsuo became a Christian. After graduating from UCLA, he enrolled in The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS).

The year after graduating from SBTS in 1940, he was interned in a relocation center for Americans of Japanese ancestry. From 1944 to 1956 he was a pastor of the First Baptist Church in Chicago and then served for 19 years in the headquarters of the American Baptist Churches.

In 1976-77 Morikawa was the interim pastor of the prestigious Riverside Church in New York City, and I had the privilege of attending a Sunday morning service there and hearing him preach during that time.

Morikawa came back to SBTS to speak when I was a graduate student there. I don’t remember what his talk was about, but during the discussion that followed he was asked a question, or perhaps questioned, about hell.

I have never forgotten his response. He said that it was strange to him that so many Christians seemed to be disappointed and disapproving whenever he or anyone suggested that perhaps there was not a literal hell where non-Christians are punished forever.

Morikawa was questioned, and his views on hell were opposed, by many who heard him that evening, for, as was included in the revised Baptist Faith and Message in 1963, Southern Baptists generally believed that after death, “The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment.”

I have dealt with the issue of hell in two previous blog posts. The most recent was on Jan. 20, 2019. In that article, I raised a question that was similar to what I heard Morikawa say in the early 1960s:

Here is the biggest question of all: Why do conservative Christians get so upset with the idea that most of the people of the world—that is, all who do not trust in Jesus as their Savior—might not be punished in Hell for all eternity?

Then back in 2011, I made a blog post titled “Bell on Hell.” It was related to Rob Bell’s controversial book titled Love Wins. I encourage you to read that article (again).

Brian McLaren writes briefly about hell on pages 193-4 of his new book Do I Stay Christian? Hell, however, is the underlying theme of The Last Word and the Word After That (2005), the third volume of McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian trilogy.⁺⁺

The 17^th chapter of that book is called “Deconstructing Hell.” That chapter, and that book, and that trilogy are well worth reading with thoughtful consideration. It was reading those books that led me to become a firm “fan” of McLaren.

In his new book, McLaren speaks of “repurposing hell.” That means that he is thinking hell “is not a threat of divine retribution in the afterlife but a dire warning about the inevitable negative consequences of harmful behaviors in this life—like war, ecological overshoot, or gross economic inequality.”

Partly because of hearing what Morikawa said in the early 1960s, through the years I have questioned the traditional Christian belief about hell. And because of McLaren’s 2005 novel, I questioned that traditional position even more.

The first sentence of McLaren’s introduction to that book is straight to the point: “I believe that God is good.” And then in the 17^th chapter he has Casey, one of his characters, say that “if hell seems to have the last word, there’s got to be a word after that.”

Pastor Dan, the central character, asks her what that would be, and Casey says, “Grace . . . I think the last word is always grace” (p. 101).**

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⁺⁺ This month I have reread this book and (again) found it to be of great value. If any of you harbor troubling questions/doubts regarding the traditional (conservative) doctrine of hell, I encourage you to read this book (which is a serious theological book written in the form of a novel).

** I didn’t consciously remember those words when I wrote my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018), but the last chapter of that book is “#30  God’s First and Last Word Is Always Grace.”

Do I Stay Christian? Pondering McLaren’s New Book

In an appendix to the book that I wrote telling the story of my life up to my 82^nd birthday, I have several “top ten” lists, including one of “theologians and/or philosophers.” Although he is neither a professional theologian nor philosopher, the youngest person on that list is Brian McLaren (b. 1956).

Currently I am slightly revising and updating that book I wrote for my children and grandchildren, and I have just added McLaren’s 2022 book, Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned, to my list of top ten 21^st century non-fiction books. 

No, I am personally not considering giving up being a Christian. Neither do I include myself among the doubters or disillusioned, although I am often disappointed with how so many Christians have lived and are living.

But certainly there are many thoughtful people now who have already left Christianity or are seriously thinking of doing so. With my lifelong interest in Christian apologetics, I was most interested in seeing what McLaren would say to those who have left, or would like to leave, the Christian faith.

The book has three parts: the first is “No,” ten chapters giving reasons for not staying Christian. Part II is “Yes,” ten chapters giving reasons for staying, and Part III is “How.”

There is much of considerable value in McLaren’s book, but I am not attempting to review his book here or to summarize the wealth of ideas worth thoughtful consideration. (I have made a page containing some of McLaren’s important statements, which you can access here.)

The ninth reason McLaren gives for not staying a Christian is “Because of Christianity’s Great Wall of Bias (Constricted Intellectualism.”) Although he has brief paragraphs about seven other biases, in that ninth chapter he mainly considers the “confirmation bias,” and it is worth pondering.

“Confirmation bias names our brain’s tendency to reject anything that doesn’t fit in with our current understanding, paradigm, belief system, or worldview,” writes McLaren (p. 67). This bias, he contends, has skewed the thinking of many Christians about nuclear war and ecological crises.

Perhaps this is the reason Mommsen failed to deal with ecological overshoot, which I wrote about in my July 5 blog post.

Mommsen, the able editor of Plough Quarterly, certainly is not “guilty” of the errors of the conservative evangelicals who believe the (eminent) “second coming” of Jesus will take care of the problem of ecological overshoot (although they haven’t used that term).

As far as I know, Mommsen has not written about the “rapture,” which has been emphasized in much conservative Christian eschatology. nor does he write explicitly about the second coming of Jesus. ⁺⁺

But perhaps Mommsen’s belief in rather traditional ideas about God acting in “supernatural” ways to consummate the world as we know it, maybe even in the lifetime of people now living, is the reason he overlooks overshoot—and the same is likely true for most traditional Christian believers.

On the other hand, perhaps it is Mommsen’s belief in the Kingdom of God (KoG) that blocks his acknowledgment of overshoot.

Emphasis on the KoG has been a central emphasis of the Bruderhof from the beginning, although he/they have not committed the “liberal” error of thinking that if we just work hard enough, we humans can “bring in” the Kingdom of God on earth.

Perhaps “confirmation bias” of Mommsen and others, traditional and liberal, has prevented serious consideration of the collapse of the world as we know it.

That collapse is projected by scientists based on their investigation of facts rather than theological (or ideological) beliefs that would skew their thinking because of confirmation bias.

(Of course, scientists are also sometimes biased, but generally they are far quicker than religious believers to recognize and correct those biases.)

In his next-to-last chapter, McLaren begins a prayer for overcoming the confirmation bias with these words: “Source of all truth, help me to hunger for truth, even if it upsets, modifies, or overturns what I already think is true” (p. 210).

This is my prayer also.

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⁺⁺ My March 25, 2015, blog post was titled “Do You Believe in the Rapture?” and it has had more than 3,000 pageviews (!) as well as far more comments than usual.

** Some of you may be interested in watching (some or all of) a YouTube interview of McLaren and his book I have introduced above: Do I Stay Christian with Brian McLaren: One Question with Pastor Adam.

 

Overlooking Overshoot

As most of you know, I am a big admirer of the Christian group known as the Bruderhof and am a regular reader of Plough Quarterly, their excellent publication. However, I have both appreciation for and some serious questions about their Summer 2022 issue titled Hope in Apocalypse. 

“Hoping for Doomsday”

Peter Mommsen, the great-grandson of Eberhard Arnold (1913~82) who was the founder of the Bruderhof, is the able editor of Plough Quarterly. I have often been helpfully informed and challenged by his perceptive editorials.

I was dissatisfied, though, with his six-page editorial in the current issue of Plough. It is titled, “Hoping for Doomsday: The times are troubled. That’s why we need the promise of apocalypse.”

While Mommsen writes some about the possible disastrous effects of climate change, he seems to think that it is less a threat to humanity than the potential destruction of earthly life as we know it because of nuclear war.

After briefly looking at those two apocalyptic threats, he writes,

one day homo sapiens will go extinct, with or without our help through carbon emissions or nuclear war, and the game will be over. At least that is what current scientific models foretell. Perhaps it will be at the next round of global glaciation, predicted in a hundred millennia or so . . . .

What he goes on to say in that paragraph is what I learned in the 1960s. But, and this was my dissatisfaction, he makes no reference to what some scientists (and others) have said in recent years about ecological overshoot.

In passing, Mommsen does mention Don’t Look Up! the movie I wrote about in my Jan. 25 blog post (see here), but he makes no reference at all to the frightening phenomenon of overshoot.

Ecological overshoot occurs when human demands exceed what the earth’s biosphere can provide through its capacity for renewal. According to some ecological scientists, the industrial world is nearing the overshoot apex and will soon begin to collapse, an irreversible phenomenon.

For a good introduction to this matter, see Michael Dowd’s video Overshoot in a Nutshell: Understanding Our Predicament and also YouTube talks (such as this one) by William Rees, professor emeritus of British Columbia University. These articulate what some scientistic models are now foretelling.

(Rees, b. 1943, is primarily known for creating the ecological footprint concept. Wikipedia, here, gives a good, brief introduction to Rees and his academic work.)

Mommsen’s failure to make any reference to the concept of ecological overshoot and the work of thinkers such as Dowd and Rees is a major deficiency in his editorial.

Why is Overshoot Overlooked?

A main reason is doubtlessly unawareness. In spite of valiant efforts by Dowd, Rees, and others to warn us of the perils of overshoot/collapse, there is little public awareness of that real and present danger.

My “Google alert” for overshoot in recent weeks has yielded surprisingly few “hits.” There are some pertinent articles found at EcoWatch (such as here), but these important essays are read by relatively few people.

Most, I’m afraid, don’t know (and don’t care?) about what is likely to happen before the end of the present century.

But some are aware (to varying degrees) of overshoot but find the idea unbearable. Some who do know at least something about overshoot just don’t want to think about it, because it is too upsetting to consider.

Perhaps a major reason overshoot is overlooked by many, especially serious Christian thinkers such as Mommsen, is that the possibility of such is unthinkable.

Earlier this year, Brian McLaren’s new book Do I Stay Christian? was published. While he does not say a lot about overshoot, he does mention the concept and makes a passing reference to Michael Dowd.

The seventh chapter of McLaren’s scintillating book deals with “Christianity’s great wall of bias, which includes the “tendency to reject anything that doesn’t fit in with our current understanding, paradigm, belief system, or worldview” (p. 67).

Perhaps this helps us understand Mommsen’s lack of serious attention to overshoot.

Much more needs to be said about this—and I plan to write at least a little more about it soon.

TTT #29 We Should Always Go Easy on Judging Others—Or Ourselves

The bulk of this article is taken from the next to last chapter of my as yet unpublished book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT). The final section of that chapter is included here, but I encourage you to click this link and also read the first three sections of the chapter.

The Case for Kindness

Christians have not always been kind to one another. The Catholic inquisitions of the Middle Ages, in which people designated as heretics were hunted down and executed, are infamous. Enmity and strife between Protestants and Catholics existed from the beginning of the Reformation, and Protestants began killing other Protestants as early as 1527.

Although there have not been religious wars in this country, still among Christian denominations and even within national and local churches often there has been harshness, incivility, and unkindness.

All of this is woefully contradictory to a challenging Biblical admonition: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”

Instead of being tough-minded and tender-hearted, too many Christians have too often been tender-minded and hard-hearted.

One of my favorite contemporary Christian authors has written a book titled Generous Orthodoxy. That is a good emphasis when it comes to theology; Christian thinkers need to be accepting and magnanimous rather than being mean-spirited and unkind.

The same is true for Christian believers of all kinds—and for adherents of others religions as well—as we seek to live out our faith. We need to be generous and open-minded in our evaluation of others rather than being critical and judgmental.

In a recent translation, 1 Peter 3:8 admonishes, “Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions.” These are good words to consider, and hard words to put into practice consistently.

But when we are tempted to say, or even think, critical words about other people, we need to recall this injunction to be sympathetic, loving, and compassionate.

When I was a freshman in college, I bought a little book titled Everyday Religion. I profited from reading that book then as a young man and I found it delightfully helpful when I read through it again a few years ago.

The first chapter is “When We Really Live,” and I have remembered through the years how the author says that we really live when, among other things, we know how to be “a little kinder than necessary every day.”

So when we start to be harsh and judgmental in evaluation of others, or ourselves, let’s remember these words and try, indeed, to be a little kinder than necessary. If we can do that, we will find that everyone will be better off.  

Denouncing Anti-Semitism

Although not a part of the 29^th chapter of TTT, last Saturday’s mass murder of Jews in Pittsburgh prompts me to reflect on how Christians, among others, have often not been kind, to say the least, toward Jewish people.

Although religious differences are real—and important—nothing can justify mistreatment of other people because of their religion or ethnicity.

This article is being posted on the morning before Reformation Day, which commemorates the beginning of the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther. Sadly, though, Luther’s judgmental and condemnatory words about the Jewish people have had a lasting negative impact on many Protestant Christians.

Please join me in sending condolences to those who are grieving in Pittsburgh, in denouncing all forms of anti-Semitism, and in pledging to be as kind as possible to all people, regardless of their religion (or lack thereof) or ethnicity.

TTT #7 The Kingdom of God is More about Society than about Individuals

Consider with me one more article concerning the Kingdom of God before we move to a different topic in the next/eighth chapter of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT).

Who Is “You”?

Unlike many (most?) languages of the world, in English there is no difference between the singular and plural second person pronoun. That is, you can refer to one person or to two—or many more—people.

Partly for that reason, there has been some misunderstanding of the Bible for those who read it exclusively (or even primarily) in English. Despite being able after seminary to read the New Testament in Greek, to a degree, I usually just read the English translation for devotional use and even for sermon preparation before going to Japan.

As I began to prepare sermons in Japanese, however, over and over again I noticed that passages I had always thought of as speaking to individuals were, indeed, speaking to multiple people, to a community, for you was plural in Japanese just as it is in Greek.

“You” in the KoG

Western Christianity has usually placed far more emphasis on individuals than on society. Accordingly, individualistic interpretation of the Bible emphasizes that God loves me, Jesus died for me, I can be saved through faith in Jesus, and when I die I will go to Heaven.

To be sure, that is an important part of the Gospel message—but it is certainly not the only, or maybe in the larger scheme of things, the most important.

Emergent church leader Brian D. McLaren has importantly emphasized this point in recent years—but, unfortunately, many Christians don’t seem to have gotten the point yet.

One of McLaren’s books is The Secret Message of Jesus (2006). That “secret message” he elucidated shouldn’t have been so secret, for it was, after all, a central teaching of Jesus.

What was that teaching? It was primarily not about isolated individuals but about the kingdom of God, a new society populated by people who form a community of faith.  

“You” and the KoG Here and Now

Not only has the Western understanding of the kingdom of God often been individualistic, it has also often been other-worldly. By “other-worldly” I mean, of course, that it has been more about life after death rather than about life now on earth.

The “pie in the sky by and by” sort of thinking was used by some, and perhaps many, slaveholders in the nineteenth century to mollify their slaves. And to some degree, the same kind of thinking was utilized by white Christians to keep African Americans satisfied with their inferior status for a century, and more, following the end of the Civil War.

Martin Luther King, Jr., alludes to that sad situation in his powerful book Why We Can’t Wait (1963). He writes, “To the ministers I stressed the need for a social gospel to supplement the gospel of individual salvation.”

King says that he also rejected religion which “prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell.”

Throughout his book introduced above, McLaren emphasizes that "the secret message of Jesus isn’t primarily about ‘heaven after you die.’ It doesn’t give us an exit ramp or escape hatch from this world; rather it thrusts us back into the here and now so we can be part of God’s dreams for planet Earth coming true" (p. 183).

So surely, one of the true things that everyone needs to know now is that the kingdom of God is more about society than about individuals and is about now as well as the future.

Ten Most Admired Contemporary Christians

Who are the ten living, and still active, Christian speakers/writers that you admire/respect the most? Recently I began to think about that question, and now I am sharing my (tentative) list with you.

Please note that these are “professional” Christians who are currently active (or not completely retired). They are people who primarily speak to or write for a “popular” audience rather than to academia. Thus, none are full-time religion/theology professors.

(My list of the contemporary theologians/professors that I admire most would be quite different.)

One more brief caveat: my list is skewed a bit (but not much) by my desire to include some diversity. I didn’t want the list to be completely of white, male, Protestants like me.

So here is my list, presented in alphabetical order (by last name): 

WILLIAM BARBER (b. 1963)

Rev. Barber is perhaps the person on this list I have known about for the shortest time. I probably heard about him for the first time when working on my 9/30/13 blog article about the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. I have since seen him on several YouTube videos and then was impressed anew when I heard him deliver a powerful sermon in Kansas City last year. Here is the link to the blog article I wrote about him last September.

AMY BUTLER (b. c. 1970)

Rev. Butler has been pastor of the highly influential Riverside Church in New York City since 2014. I first met her when I visited a Sunday morning worship service at Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., in 2012 when she was pastor there, and I regularly see/read her perceptive op-ed articles. 

SIMONE CAMPBELL (b. 1945)

Widely known as “the nun on the bus,” Sister Simone is the executive director of NETWORK, a nonprofit Catholic social justice lobby. She was the subject of my 9/20/14 blog article (see here). 

TONY CAMPOLO (b. 1935)

Stimulating writer and extraordinarily good speaker, in my 2/18/15 blog article I called Campolo “one of my favorite people.” He is one I would have long had on a list such as this. 

SHANE CLAIBORNE (b. 1975)

The youngest person on this list, Claiborne is the author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (2006, 2016). He is a young man worth reading and listening to. 

POPE FRANCIS (b. 1936)

Perhaps this selection speaks for itself. 

JAMES FORBES (b. 1935)

A marvelous preacher and gentleman, I have long admired Rev. Forbes, who was pastor of Riverside Church in New York from 1989 to 2007. 

BRIAN McLAREN (b. 1956)

I have been an admirer of McLaren since I read his novel A New Kind of Christian (2001). Then in 2008 I marked that the best theology book I had read that year was his Everything Must Change (2007). As a primary leader of the emergent church movement, he is a very significant contemporary Christian leader. 

JIM WALLIS (b. 1948)

Founder, president, and CEO of Sojourners and editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, I have been an admirer of Wallis since the early 1970s—and have written about him and his early activities in this article on another blogsite. 

PHILIP YANCEY (b. 1949)

I have personally met or seen/heard all of the above persons—except for Pope Francis, for obvious reasons. But I have never met Yancey; however, I have read, and been impressed by, several of his books. I especially recommend What’s So Amazing about Grace? (1997) and Soul Survivor (2001).

Since these are contemporary Christians that I most admire, I have also learned from them--and my faith has grown, I believe, because of them. 

Who's on your list?

Growing in the Faith

Is your religious faith, or lack thereof, the same now as it was, say, when you were twenty years old, or (for you mature adults) when you were forty years old? If not, how would you explain the difference? Is the difference due to growth or stagnation?

CONSIDERING A QUESTION

One of my church friends, who fairly recently became a Thinking Friend, is a young woman who had strong ties to Southern Baptists while growing up. Her family still has close ties with the Southern Baptist Convention: her sister, for example, is currently a student at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary here in Kansas City.

My friend, who is an activist and quite “liberal” in her social views, knows that I was a Southern Baptist for most of my life but that I now largely agree with her and share most of her “liberal” social views.

A few weeks ago my friend asked, “What caused you to change?”

My answer: “I would like to think it has been the result of growing in the faith.”

Indeed, I do think that—but I realize that there are others who knew me “back then” who would have a different assessment. They would likely explain my change as being due to abandoning the faith—at least the faith as was known and practiced by most Southern Baptists in the 1950s and by many SBs still.

CONSIDERING AREAS OF CHANGE/GROWTH

Two of the main areas in which I believe I have experienced change/growth in faith are (1) change from an exclusivistic view of God and God’s relationship to the people of the world to much more inclusivistic view, and (2) change from a predominantly other-worldly view of life to an equally dominant, if even not more prominent, this-worldly emphasis .

Perhaps reading J.B. Phillips’s Your God Is Too Small (1953), during my first year of college started me growing toward a view of God that was broader, more inclusive than what I had grown up thinking/believing.

Back in 2015, I ended my Oct. 15 blog article with these words:

Without question, Christianity has often held to an exclusivism that has been divisive and restrictive. But a deeper understanding moves one from exclusion to inclusion and from restriction to expansion. – Maturing in faith impels a person to move from the us/them mentality of childhood to including “others” as a part of an inclusive circle of “we.”

Then, consistent with the evangelicalism/revivalism that I was nurtured in and embraced well into my 30s, the overwhelmingly important mission of the Christian faith, I thought, was “saving souls” for life after death, for Heaven. That is an “other-worldly” emphasis that many of you readily recognize.

But gradually I came to understand that human life and well-being in this world is of great importance--and, in fact, the Kingdom of God is as much about, or even more about, God’s desired reign now rather than after the “end of the world.” 

CONSIDERING EXAMPLES

Some of the contemporary Christians I admire the most, and by whom I have been influenced, have a story similar to mine. They also moved from a narrow, fundamentalistic type of Christianity toward a broader, socially “liberal” position on many issues.

Three good examples are Jim Wallis, Philip Yancey, and Brian McLaren—three “mature adults” in their 60s. I must write more about these three: to this point in my blog articles, I have “labeled” Wallis twice, Yancey once (here on 10/5/16), and McLaren not even once.

First, though, I plan to write about the ten Christian speakers/writers whom I admire most—and who have helped nurture my growth in the faith.