"A Generous Orthodoxy"

It is summer and I’ve been busy doing one of my favorite things: reading. Now, you may wonder what I did all year while I was in classes, and yes, I did lots and lots of reading, and I even enjoyed most of it. But now I am free from my classes and syllabi have been filed away. I now have these three precious months where I can look at my bookshelves and read books that I’ve been longing to read but simply haven’t had time for. I have an ever-growing list of books to read, and this summer I have made an ambitious list of 12 books to read. And I’ve already finished 2!

The first one I finished was “A Generous Orthodoxy” by Brian McLaren. I’ve written about McLaren before on this blog, who is a leader in the emergent church and loves to talk about how postmodernism is influencing the church. I know to some the idea that postmodernism might influence the church is synonymous with saying that there’s no such thing as truth and we might as well give up holding onto any concept of truth (pluralistic relativism). And sometimes, McLaren himself gets this brunt of these accusations, and for those who read “A Generous Orthodoxy,” they’ll recognize that this is not what he’s promoting, but what he is promoting is relevant, beautiful, and engaging (both personally and culturally).

In the book, McLaren outlines why he is a Christian and then explores what he means by “generous orthodoxy.” Much attention is given to the difference between orthodoxy (right beliefs) and orthopraxy (right practice), and I couldn’t agree more with him on this (can you truly have one without the other?). I especially appreciated McLaren’s efforts to strike down some of the dividing lines between sects within the Christian faith (Catholics, Methodists, Anabaptists, Mystics, Liberals/Conservatives…) and finds aspects in each which add a unique light. I think of it as a stained-glass window, where no one piece has the whole picture (this isn’t an oil painting), and in fact, one piece of glass removed from the overall window simply looks like a piece of colored glass that is found on the beach. But when all of these pieces of glass are brought together, well now, that’s something immensely more beautiful and profound. In a lot of ways, I think the Church is like that. (If you want to continue with the symbolism, you could emphasize that any stained-glass window needs light to reach the apex of its beauty, and this light is Jesus Christ that must permeate through each separate pane of glass…)

We always hear about how there is one body with many parts, and I’ve always heard this mentioned in regards to people’s gifts and roles within the church. I think it’s helpful to think of this as various congregations or groups or denominations as well, “so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to the others” (Romans 12:5). I find myself weary of those who fight so much for what they stand against, that they almost lose sight of what they stand for. At what point must it simply come back to loving God and loving others? McLaren says it this way: “Generous orthodoxy presumes that the divisions, though tragic, are superficial compared to Christianity’s deep, though often unappreciated, unity” (p. 222). (And yes, I recognize the danger the lurks when we become so free-loving in our orthodoxy that the faith leans towards that pluralistic relativism I mentioned earlier, but this is not what McLaren or I are talking about, and this is not what he means by “generous orthodoxy”.)

I’ve come a long way in my theological and spiritual thinking in the last several years, and for this I am so thankful. I probably thought I had a lot more answers a few years ago than I think I do now, but my faith has also grown in richness and appreciation. I found myself at a juxtaposition between conservative and liberal (or I might more aptly state: conservative vs. liberal) and felt like I must choose between the two (while thinking that all the true Christians would choose conservative). This didn’t make sense to me, and it still doesn’t. I haven’t chosen between the two, and I’m glad of that. There’s stuff on both sides that needs a looking at, and while I don’t have any real answers, I doubt any answer will lie in one group trying to prove they are right simply because they hate all the others. I sense myself starting to climb onto my soapbox now, so I’m going to stop writing and climb down before it gets too late. Thanks for reading.