Review of Brian McLaren's new book

Book review of Why did Jesus, Moses, The Buddha and Mohammed cross the road? : Christian Identity in a Multi-faith World by Brian D. McLaren (2012).  Hodder and Stoughton.

Why did Jesus, Moses, The Buddha and Mohammed cross the road?  As Brian McLaren points out, this is a question he only dares ask because his faith in Christ frees him from fear of reprisal from ‘our’ heavenly Father.  McLaren conjectures, whether Jesus, Moses, The Buddha and Mohammed would cross the road to meet?  If so, what would they discuss? He also challenges the exclusivity of ‘our’ concept of God.  Do we allow ‘our Father’, the god of Israel, to also be the maker of all people, all creation, spanning countless millennia?

McLaren, a pastor from Washington DC and regular speaker at the Greenbelt Arts festival, is a theologian who is interested in the practicality of ‘imitating Christ’ in our multicultural world.  He suggests that this must be driven by love if our witness is to be at all effective, and invents a new word, ‘with-ness’, to describe how we do this.  Conditional friendships (I want you to change to be like me) are always likely to be strained. McLaren suggests we are able to ‘square this circle’ without watering down our faith and theology through what he calls ‘strong benevolence’.   McLaren suggests that our religion has been tainted over the centuries with supremacy ideology, from the point when Christianity moved from persecuted, to persecutor.  He feels our need for ‘de-bugging’ that which is not of Christ within us, is similar to our hearts desire for all people of other faiths and none.  In this way, our approach is one of seeing blessing from contact with others, both within our tradition, and without, where the Holy Spirit’s work can transform all through the experience.

McLaren characterizes the churches approach to multi-faith witness as creating a dissonance between ‘intelligence on ice’ and ‘ignorance on fire’.  He hopes we can find a middle way, based on imitating Christ.  I for one am with him.

Andrew Starr

Member of the Leicester Muslim-Christian Forum

Excerpts from Peter's Diary 1978

Forgive me Peter.
(If you click on a picture, you get a slideshow)

Playing Star Wars with Angus (!)

25th July - Ilkley- Visiting Kingsman Family

28th July Visit from Forrest Family caption

30th July Arrival of Arpee Family

31st July Description of Arpee Children

1st August Visit to Oasis Swindon

2nd August Arpee's leave and Sara and Matthew arrive

4th August Stunt Kite flying with Adrian and Pauline

27th August Angus arrives- News of a nameless Theo

8th September Dad goes to Libya

9th September Frances tries opium

10th September Frances is a road block

The End

More Like Me

Here is Elizabeth's short story for the Leicester Children's Arts Festival called The Spark.

Ty Coch

Beautiful Ty Coch

View of the Bridge

Memorial to Spanish Sailers in Barmouth

Contrasting Neighbours

Andrew with his girls

The Parents

Margaret in her natural element

View of Cadair Idris Summit

Interesting fellow

 In the Rhinogs

Harlech castle

Roman Steps

Neighbours nip through the wall

View of the picture painted by Eric Reed that we have in our hall

And another picture by Eric

Fireworks?

The end

Signs of the Times

Coming home recently, I noticed road works on my usual route were now clear.  The road had been closed for some time to bury a large pipe, part of the Leicester communal heating system.

I was intrigued to see a small area of yellow hatching on the road, covering the route of the new pipe.  I realised that this was replacement paint for the 'yellow box' road markings at a junction, indicating that cars should never stop in this area.  Most of the old paint had worn away, but the new paint stood out with beautiful irrelevance.

It struck me that this was a good example of 'jobs worth'.  A excellent job that would mean nothing without the complete whole.  It would have been better not to waste the effort at all, and wait for the whole thing to be repainted.

What an apposite metaphor for what I see going on to services I work in, I thought.

In particular:

• Services that need to work together to meet families' needs now seem to be working in opposition to each other, attempting to strengthen their position and security.

• The youth counselling service I support is having it's funding cut by the local authority.  The Health commissioners refuse to pick up the tab, despite having a massive underspend, because their needs analysis does not indicate that counselling is needed.  This is because it currently being provided.  When the evidence does materialise, the service will be gone, and of course, very costly to resurrect. 

My cynicism was illustrated by some wonderful questions I heard asked at my NHS Trust's AGM.  Our CEO gave a slick presentation, starting with how proud he was of the Trust's complaints record.  Very few people had complained it seems.  It struck me that as the majority of our clients have severe mental health problems, this meant nothing.  After all, Saddam Hussain was elected on 99% of the vote.  Complaints may in fact indicate our client group feeling more empowered.  They have a lot to complain about after all.

At the end of his talk the CEO opened the discussion to questions from the floor.  A number of service users were present.  One reported that she found it very difficult to see her doctor, and "what was the Trust going to do about this?"  I enjoyed seeing the sense of relief on our Chief's face as he told her that our Trust had no responsibility over GP's.  The questioner persisted  saying "ah but because she couldn't see her GP, she was forced to go to the area 'walk in' centre", which our Trust does run.

Our Chief had to come up with something about 'the NHS being seamless, and of course we needed GP's to be able to offer timely appointments, and how services are all interdependent.'  I don't think anybody believed him.

The Great Sayings of My Mother

• The only mistake is one from which nothing is learnt.
• The ability to postpone the gratification of desire is a sign of maturity.
• It's a very fiable fact. Look it up!
• Deaf in one ear, and cannot hear with the other.
• Eyes have they, and see not.
• Only boring people get bored!
• May you be forgiven!
• Never let me hear you say that again!

Christ without the New Testament

Our preacher started a recent sermon by saying,

"Most academics, and rational people believe Jesus existed, and think of him as 'a good man'.  But Jesus can not have just been a good man. If what is recorded about what he said is correct, he was either divine, or a bad man."

This is a true saying, except that for many hundreds of years, Muslims have contented that Jesus was a prophet of Allah, whose words were twisted and misrepresented by later Christians.  Therefore the New Testament record can not be trusted.  (Shabir Ally actually argues that the biblical account is true, just misinterpreted by Christians. See http://www.islam-guide.com/ch3-10-1.htm)

There are many arguments to challenge this perspective.  Biblical texts were distributed far and wide across the middle East and Egypt.  (See 'A New Eusebius' for English translations of these documents.)  For the biblical record to be uniformly changed this would have taken a concerted effort from a significant power, (such as Constantine.)  There would certainly have been some record of this change in the history of theology, just as there has been for schisms and argument throughout time.  The minutes of a number of councils, drawing theologians from across the known world, to define the biblical cannon, are well documented.  These meetings were known to be very conservative, and the main drive was to chuck out anything that did not feel to be authentic, even if it was felt to be edifying.  There was a great suspicion of 'new doctrine'.

However, if we are to define Christ as divine avoiding the arguments about New Testament texts being altered, then we have to use the Jewish texts, which no one argues have been changed, because they are guarded and protected by the Jewish people.

James Dunn's book 'Did the first Christians worship Jesus' addresses this subject.  Did they see Jesus, in the way believers do today?  Early Christians did not have the New Testament that we have.  They will have continued to use the Torah as their main spiritual source book.  Dunn concludes the introduction by saying
"What I hope will become apparent is that the first Christians did not see worship of Jesus as an alternative to worship of God.  Rather, it was a way of worshipping God.  That is to say, worship of Jesus is only possible or acceptable within what is now understood to be a Trinitarian framework.  Worship of Jesus that is not worship of God through Jesus, or, more completely, worship of God through Jesus and in the Spirit, is not Christian worship." page 6.

Many verses in the Torah describe the 'Son of Man', or Messiah.  Daniel makes it clear that the Son of Man is to be worshipped.

Daniel 7: 13-14
I saw what looked like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven,
and he was presented to the Eternal God.
He was crowned king and given power and glory,
So that all the people of every nation and race would serve him.
He will rule for ever, and his kingdom is eternal,
never to be destroyed.

Psalm 110:1 says
The Lord said to my Lord,
Sit at my right side,
until I make your enemies into a footstool for you.

In Matthew 22 Jesus acknowledges with the Pharisees that this prophecy refers to the Messiah.

Mark Roberts, in his blog (linked below), argues that the clearest evidence that 'Jesus', the Messiah is divine  is that throughout the old Testament, God explains to Israel that He himself will rectify the disaster brought on the human race by evil.  This is the meaning, in the otherwise cruel story, of Abraham attempting to sacrifice Isaac.

I agree that this, above all reasons, is the greatest reason to believe that Jesus is one with the Father.

My own father once explained to me, after I asked him why Jesus had not been more explicit about his divinity, saying something like this:
"Jesus didn't make it straight forward.  You are forced to have to work it out.  Like with his disciples, it only starts to make sense when you get to know him."

Then Jesus asked the disciples, "Why can't you understand? How can you be so slow to believe all that the prophets said?  Didn't you know that the Messiah would have to suffer before he was given his glory?  Jesus then explained everything written about himself in the scriptures, beginning with the Law of Moses and the Books of the Prophets."
...At once they knew who he was, but he disappeared. They said to each other, "When he talked to us along the road and explained the scriptures to us, didn't it warm or hearts?" Luke 24:23

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(Rev. Mark Roberts explains why he believes that early Christians believed Jesus to be divine, and that this was not just an extension of Graeco-Roman belief systems.  See http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markdroberts/series/was-jesus-divine/)

Weekend Camping with my Girls

It started with a suggestion from Charlie, Sophie and Ben, joined in by Dave and his kids.  It ended with a wonderful weekend for three in the Peak District, under a modern equivalent of canvas.  

Upper Hurst Farm, near Hartington.

Ready to explore the Peak District

Crossing the Dove at Wolfscote Dale

View of Wolfscote Dale

We entered a cave into the Limestone cliff, using the light from my mobile phone.

This is the path to Hartington, where rattiness was dispelled by Tea and cake.

One of Joanna's artistic shots

The lowering sun hits the autumnal trees

I smile like my Uncle David, Liz smiles like her cousin Emre

Another Joanna shot

We woke in a cloud of fog. This is the inside of the tent

Morning fog normally means bright sunshine is coming

Climbing Ecton Hill, overlooking the Manifold Valley

End of the road.  Time to return to Leicester