Tag: Greco-Roman

Food for thought #6: A New Kind of Christianity

~ K ~ 6 Comments

The God Question

McLaren starts out this section by—what seems to me—as apologies for God’s atrocities:

Now, I am in no way interested in excusing or defending divine smiting, genocidal conquest, or global quasi-geocidal flooding; I’m just saying that even if these are the crimes of Elohim/LORD, they are far less serious crimes than those of Theos. (p. 99)

Then McLaren starts in on explaining how God isn’t actually violent but since people see God as violent, they act out how they see God. (Conversely, if we all saw God as loving, we’d all be loving to one another.) He uses an analogy of math concepts revealed in textbooks during the course of a person’s schooling as an example of how humans understand God: at first we learn very basic concepts since we are so immature but then we learn very complex concepts because humans have matured in their understanding of God. And as icing on the cake, McLaren takes a cheap (and distasteful) potshot at Christians who eat meat, subscribe to a just-war theory, and use fossil fuels. (For someone who talks a lot about being humble and mild-mannered, his snark and disdain for Christians who think differently than him is quite apparent in this book. I’ll admit, however, I am guilty of the same toward him now.)

The more I read McLaren’s theories, the more I cringe. The God of the Bible is loving, merciful, gracious, and slow to anger. But the God of the Bible is also a just, righteous, and jealous God. He is not McLaren’s caricature of a bloodthirsty “Theos” but McLaren’s happy-go-lucky description of Elohim is neither the full picture. McLaren often attacks Christians in his book, painting them as fundamental extremists or right-wing Republicans. It’s like saying all Democrats are treehuggers. It’s tough to be open-minded to other people’s opinions or “new” ideas when they brand you with a scarlet letter just for identifying yourself with the same religious group. I am neither a fundamental extremist nor a right-wing Republican yet McLaren often makes me feel as though my view of the Bible makes me part of that group. He couldn’t be more wrong.

I’m easily getting tired of McLaren now. He worries that Christians will use the story of the flood (Noah) to justify genocide [insert eyeroll here] then comes up with this:

Yes, I find a character named God who sends a flood that destroys all humanity except for Noah’s family, but that’s trivial compared to a deity who tortures the greater part of humanity forever in infinite eternal conscious torment, three words that need to be read slowly and thoughtfully to feel their full import. (Endnote: For this reason, I would grimly prefer atheism to be true than for the Greco-Roman Theos narrative to be true. And for this reason, I joyfully celebrate the narrative centered in Jesus as a better alternative to both.) (p. 99, 272)

[insert facepalm here] The ironic thing about the “narrative centered in Jesus” was that Jesus is the one who introduced the concept of hell, or “eternal conscious torment,” as we know it today. What Bible is McLaren reading? (Is he reading one at all?) Continue reading “Food for thought #6: A New Kind of Christianity” →

Food for thought #3: A New Kind of Christianity

~ K ~ 3 Comments

“What is the overarching story line of the Bible?” McLaren asks. His response, which really comes across as more of an authoritative answer in some areas, is that current Christianity reads the Bible through the lens of an Aristotelian-Platonic universe. He calls it a Greco-Roman story line where Christians see God as something akin to Zeus or Jupiter—a perfect heavenly being that is ready to strike down flawed creatures on a whim—and if certain creatures never reach the Platonic ideal of heaven then they are sent down to a Greek Hades, a hell, “imagery misappropriated from Jesus’ parables and sermons.” (p. 44)

McLaren may have a point. Perhaps Christians read the Bible through the lens of this Greco-Roman narrative, but it’s worth pointing out that Jesus’ story developed within a Roman context. (Pilate? Caesar, anyone?) And that the New Testament was written in Greek. As a result, I disagree with McLaren that this Greco-Roman narrative is necessarily bad. Instead, I argue that the Greco-Roman narrative provides a form of context as a result of being influenced by the Roman Empire and the original language of the New Testament. This influence is inescapable.

McLaren also makes the point that we should read the Bible for the Judaic narrative that it is—as Jesus would have read it. That is a fair and valid point as well. Therein lies the challenge: reading the Bible for what it is without inserting a post-Jesus historical lens (ie, reading the Bible through a post-Reformation lens or a post-Council of Trent lens).