Post Series
Introduction
Reimagining Christian Religious Identity (Part 1: The Crisis of Christian Identity)
Reformulating Christian Doctrine (Part 2: The Doctrinal Challenge–1)
Reformulating Christian Doctrine (Part 2: The Doctrinal Challenge–2)
Reconstructing Christian Practices (Part 3: The Liturgical Challenge)
Redefining Christian mission (Part 4: The Missional Challenge)
This post is the second in a series examining the ideas in Brian McLaren’s newest book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World
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The singular goal in McLaren’s book is to rethink Christian identity in a multi-faith world. In so rethinking, McLaren insists that we (mostly conservative evangelical Christians, McLaren’s favorite whipping boy) need a strong-benevolent Christian identity, a so-called “third way” Christian identity that is both strong—“vigorous, vital, durable, motivating, faithful, attractive, and defining” (10)—and kind—“something far more robust than mere tolerance, political correctness, or coexistence,” but rather “benevolent, hospitable, accepting, interested, and loving…seeking to understand and appreciate their religion from their point of view.” (10-11) His writing on this issue of Christian religious identity flows from his personal experience with a problematic syndrome he calls CRIS.
McLaren insists Christians like him have a problem: They suffer from so-called “Conflicted Religious Identity Syndrome (CRIS).” This condition afflicts people like him who are “seeking a way of being Christian that makes you more hospitable, not more hostile…more loving, not more judgmental…more like Christ and less like many churchgoers you have met.” (15) The word hostile is an important piece to McLaren’s argument for reimagining Christian religious identity in a multi-faith world, as it allows him to pit hospitable Christians like him against so-called hostile Christians like conservative evangelicals.
Key to McLaren’s reimagining efforts is painting conservative Christians, who care that their non-Christian neighbors place their faith in Jesus Christ, as having “a strong identity characterized by strong hostility toward non-christians.” (41) He contends that such an identity, rooted in hostility and oppositionalism, “values us as inherently more human, more holy, more acceptable, more pure, or more worthy than them…Our root problem is the hostility that we often employ to make and keep our identities strong.” (63) Thus, McLaren is pleading with traditional Christians to become less hostile, (44) to leave behind “an oppositional religious identity that derives strength from hostility.” (57) Religious hostility is a potent rhetorical device that McLaren uses throughout to paint his opponents as hateful monsters. It is derived, however, from an unfair caricature of fair-minded, concerned Christians who long for their friends and neighbors of other religions to find salvation through Jesus Christ, which the Bible and Church have insisted on for two millennia.
In response to the hostility of traditional Christians, Mclaren argues for a different posture: He wants them to replace their hostility with solidarity, which he urges in the final of ten questions testing ones Christian identity:
“My understanding of Jesus and his message leads me to see each faith tradition including my own, as having its own history, value, strengths, and weaknesses. I seek to affirm and celebrate all that is good in each faith tradition, and I build intentional relationships of mutual sharing and respectful collaboration with people of all faith traditions, so all our faiths can keep growing and contributing to God’s will being done on earth as in heaven.” (69)
Note several assumptions in this push for solidarity: Christianity is simply one faith option among several legitimate “faith communities;” every religious tradition is good and legitimate; Jesus Himself and His message apparently leads us to affirm and celebrate the good in other religions; every religion contributes to God’s will unfolding on earth, every faith contributes to the Kingdom of God advancing. McLaren insists it is possible to accept people of other faiths “with the religion they love,” (32) because there is something good that shines in every religion.
Not only is McLaren’s main thesis problematic from the perspective of Scripture—the Bible is clear there is only one true God, Jesus Christ, and all else are false gods—it is problematic in that his starting place of Christian identity is a false definition of our position in the first place. We are not interested in converting people from one religious identity to our Christian identity, from another religion to Christianity, as McLaren claims. (31) The Church’s mission has always been for people to give their life and lifestyle to Jesus Christ as Lord and Rescuer, to place their faith in Him. Christianity or a Christian religious identity has never been the point. Jesus is the point, and faith in Him as Lord and Savior is the point and everything that comes along with that faith—release from the bondage of sin, freedom from the oppression of shame and guilt, salvation from death. Again, Christianity has never been the point. Jesus Christ as the only one true God who is humanity’s only hope for rescue is.
Furthermore, McLaren’s assumptions regarding Christian identity also play into his broader views of religion. It seems clear that he believes every religion, or every so-called “faith tradition,” is valid, legitimate, and good. Every faith has strengths and every faith has weaknesses. Thus, McLaren calls on traditional Christians to shed our hostile identity and instead walk in solidarity with our fellow brothers and sisters in faith—regardless of the particulars of that faith. But here’s the problem, well several problems, actually: McLaren’s optimistic, rosy-glass view of religious harmony is misguided; religion itself is a social construct; the whole Holy Scriptures make clear there is only one true God, and all other gods are false; and there is one way to become right with that one true God.
First, McLaren’s rosy-glass view of religious harmony is misguided because every religion makes exclusive claims. I found it remarkable that McLaren seemed to downplay and even dismiss the reality that every religion makes exclusive claims, ones that tend to negate other religious claims. This is Comparative Religion 101, here. Islam declares there is only one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger, implying that beliefs about all other claims to deity, like those by Christians about Jesus, are false. In fact, Muslims make the explicit claim that Jesus is merely one prophet among many, beginning with Adam, the first Muslim, and ending with Muhammed who was the last and greatest. Buddhism is complicated because of its history, but generally Buddhists have a view of God, among other things, that conflicts with monotheists, or even polytheists. Though they don’t deny the existence of God, or multiple gods, per se, for Buddhists whether there are gods doesn’t matter because they have nothing to say about ultimate existence; only the Buddha has revealed the way beyond this existence. In Islam and Buddhism alone, McLaren’s thesis is negated, as oppositionalism—and, we could say, hostility—is built into these religions by nature of their own exclusive worldview claims.
Second, religion itself is a social construct. It is a way social beings organize themselves around a particular reality defining story—and subsequent beliefs regarding that story—in response to some religious affection. The idea that multiple religions exist is true insofar as humans themselves in socially coordinated efforts have constructed belief systems in response to what theological liberals have called a “feeling of absolute dependence,” or a feeling of dependence to a Higher Being. Such human affection and feeling does not validate a particular religious experience, only revelation can do that. Paul makes clear in Romans 1 that countless human societies know the only one true God, yet they’ve exchanged Him for “images,” for socially constructed religions. In the Bible these social constructs were known as Baal or Ashera of the Cannanites, the god Pharaoh of Egypt, or the “unknown god” of the Athenians. In our modern, multi-faith world these social constructs are known as Allah or Buddha or Krishna. The only true revelation humans have ever had regarding a “Higher Being” is the Holy Scripture, which reveals a very particular God: Jesus Christ. And that revelation insists that faith in Him is the only “religious” experience that is real, while all other human experiences we define as religious are fake.
Third, as previously mentioned, the Holy Scripture makes it clear that there is only one true God. The church has always understood that one true God as Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit. This does not mean God is three gods in one, but rather three persons with one essence. This God is not the same god worshiped by Islam, Buddhism, or even Judaism. And any attempt to blur the distinction between these fake gods and the only one true God of the Bible is nothing short of idolatry. The Shema of Deuteronomy makes this clear: “Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” And Paul does, too, when he address a situation in the Church of Corinth with food sacrificed to idols. He quotes the Shema and then amends it, saying, “We know that ‘An idol is nothing at all in the world’ and that ‘There is no God but one.’ For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” (1 Cor 8) Here Paul makes clear that Jesus Christ is the only one true God. The ‘gods’ and ‘lords’ are mere social constructs, lies created by people in place of the true God.
Finally, the only revelation we’ve received from God Himself makes it clear there is one way to become right with this God: Rescue by grace through faith in Jesus. There is no other name under heaven by which a person can be saved (Acts 4). No one comes to the God the Father except through God the Son (John 14). There is but one God, the Father; there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live (1 Cor 8). Everybody is made right with God by His grace through the rescue that’s come by Christ Jesus, whom God presented as a sacrifice of atonement, to be received by faith (Romans 3). To teach anything else is false teaching; to suggest the Holy Scriptures teach anything else is heresy.
It would be bad enough if McLaren stopped his enterprise here at reimagining Christian identity, but he doesn’t. He takes it a step further by insisting we need to reformulate Christian doctrine itself, which is the topic of the next two posts.
