(My apologies for the delayed post …)

A not-quite-new villain for Biblical Christianity is getting newer criticisms because of his newest book, A New Kind of Christianity. And though I haven’t read that book, by Brian McLaren, myself, that criticism seems well-deserved.

Tim Challies, the sort-of “spokesperson” for “young, restless and Reformed” bloggers, was among the first online critics. His review is not as detailed as others, and I wish he had rebutted McLaren’s ideas and mostly his likely basis of thought (though other reviewers have done this well). But Challies does summarized his thoughts most effectively:

It wasn’t too long ago that I wrote about Brian McLaren and got in trouble. Reflecting on seeing him speak at a nearby church, I suggested that he appears to love Jesus but hate God. Based on immediate and furious reaction, I quickly retracted that statement. I should not have done so. I believed it then and I believe it now. And if it was true then, how much more true is it upon the release of his latest tome A New Kind of Christianity. In this book we finally see where McLaren’s journey has taken him; it has taken him into outright, rank, unapologetic apostasy. He hates God. Period.

[. . . ] And swarms of Christians are looking at him with admiration and saying, “See how that guy loves God?” I don’t know what McLaren could do to make the situation more clear. In fact, his book is nearly indistinguishable from many of the de-conversion narratives that are all the rage today.

Author and pastor Kevin DeYoung runs down McLaren’s work in a more-gentle, yet certainly not less critical style. He split his reviews into two parts, an introduction and a much lengthier rebuttal of each chapter. He concluded there isn’t much “new” about this kind of Christianity. It’s been-there-done-that liberalism, not well defended, and not Biblical.

The message of McLarenism is pretty simple: God is love and wants everyone to be kind and inclusive and care for the poor and the environment. This is what Jesus was like, and we should be like Jesus. This is, of course, not wrong in so far as it goes. The Liberal/McLaren emphasis on the kingdom is right, their concern for the “other” is right, much of their ethics is right. But McLarenism, like liberalism, cannot be right. It has its emphases all out of proportion, its right statements thrown out of whack by all that is missing. In McLarenism there is no original sin, no wrath, no hell, no creation-fall-redemption, no definite future, no second coming that I can see, no clear statement on the deity of Christ, no mention of vicarious substitution or God’s holiness or divine sovereignty, no ethical demands except as they relate to being kind to others, no God-offendedness, no doctrine of justification, no unchanging apostolic deposit of truth, no absolute submission to the word of God, nary a mention of faith and worship, no doctrine of regeneration, no evangelistic impulse to save the lost, and nothing about God’s passion for his glory. This is surely a lot to leave out.

Professor Mike Wittmer (author of Don’t Stop Believing) also took McLaren to task for leaving out essential doctrines of the Gospel, and, like many before him, substituting liberal moralism in its place while claiming to be persecuted.

[T]his debate about the Christian faith—which he and his friends started—is not a personality contest.  You can’t dismiss what Christians have always believed and then expect a free pass because you’re likeable.  And just below the surface of Brian’s humble, can’t-we-all-just-get-along vibe is an accusatory tone that repeatedly compares his critics to a religious Gestapo whose leaders defend their conservative beliefs because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

That doesn’t sound like me.  I am an easy-going guy who just wants to love Jesus.  But to love Jesus, I have to know and believe something about him.  Jesus is not an elastic symbol for whatever we happen to value (e.g., inclusive love), but is an actual person who can be known, trusted, and loved.

Perhaps sometime I will read the book myself. But mostly I do prefer reading books that seek Biblical balance.

McLaren’s rejection of not just church traditions, but Biblical truth, prevents him from falling in that category. The Biblical truths he rejects are things as central to Christianity as Christ dying for sinners, and the fact that God is moving His universe, and redemptive history, to a conclusion: the New Heavens and New Earth for God’s people.

What is truly loving and humble is proclaiming this message and acting accordingly. And unfortunately, it is so unloving and arrogant to proclaim that some “new” Christianity must replace this.

What I’ve found most sad is this: from all the material online that I have read from him, and especially his defenders, there would be nothing for this “new” Christianity to do once all the bad guys are gone. McLaren and other “emergent” advocates rant a lot about how intolerant Christians have been before. What would they do in a perfect After-world (assuming they make it there) when God has already dealt with all the real-life villains on Earth, and there’s no longer any Social Justice to do?

Perhaps the best reaction of God’s people is not to be outraged at McLaren and others, but to pity them. They have no positive delight in the God of truth and Grace to live for and love. They have only villains to shoot at. We shoot back, of course, but for the glory of God and the truth of His Word and His future world in view.

I hope to Heaven we can always live in that light and never base all our actions on Beating the Bad Guys — whether it’s the Devil himself, or a legalist somewhere, or Brian McLaren, or anyone else.