A New Kind of Christian (2001) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Daniel: A pastor, becoming tired and disillusioned
• Carol: Daniel's wife
• Dr. Oliver: Add a description of this character.
• Paul
• C. S. Lewis
• Casey B.
• Tash
• Neo
• Jess
• Melissa
• Marita
• Peter
• John
• Polanyi

Quotes edit see section history

• “Is it possible to have a faith that transcends the historical situation we find ourselves in?”

  Daniel Poole

• “All our Christian institutions—seminaries, radio stations, denominations, Bible studies, and so on—are in fact modern inventions. Within the world of the church, almost every influence is a modern one.”

  Daniel Poole

• “In one way, Lord, this makes me want to praise you, because many of our intellectual problems with faith, like the whole issue of how evil can exist in your universe, seem to disappear or shrink when we step outside the mechanistic model. In other words, if a company designs a plane and it crashes due to design failure, we hold the designer liable. Or if a person drives a car drunk and kills a pedestrian, we hold the driver responsible. In both cases, the machine designer or operator is the only sentient being capable of being held responsible. But if a parent raises a child with all appropriate guidance and the child grows up and rejects his parents' teaching and commits a crime, we don't hold the parent responsible in the same way. So I can see how limiting ourselves as moderns to a mechanical view of the universe—and of you—really creates problems for us. Forgive us, Lord, for judging you according to our own incomplete paradigms.”

• “To the Christian culture of medieval Europe, none of you today could be considered real Christians. True, you might say that you believe in Jesus and that you follow the Bible—but that would sound like nonsense to them if at the same time you denied what to them was essential for any reasonable person to accept: the medieval worldview, which was the context for their faith.”

  Neo

• “Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question. When Judgment Day comes, God may ask a lot of us how we interpreted the Bible—not to judge if our interpretations are right or wrong but to let our interpretations reveal our hearts. That will be telling enough.”

  Neo

• “Our modern age has predisposed us to only a limited range of postures with the Bible. It's all objective analysis and forensic science, always trying to prove something. It's all about a kind of aggressive conquest of the text—reducing it to something explainable by our preconceptions, turning it into moralisms or principles or outlines or conclusions or proofs or whatever.”

  Neo

• “I wonder what would happen if we approached the text less aggressively but even more energetically and passionately. I wonder what would happen if we honestly listened to the story and put ourselves under its spell, so to speak, not using it to get all of our questions about God answered but instead trusting God to use it to pose questions to us about us.”

  Neo

• “Sure it has answers, but I don't think that's the point. Think of a math book, Dan. Is it valuable because it has the answers in the back? No, it's valuable because by working through it, by doing the problems, by struggling with it, you become a wiser person, a person capable of solving problems and building bridges and balancing your checkbook and targeting the trajectory of a rocket to Mars. That's one way I see the Bible as being valuable. The whole answer-book approach is what modern people want the Bible to be, but it's not necessarily what the Bible really is. Of course, the Bible is even more than a book of wisdom and wisdom development. It's a book that calls together and helps create a community, a community that is a catalyst for God's work in our world.”

  Neo

• “But truth means more than factual accuracy. It means being in sync with God.”

  Neo

• “I think some Christians use Jesus as a shortcut to being right. In the process they bypass becoming humble or wise. They figure if they say 'Jesus' enough, it guarantees they won't be stupid.”

  Neo

• “As you say that, I think of Jesus telling Peter to 'get behind me Satan.' I guess that should tell us that we Christians will sometimes be walking with Jesus and at the same time working against him.”

  Daniel Poole

• “The priest and the Levite are over here. They are 'righteous' in a superficial way. They don't rob anybody. They're not like that lousy criminal who is over here, on the bad end of the line. Do you see it? That's the line we modern Christians try to live on the right end of, but in Jesus' story the answer isn't on the line at all. The answer—again—is up here, moving about the line altogether. The issue isn't who is wrong or righteous; that's obvious. The issue is who is truly good.”

  Neo

• “By nitpicking like that, the poor people missed the whole point of the sermon! That God is real! That he is the ultimate reality we will face when we die! That we will all be held accountable--Christians and non-Christians! And that the accountability isn't to some trivial list of petty rules but the ultimate reality of the Being of God, in all God's glory and compassion and goodness.”

  Neo

• “It really is a legitimate concern, you know. It's a real struggle for me, and for my church. How do we remain open and accepting of people, without compromising and condoning sin?”

• “The people who speak most vehemently against sin are the most in danger of feeling superior to those whose sins they excoriate, thus falling prey to an even more horrible, subtle species of sin. And since they preach so hard against sin, they are also the most in danger of yielding to the temptation to hide the sins they themselves commit.”

  Neo

• “It's none of your business who does and does not go to hell. It is your business to be warned by it and to run, not walk, in the opposite direction! It is your business to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, to love your neighbor as yourself, to have confidence in Jesus Christ and live as Jesus lived. Let the imagery of hell remind you that life is serious business, that there are real consequences to how we live and believe, that justice and injustice ultimately matter more than most of what people worry about. Now stop speculating about hell and start living for heaven!”

  Neo

• “The traditional churches will have to do one thing about their traditions, if they want to retain them: they will have to relativize them. They won't be able to enforce them as being right, necessary, or biblically mandated; they will rather simply offer them as elements of their church culture that have meaning for them. And if they don't work, they will feel free to drop them in favor of new practices that will work.”

  Neo

• “Ultimately this transition is not about changes in musical style, preaching style, liturgy, or architecture, although all of those things may change if we go through the transition. At heart, it's about attitude, theology, and spirituality. People talk a lot about 'seeker-sensitive services,' but I think the real issue is 'seeker-sensitive people' with 'seeker-sensitive attitudes'—all of which would flow from a more missional theology and spirituality If the attitudes change, the stylistics are not only easier to change, but they will also 'want' to change. Maybe that's why the traditional-to-contemporary change was so disruptive—too often we tried to change exteriors without changing our attitudes, theologies, and spirituality.”

• “I firmly believe that the top question of the new century and new millennium is not just whether Christianity is rational, credible, and essentially true (all of which I believe it is) but whether it can be powerful, redemptive, authentic, and good, whether it can change lives, demonstrate reconciliation and community, serve as a catalyst for the kingdom, and lead to a desirable future.”

• “In my thinking, church doesn't exist for the benefit of its members. It exists to equip its members for the benefit of the world.”

• “Then we'd try to face today's world and challenges, and drawing from the Bible, with twenty centuries of 'Christian universes' to learn from, we'd help students construct their own model of reality, their understanding of the universe and story we find ourselves in. And--this is SO important--we'd teach them that their model isn't reality; it's just a model. It must always be open to correction, adjustment, improvement, even revolution. Otherwise, we stop being disciples and become know-it-alls. We stop being seekers and become defenders (and you have had some firsthand experience lately of what defenders can be like).”

  Neo

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• truth means more than factual accuracy. It means being in sync with God.”

  Highlighted by 38 Kindle customers

• “I think some Christians use Jesus as a shortcut to being right. In the process they bypass becoming humble or wise.

  Highlighted by 37 Kindle customers

• To be postmodern means to have experienced the modern world and to have been changed by the experience—changed to such a degree that one is no longer modern.

  Highlighted by 36 Kindle customers

• “Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we’re unwilling to question.

  Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers

• One of the most dangerous things in the world—maybe even the most dangerous—is to redefine sin to suit our own tastes.

  Highlighted by 25 Kindle customers

• “In the postmodern world, we become postconquest, postmechanistic, postanalytical, post-secular, postobjective, postcritical, postorganizational, postindividualistic, post-Protestant, and postconsumerist.”

  Highlighted by 23 Kindle customers

• “what would happen if we approached the text less aggressively but even more energetically and passionately. I wonder what would happen if we honestly listened to the story and put ourselves under its spell, so to speak, not using it to get all of our questions about God answered but instead trusting God to use it to pose questions to us about us.

  Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers

• The question isn’t so much whether we’re right but whether we’re good. And it strikes me that goodness, not just rightness, is what Jesus said the real issue was—you know, good trees produce good fruit, that sort of thing. If we Christians would take all the energy we put into proving we’re right and others are wrong and invested that energy in pursuing and doing good, somehow I think that more people would believe we are right.”

  Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers

• “Neo, maybe the third alternative is to . . . to loosen up and approach the Bible on less defined terms. Instead of approaching it with our modern assumptions and expectations and our aggressive analysis, maybe we need to read it less like scholars and more like humble seekers trying to learn whatever we can from it, in the context of our sincere desire to live for God and do what he wants.

  Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers

• We’re talking about a new kind of Christian, not the new kind or a better kind or the superior kind, just a new kind. Right?”

  Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Seattle
• Jamaica
• St. Tim
• New Mexico
• Maryland

First Sentence edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Brian D. McLaren (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 248.4

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Christianity › Christian Living
• Books › Religion & Spirituality › Spirituality