OK kids, Andy has flaws.
I know I know - it came as a shock to me as well. (Although, truthfully it came early. I was 4 years old and discovered that I physically cannot enjoy bleach as a beverage. Who knew?)
But truthfully I wrote that last post, fully intending to make notes along the way about reading Everything Must Change, and frankly, I HATED IT SO MUCH I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I got six chapters in, filling the pages of the book with assorted lines, circles, snarky comments... and just couldn't take the idiocy any more.
And here I am, 5 months later, grudgingly admitting I'm just not going to get to it. Frankly, to give this book the proper dissection and destruction it needs would require the kind of free time I just don't have.
Also (joyously), I discovered a blistering critique of McLaren's work (generally speaking) in the first chapter of Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What.
In it, Miller describes a (hopefully fictional) Christian writers' conference in Memphis, and a presentation by a nice southern lady on how to write a successful self-help book. Here's the 4-step formula:
1) Name a crisis. This isn't a problem, or a nuisance, it is a CRISIS. This crisis is life/world/eternity THREATENING, and your reader must FEAR the results of the crisis.
2) Name your enemy in said crisis. This can be a person, a group, a philosophy that has caused the crisis. That cause must be equated with the enemy of all that is good.
3) Describe the ramifications of the crisis, if left unchecked; compare this to the dramatic glory and beauty of the crisis if it is averted. You must describe a WAR against the enemy, and enlist the reader in this war. Your reader must feel they are the "good guy" railing against the forces of evil in this crisis.
4) Finally, detail a 3-to-4 step plan to deal with the crisis.
Now - Miller's point is that life, God, everything, is not so simple as to be summed up in a few neat bullet points. Our relationship with the Living God is a living thing - like any relationship (a marvellously obvious and profound truth). A book like McLaren's not only doesn't get the point of Christ's life on earth, it doesn't even grasp the point of its author's life.
My delight with Miller is that he calls McLaren out on the very exercise in shallow, uncomplicated thinking that is rife in evangelicalism. In the parlance of Volleyball, as McLaren tried to loft a ball over the net, Miller blocked McLaren's shot. More than that - it slammed an Ace right through the center of his court. It was so awesome I just wanted to yell "ROOOOOF!!!" (My apologies for the sports analogy).
McLaren's search for a "framing story" should stop with our identity as God's children. He should recognize two of his "deep dysfunctions" as borrowed from Marx. He should realize that "response called for by Jesus" is not just "hope" - but the actual power of God. Finally, he should recognize the apology he gives for his modes of expression as a page straight out of the Gnostic playbook ("the more passionate language would have been off-putting for uninformed readers (just as the understatement may be off-putting for informed readers, which shows my bias)." In that beauty of a sentence, he "dresses the emperor" (my phrase) to let you know that your qualms are probably just due to ignorance. Suffice to say, the word "nice" was sarcastically scribbled in this margin). These were just notes from the first chapter.
I've been around the block a few times. I met some of the most brilliant theologians and Biblical scholars alive today while I was at Princeton. I make no claims to any original brilliance myself, but I was trained well: know a skunk when I smell one, and Everything Must Change just stinks.
