Brian D. McLaren Quotes - Page 2

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Christ Church Community Culture Dialogue Heaven Hell

I'm so grateful for Living the Questions. These progressive voices offer less rigid and more expansive approaches to Christian faith, and make room for people who practice critical thinking and question the gatekeepers. They help us see that questioning the gatekeepers is exactly what Jesus was all about.

Brian D. McLaren

Christian, Jesus, Grateful

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The cross is almost a distraction and false advertisement for God.

Brian D. McLaren

Distraction, Crosses, Advertisements

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You might tell me that you have been engaging in some deep questioning and theological rethinking.1 You can no longer live with the faith you inherited from your parents or constructed earlier in your life. As you sort through your dogma and doctrine, you’ve found yourself praying less, less thrilled about worship, scripture, or church attendance. You’ve been so focused on sorting and purging your theological theories that you’ve lost track of the spiritual practices that sustain an actual relationship with God. You may even wonder if such a thing is possible for someone like you.

Brian D. McLaren

Spiritual, Practice, Track

Brian D. McLaren (2011). “Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words”, p.2, Harper Collins

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Joyfully celebrating the killing of a killer who joyfully celebrated killing carries an irony that I hope will not be lost on us. Are we learning anything, or simply spinning harder in the cycle of violence?

Brian D. McLaren

Killers, Spinning, Violence

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I had to face the possibility that the art of living in the way of Jesus was no longer carried on in a holistic way by any single tradition.

Brian D. McLaren

Jesus, Art, Faces

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The Church has little idea how unorthodox it is at any given moment. If a church can't yet be perfectly orthodox, it can, with the Holy Spirit's help and by the grace of God, be perpetually reformable.

Brian D. McLaren

Ideas, Grace, Church

Brian D. McLaren (2005). “A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/conservative, Mystical/poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished Christian”, p.34, Zondervan

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The church has been preoccupied with the question, 'What happens to your soul after you die?' AS IF THE REASON FOR JESUS COMING CAN BE SUMMED UP IN, 'JESUS IS TRYING TO HELP GET MORE SOULS INTO HEAVEN, AS OPPOSED TO HELL, AFTER THEY DIE.' I JUST THINK A FAIR READING OF THE GOSPELS BLOWS THAT OUT OF THE WATER. I don't think that the entire message and life of Jesus can be boiled down to that bottom line

Brian D. McLaren

Jesus, Reading, Blow

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Tony [Campolo] and I might disagree on the details, but I think we are both trying to find an alternative to both traditional Universalism and the narrow, exclusivist understanding of hell [that unless you explicitly accept and follow Jesus, you are excluded from eternal life with God and destined for hell].

Brian D. McLaren

Jesus, Thinking, Understanding

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Baptism is rich in meaning. It suggests cleansing. When you are a disciple, you understand that you are cleansed by Christ. You understand that Christ died in your place on the cross, paying for your sins, fully forgiving you for all your wrongs. You are cleansed from guilt, and you are becoming a cleaner, healthier, more whole person.

Brian D. McLaren

Baptism, Forgiving, Guilt

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A friend of mine says that in the world of religion we often have ignorance on fire and intelligence on ice.
The thing I love about The Beatitudes Society is they represent faith and intelligence on fire and there's enthusiasm and passion and a realization that a more open and progressive approach to faith is something to celebrate.

Brian D. McLaren

Passion, Ignorance, Fire

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I don't think we've got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be 'saved'? When I read the Bible, I don't see it meaning, 'I'm going to heaven after I die.' Before modern evangelicalism nobody accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, or walked down an aisle, or said the sinner's prayer.

Brian D. McLaren

Jesus, Prayer, Mean

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The Christian faith, I am proposing, should become (in the name of Jesus Christ) a welcome friend to other religions of the world, not a threat

Brian D. McLaren

Christian, Jesus, Names

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I love writers who are insightful enough to be cynical but choose not to be.

Brian D. McLaren

Cynical, Insightful, Enough

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...the tragedy of consumerism: one acquires more and more things without taking the time to ever see and know them, and thus one never truly enjoys them. One has without truly having. The consumer is right-there is pleasure to be had in good things, a sacred and almost unspeakable pleasure, but the consumer wrongly thinks that one finds this pleasure by having more and more possessions instead of possessing them more truly through grateful contemplation. And here we are, living in an economy that perpetuates this tragedy.

Brian D. McLaren

Grateful, Thinking, Tragedy

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It used to be that Christian institutions and systems of dogma sustained the spiritual life of Christians. Increasingly, spirituality itself is what sustains everything else. Alan Jones is a pioneer in reimagining a Christian faith that emerges from authentic spirituality. His work stimulates and encourages me deeply

Brian D. McLaren

Christian, Spiritual, Pioneers

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A lot of arguments happen among religious and non religious people about the question of who's going to hell and who's going to heaven and uh, a lot of times Christians get into this argument by saying 'we have the only way to heaven.' And uh, people often ask me what do I think is the way to heaven. I have a problem when they ask me this question because it assumes that the primary purpose of Jesus' coming and the primary message of Jesus was a message about how to get to heaven.

Brian D. McLaren

Christian, Religious, Jesus

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We should consider the possibility that many, and perhaps even all of Jesus' hell-fire or end-of-the-universe statements refer not to postmortem [after death] judgment but to the very historic consequences of rejecting his kingdom message of reconciliation and peacemaking. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 67-70 seems to many people to fulfill much of what we have traditionally understood as hell.

Brian D. McLaren

Jesus, Fire, People

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I don't think we've got the gospel right yet.I don't think the liberals have it right. But I don't think we have it right either. None of us has arrived at orthodoxy.

Brian D. McLaren

Thinking, Orthodoxy

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Seventh-Gay Adventists isn't just a helpful movie, important for the way it can help congregations of any denomination deal graciously and truthfully with the issue of homosexuality. It's also a beautifully-filmed and artfully-conceived movie. It does what the best art does - it 'humanizes the other.' You should see it, and when you do, you'll encourage others to see it as well.

Brian D. McLaren

Art, Gay, Issues

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If your goal is to produce firefighters and rescue workers, you have to produce people willing to enter burning buildings.

Brian D. McLaren

Goal, People, Firefighter

Brian D. McLaren (2008). “Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices”, p.70, Thomas Nelson Inc

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In the tradition of Julian of Norwich and St. Teresa of Avila and all the other mystics, we can learn to render ourselves vulnerable to the "favors of God" - those indescribable experiences that mock our dualisms and so saturate our imagination with abundance that they transcend our ability to convey joy and wonder. In the tradition of St. John of the Cross, we can learn to survive and derive benefits from the soul's dark night.

Brian D. McLaren

Dark, Night, Imagination

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Our message and methodology have changed, do change, and must change if we are faithful to the ongoing and unchanging mission of Jesus Christ.

Brian D. McLaren

Jesus, Faithful, Ongoing

Brian D. McLaren (2009). “A Generous Orthodoxy: By celebrating strengths of many traditions in the church (and beyond), this book will seek to communicate a “generous orthodoxy.””, p.134, Zondervan/Youth Specialties

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Because we are rooted in a generous Christian heritage, we are eager to collaborate with people of other faiths, and those seeking the common good. Our networks of dialogue and action thus extend beyond Christian communities to persons of all faiths, as well as to communities that are not themselves faith-based. We welcome allies and allegiances wherever we find common cause.

Brian D. McLaren

Christian, People, Community

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I was relaxing in my parents' swimming pool with my brother, Peter. I asked him how the engineering business was going, and he reciprocated: 'How's the ministry world going?' 'Okay,' I said, 'except that a couple of weeks ago I realized that I don't know why Jesus had to die.' Then Peter, without skipping a beat, without even a moment's hesitation, said, 'Well, neither did Jesus.'

Brian D. McLaren

Jesus, Couple, Swimming

"More Ready Than You Realize: The Power of Everyday Conversations".

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So we must realize this: the suicidal framing story that dominates our world today has no power except the power we give it by believing it. Similarly, believing an alternative and transforming framing story may turn out to be the most radical thing any of us can ever do.

Brian D. McLaren

Believe, Suicidal, Our World

Brian D. McLaren (2009). “Everything Must Change: When the World's Biggest Problems and Jesus' Good News Collide”, p.270, Thomas Nelson Inc

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Born: 1956
Occupation: Pastor
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