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Famous Lost Words: Brian McLaren

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The latest pox to be released on orthodox Christianity is the Emergent Church movement. This is a movement of primarily “Post-Modern” young people that hold to no absolute truth, deconstruct and reconstruct Christian beliefs at will to accomodate their culture, and prefer interfaith dialogue rather than verbal evangelism.

The Grand Poobah of the movement is Brian McLaren. Here are his views concerning the Gospel and Hell:

“I don’t think we’ve got the gospel right yet. What does it mean to be ‘saved’?…. 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.”
—The Emergent Mystique, Christianity Today, 2004

“Isn’t Hell such a grave ‘bottom line’ that it devalues all other values? It so emphasizes the importance of life after death that it can unintentionally trivialize life before death. No wonder many people feel that ‘accepting Jesus as a personal Savior’ could make them a worse person — more self-centered and less concerned about justice on earth because of a preoccupation with forgiveness in heaven. Again, although I believe in Jesus as my personal savior, I am not a Christian for that reason. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus is the Savior of the whole world.”
—A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 100

“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.”
—From the PBS special on the Emerging Church

” But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.” (2Peter 2:1-2)

Read more Famous Lost Words from Joel Osteen, a leader of another type of movement—not Christianity—here.

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