Wednesday, December 01, 2004

The Other Guys

I've recently returned to a book that I had to set aside due to time. It's Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian. The book describes the spiritual journey of two friends, one formerly in ministry and the other desperately looking to get out or find a new way to bring authenticity and meaning to the practice of religion that has grown stale to him--and many others.

Here are some insightful words from one of their conversations concerning Christian's approach to those of other faiths: "...when it comes to other religions, the challenge in modernity was to prove that we're right and they're wrong. But I think we have a different challenge in postmodernity. 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 more people would believe that we are right."

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