Heretics
by MW Cook
Scot McKnight interviews Brian McLaren: Watch the video.
The best moment was at about 2:40 when Brian said, “When I read a book or listen to music, I’m not always asking, ‘what do they believe?’ I want to ask, ‘what do they have to say to me?'” And he expands on that in the following minutes. It makes me wish I had put my own checklist away years ago – perhaps I would have gained more by now that I already have.
Matt W Cook 
So what did it settle for you?
Just that when I read a book it’s more important for me to seek out something useful in what the author is saying, instead of trying to nail down his system of belief. It’s important to know what I believe, but it doesn’t matter as much what someone else does, y’know?
So, I guess we got different things from this video. That’s okay, too.
I think McLaren’s failure is that he doesn’t distinguish between mediums. In a theological book, what the person believes has everything to do with how you understand what they write. Take McLaren himself: his “inclusionism” means that when I read what he has to say about the Gospel, it is right for me to interpret it differently than when I read what, for example, Wayne Grudem has to say about the gospel. In fact, you can’t correctly understand McLaren without knowing what he believes. Which makes the video pretty important, really.
We think it comes down to having to be firm in our faith and being able to discern that which is right from that which is wrong. If we cannot step out of ourselves long enough to try and see something from another person’s point of view then we become narrow minded and/or must have a very weak foundation for our faith. If C.S. Lewis had said the same quote that Matt pulled out from Mclaren then most likely we would have agreed. It seems that Matt is making the point that we can learn from many different sources. Yes there is stuff that Mclaren says that we don’t agree with (e.g. universalism and putting aside the importance of salvation in the ‘biblical narrative’) but on the other hand he also made a lot of good points (i.e. the quote Matt pulled out). I don’t think we need to be afraid of reading or learning from people we disagree with in every point.
I’m not saying that I’m a McLaren disciple or that my thoughts about God and the Church match his. I’m just saying that I liked his quote at 2:40. I may not like most things about what Bertrand Russell had to say about God. But his views on economics in his little book ‘Political Ideals’ was very insightful and I gained a lot from it. Surely if I can learn from Russell, McLaren might have one or two decent things to say, eh?
I totally agree — all truth is God’s truth. I think where McLaren’s quote gets dicey is if you try, as he does, to apply it to himself. When you’re writing about applied theology (ie, A New Kind of Christian/Christianity), then what you believe about theology is directly in view. But, outside of the applied theology realm, I’ve benefited from McLaren. It’s not so much the quote as the way McLaren is trying to use it that I object to. Sorry for being unclear — it’s one of my best abilities.