Today we continue my conversation with Brian McLaren with the King Question. After all, King had a dream of a new kind of Christianity as well…
Jazz Theologian: Not long after telling our nation about his dream, Martin
Luther King Jr. said that his dream had turned into a “nightmare.” One of
the reasons for this can be found in his, “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,”
in which he expressed his love for the church while at the same time he pled
with pastors to reject the “fear of being non-conformists.” Do you ever
feel like that? What do you do?
McLaren: The
pressure to conform really is great, and the punishment for stepping out of
line can be harsh. For a lot of years, I did what a lot of people do: tried to
conform and stay out of trouble! But eventually, I just couldn’t do so any
longer. In part, the Bible drove me out of conformity, because the Bible didn’t
fit in the narrow framework I was given. In part, people drove me out – when I
met people who were experiencing injustice, and when I took seriously my call
to love them as I love myself, their burdens and concerns became my own and I
had to take some risks.
Knowing how much to risk when is a real matter for spiritual
discernment. Some of us are liable to be too timid, and others of us to be too
rash, so I think there aren’t one-size-fits-all answers to this, except to say
that we need to be prayerful and open to the Spirit’s guidance, and we need to
have a circle of soul-friends with whom we can process our lives and our work.
Join the Groove…what do you do with your dreams that have gone bad?
