I’d rate this as an extremely useful and well-written book. It has helped me immensely in understanding the strange forces at work in my life, and I don’t mean Rush Limbaugh.
Posts: 5365 | From: Washington State | Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Instead of creating a new thread let me just stick this short review/excerpt here.
Right now I’m reading this book titled Finding Faith by noted postmodernist Brian McLaren. His postmodernism seems a sincere attempt to redress past grievances and to reach out to others who, ironically, (and I’m not so sure he is aware of this) have been put off of more traditional things because of a postmodernist outlook. Anyway, so far it seems a rather savvy, mature and innovative approach to explaining faith, as evidenced by this excerpt below from a section in which he’s running down a list of what I would consider reasonable notions of "bad faith.":
quote:In writing this book, I asked several of my friends (agnostics and atheists) to read the manuscript and give me their feedback, all of which was helpful and some of which was downright profound. As I dialogued with one of my friends, something became clear to me in a whole new way: Healthy people don’t step backward or down; they only step forward or up. This insight explains both why some people leave faith and others accept it; in either case, their move into or out of faith is perceived by them as a step up. For this friend, brought up in a rigid, anti-intellectual religious system, science (in this case, science as a package deal with atheism) – honest, accurate, curious, open-eyed – felt like a huge step up from the superstitious version of religion he had been presented with. I’d have to agree with him; it was a step up. As we continue our dialogue, I’m hoping he can see that the best alternative to "bad faith" in God is not necessarily no faith (or faith in the science-atheism package). Granted, to step back into the version of religion he grew up in would be a step down, but perhaps there is a step that will present itself to him that will be a step up into good faith.
[ June 14, 2005, 02:39 PM: Message edited by: Brad ]
Posts: 5365 | From: Washington State | Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged |
. Shalom Place
UBBFriend: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic
