Parables Revisited

As I have been continuing to study the Emerging Church movement, controversies surrounding Brian McLaren seem to be a never-ending topic. In late November, 2010, I found one on my own. The following were my immediate thoughts:

I admit that I do periodically read McLaren’s blog. Since his recent book A New Kind of Christianity has been a source of many questions and comments on which he writes, I noted a new one that discussed “Violent God.” The question comes from someone who is having trouble accepting that God could really do all the violent things that are recorded in scripture. In response, McLaren points to a book by William Herzog entitled Parables as Subversive Speech. McLaren proceeds to give Mr. Herzog’s reading of the parable of the talents as being about the nature of the kingdom of the world and not the kingdom of God. It is about an unjust economy that “reaps quick exploitative profits off his fellows.”

McLaren writes “When I first read this book some years ago, I thought, ‘He can't be right,’ but now I think he's spot on in most of his reinterpretations.”

Is There God?

As part of a study on the theological problems of accepting the notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving being — God — in the face of pain, even significant pain, of both the physical and emotional kinds, a member of the group provided a link to an article written by Roger Ebert, the film critic, posted on the Chicago Sun-Times web site on March 30, 2011. The link is here.

For approximately 1,700 words, Ebert ponders the existence and purpose of man, and concludes that he finds “the Theory of Evolution a great consolation.” Following are a few of the passages and my comments and questions.

What we are left with are the cosmic shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. Ultimately the images from Hubble will give us a glimpse of conditions that existed an infinitesimal instant after the Big Bang. There will never be an image of the Big Bang itself, because it had no image. There was Nothing, and then there was Something, and all we can hope is to see that Something as soon as possible after it became.

And with this, evolution, the principle of taking what is and morphing it into something else that is, but was not before, is set in motion by an event that took Nothing and made that Nothing into Something. That is an insufficient explanation.