Humility needed...

Brian McLaren makes me hopeful and angry all at the same time. Hopeful in that maybe the church can move past the mistakes we constantly make as we seek to present Christ to the world. Angry because he just opens up so many "cans of worms". All anger aside, I appreciate what Brian does, especially in his book A Generous Orthodoxy. As I was reading through my blogroll today I was reminded by Darren at Thin Spaces of a quote from the book that I found to sum up alot of my thoughts regarding a continual "reformation" that the church has to surrender itself to.

"We must continually be aware that the 'old, old story' may not be the 'true, true story.' In other words, we must be open to the perpetual possibility that our received understandings of the gospel may be faulty, imbalanced, poorly nuanced, or downright warped and twisted. Here we must retain the good protestant, evangelical, and biblical instinct to allow Scripture to critique tradition - including our dominant and most recent traditions, and including our tradition's understanding of the gospel. In this sense Christians in missional dialogue must continually expect to rediscover the gospel."

Scary, yes, but very important that we do not allow our ideas for the church to crowd out God's Kingdom agenda. Slavery was sanctioned by the church at various times throughout history. We have to have the humility to at least be open to the fact that maybe we have some blind spots when it comes to our own theology. Humility, the gift nobody wants, but the one that we all need.