you just can't stop reading a good author

On our quickie vacation a few weeks ago we stopped in a hippie coffee shop. My wife and I both LOVE these types of places. I think we like to pretend to be hippies for moments... the lifestyle is romantic, I guess. But we wouldn't do well with never washing the dirty dreads in our hair or going barefoot all day or eating all organic veggies... or smoking weed. but we like their fair trade coffee shops.

Anyway, I picked up a book off the futon in that coffee shop around Asheville, NC. It was the famous Dostoevsky (I like how his name is pronounced) novel - The Brothers Karamazov. I read the 1st chapter & then we left. It got me wanting to read a good story!

so, I turned to the guy who is one of the greatest writers in my opinion, Brian McLaren. I started on the 3rd book in his awesome trilogy... The Last Word and the Word After That. It's the 3rd & final part in the New Kind of Christian trilogy. This stuff is the only fiction I've read since like 7th grade. I just don't read fiction because I don't have time. There's too much to learn!

BUT, this is different. I learn just as much (maybe more) from McLaren's fiction as I do almost any other books! They are masterpieces... brilliant! And I try to keep a really nice balance of reading a wide variety of authors... but this guy is just SO GOOD. He's an amazing writer. So, of course he's gonna get the opportunity to bend my ear a little more because it is straight up fun reading him. [despite all the warnings to "beware" of this "heretic"... well, maybe not despite... because I always go pick up a book that I am warned against. ha, I guess it's just my nature.]

*Oh, and see who I think McLaren looks A LOT like HERE. They could be twins! don't you think?

It's a fiction novel, but I wanted to share this great stuff below just from the introduction! (just Brian's intro before the novel actually began...)

"I believe that God is good. No thought I have ever had about God is better than God actually is. ... I have never overestimated how good God is because God's goodness overflows far beyond the limits of human understanding." [very beautiful and so true. I NEED to be reminded of this much more often. this literally makes me lift my heart up in unrestrained worship every time I read it! stop & read it again... That thought is so amazing!]

"if your concept of God is radically false, the more devoted you are, the worse off you will be." [that is a great statement in SO MANY ways]

"perhaps the dysfunctions of the Christian religion can be traced not to God as God really is but to views of God..."

*** "God's justice is always merciful and God's mercy is always just."

"deep in our hearts, we don't fully love God because we are not fully confident that God is fully good."

"clarity is good, but sometimes intrigue may be even more precious; clarity tends to put an end to further thinking, whereas intrigue makes one think more intensely, broadly, and deeply." [Jesus is a great example of this.]

** "we often seek clarity at the expense of truth: we would rather have something simple and clear than continue to search beyond convention for a truth that won't resolve to a neat formula, label, category, or pat answer." [OOOOHH!!! that one really hits home these days for many people. this is so right on about all of us believers today who are products of modernity. it's not necessarily our "fault", BUT now we need to fix it & CHANGE.]

"Deconstruction is not destruction; it is hope."

***[deconstruction] "sometimes, our constructed laws get in the way of unseen justice, our undeconstructed words get in the way of communication, our institutions get in the way of the purposes for which they were constructed, our formulations get in the way of meaning, our curricula get in the way of learning." [SO ironic!!! so true. so sad.]

"one must deconstruct... in the hope that something better will appear once the constructions-become-obstructions have been taken apart."

"Is anything undeconstructable? Obviously, while God and God's mysteries would be beyond human deconstruction, it makes sense that anything constructed by humans would also be deconstructable by them--including human formulations about God and God's mysteries."
[definition] = "Perhaps deconstruction, then, could be seen as the search for God and God's mysteries when human constructions may be obscuring them: it is an endeavor hoping eventually to fail, for when it fails and reaches the Undeconstructable, it has reached the goal of it's pursuit." [beautiful]

"asking me--as people often do--whether I'm an inclusivist or a universalist is like asking a vegetarian whether she prefers steak, pork, or venison."

[Dr. Walter Brueggermann's guidelines for theological educators...]
"1 Don't tell students more than they are ready for or can handle.
2 Don't tell them anything they'll have to unlearn later on." [MAN, do we ever need to follow those guidelines!!!]

OK, now I really want to hear some of YOUR thoughts! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF SOME OF THESE QUOTES?