Two Libraries

There are two small libraries in my living room. My wife's stands in the form of a bookshelf on the one end, and mine sits in a window sill on the other. Not only are they spatial opposites, they are literary opposites. I rarely venture to the dark side. Except I did this morning. And I saw a book called "The Church on the Other Side", by Brian McClaren. I've read a decent amount of his stuff, but its been a while. I was initially drawn to his work at a time in my life when my head had more questions than answers, and I needed to read someone who had the same questions, not someone who had the answers. Eventually I began to grow weary of the popular "Emergent Church" authors. I wanted to read more substantial things. In fact I even left theological readings for a while in favor of the more "objective" studies of philosophy. So I read some Augustine, (theological I know). I read some Plato. I read some Hume, some Kant, and a lot of Kierkegaard. Then, I came back to theology. I read Carson, Wright, a book by Hays, some Barth, and Yoder, and recently Lesslie Newbigin and Jacques Ellul(Despite your suspicions, this post is not really about how much I've read. I'm just trying to spell out my literary journey as descriptively yet succinctly as possible). And then I saw Brian McClaren's new book, "A New Kind of Christianity." I read a few key chapters and threw up in my mouth. I hated it. There were so many holes in the logic, so many straw men, prejudices, and manipulative rhetoric, and I was more weary of the Emergent Church than ever, never stopping to notice that McLaren's bibliography was eerily similar to my library.
But then I picked up McLaren's "Church On the Other Side". The nature of the church is a major issue for me right now. I'm drowning myself in Ecclesiology. So, I had this thought, "wonder what Brian has to say about the Church"? The short of it is that I realized that much of my problem with McLaren was not theological, philosophical, or propositional. A lot of it may have been rhetorical and stylistic, but most of it was that Brian McLaren's works are not meant to be like the scholarly books I was reading. He doesn't fill in the gaps that the scholars do because he isn't writing for scholars or critics, but for followers of Jesus who are feeling disenfranchised or disillusioned. Now, the audience for that may be bigger than McLaren thinks it is. (He does sell a lot of books though), but in reading my wife's book I gleaned no novelty, but there was little with which I was in disagreement. And I found that I haven't changed much. I'm still searching for different explanations of my faith years later, I'm just finding it on the shelves of university libraries, instead of of on the shelves of popular bookstores, or my wife's shelf. The major difference between McLaren and those in his bibliography is that Brian just doesn't feel in the logical gaps. He foresees the cultural shift of our culture, and is aware of the conversations that are happening in the Universities, and expounds their practical implications for the blue collar. I don't think I'll read Brian much for theological insight, not to sound smug, but I will read him for insight maybe as to "what it looks like" or "how it's going to happen", and maybe for facebook statuses.