A Generous Orthodoxy

So I’m working my way reluctantly through Brian D. McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy.  I’ve lost much of my interest in doing so, but I have this fetish that forces me to finish a book I’ve started, even if I don’t care for it.  I think it’s out of guilt for the fact that my mom bought me a book when I was in junior high (The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams).  I had loved Adams’ other book, Watership Down, which I read as part of my junior high advanced English course.  But I couldn’t get into Dogs at all.  I tried valiantly.  Repeatedly.  She would ask me over and over again if I had finished it yet.  And I was always ashamed that I hadn’t, that I didn’t like the gift she had gotten me. 

Thank God I’m the only person motivated by guilt.  Right?

So I’m trying to read Orthodoxy.  And I like the premise.  It’s just that McLaren can’t ever leave the background that he’s coming from long enough or convincingly enough to make it sound like an authentic call to move on.  At the halfway point in the book, there have been no recommendations on *how* this moving on takes place, simply a lot of constructive criticism.  The criticism is not necessarily inaccurate.  But it’s also hardly balanced, clearly highlighting more of McLaren’s views on things than promulgating a way forward beyond the roots of those views. 

So I hope to finish it sometime soon.  Because I have a lot of reading that I’m really excited about getting into.  And that’s a great feeling.