What I Have Been Reading Lately...

Well, another blog entry and not months in between...I think I'm improving. I have found time again to enjoy evenings out on the front porch enjoying the sunset, a good cup of coffee, and a chance to slow down in life and read a few pages here and there.

I am always someone that reads a few books at a time as I have a short attention span and need to flip flop back and forth. So lately, it's been a fictional book, and then Brian McLaren's "a Generous Orthodoxy". Let me start by saying that tossing around words in theological discussions like "exclusivist", "univeralists", "fundamendalist", and on and on, is not for me. It's probably cause I am a simple person with a simple mind. I do not claim to even a have a clue on these issues. So let me preface it all with those statements.

However, today I read a section of McLaren's book and it struck a chord in me.

When I say that I cherish an evangelical identity, I mean something beyond a belief system or doctrinal array or even a practice. I mean an attitude – an attitude toward God and our neighbour and our mission that is passionate. When evangelicals (at their best) sing, they sing. When evangelicals pray, they pray. When evangelicals preach, they preach. When evangelicals decide something is worth doing, they do it. They don’t tend to establish committees to study the feasibility of doing it. They don’t ask permission from the bureaucracy to do it. They don’t do a degree that qualifies them to do it. They just do it – and with passion.

True, this evangelical passion gets them into trouble from time to time. For example, passionate can easily degenerate into sentimental or cheesy or hotheaded or hardheaded or softheaded, and too often it has done so. But if I have a choice between the kind of trouble that comes from too much passion or the kind that comes from too little, my choice would be easy.

I paused for a moment as I reread this blurb, because I realized that I wanted to do a simple entry and now that I put this down, I feel like I have to justify, explain, reason, etc. The reality is that I'm not trying to make a statement about being pro-evangelical, or anti-evangelical.

Instead, as you can see from my bolded words, my desire is to live my life with passion. I'm not talking about living a reckless life but I'm talking about living each day with an attitude that says that I want to seize all that today has to offer, and whatever I take on, that I do it with zeal.