Return of the New Kind of Christian

I just finished (less than 24 hours after it was delivered to my doorstep), The Last Word and the Word After That, by Brian McLaren -- the conclusion to the trilogy which started with A New Kind of Christian. I was not disappointed. McClaren seems to read my mind with what he writes. A good friend of mine and I thought for sure that McLaren had been taking notes on our coffee talks when we first read aNKoC. We took turns calling each other "Neo", the character McLaren uses to challenge the fundamentalism from which we were (are) both recovering.

In "Last Word" (the geek in me wants to abbreviate the title "LW&++"), McLaren spends a lot of time talking about hell, which I very much appreciate. And in fact, I believe he's brought a perspective on the subject I hadn't considered. I'm not going to write about that perspective yet, because I'm still digesting it. But I'll quote one line which certainly nails this blog:

"Ah, Hell... Hell is the frequent preoccupation of recovering fundamentalists."

That would be me. (See for example, discussion of hell from a George MacDonald perspective on this blog).

Maybe by the time I can get over hell, I'll be recovered from my fundamentalism.