The final stage in Brian McLaren's spiritual journey in Faith after Doubt is called Harmony. Sounds compelling. Sounds naïve. In a world given to conflict, religious and political polarization, seeing harmony as a theological ideal seems a fool's errand at best.
But perhaps not. In McLaren’s scheme, the stage before harmony is being perplexed. The answer to being perplexed requires grounding ourselves in the deepest parts of our faith traditions, bypassing the doctrinal disputes that have separated Christian denominations and Christianity from other religions. At the core, we are being asked whether we share love or hate. If love, then understanding.
McLaren writes about his delight in the love of people from different faith traditions who have found harmony at the heart of their own tradition and as a bridge to others. This, he writes, "didn’t make them less wholeheartedly Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or Jewish, but more. When they discovered the sound of the genuine at the heart of their faith tradition, they were able to recognize it in other faith traditions. The deeper they went in their own tradition, the deeper their love for all people, whatever their tradition, and simultaneously, the deeper their love for their own tradition."
“If it took the agony of doubt to bring me to this place, then thanks be to God, and blessed be doubt.”
Does getting to harmony require one to give up something about one’s own religious belief? Yes, just this: the loss of supremacy, the sense of religious privilege and superiority.
As McLaren put it, "I don’t want to be better than anyone. I don’t want to win in any way that makes others lose. I even wince a little whenever I speak of the four stages, because I know that some people will interpret them in a way that makes Stage Four supreme, and that thought repulses me. Harmony is, at its heart, a state and stage that loves solidarity, not supremacy. If it took the agony of doubt to bring me to this place, then thanks be to God, and blessed be doubt." (197)
Photo: CTK, Laguna Beach, 2009