As I’m preparing to start a new series at Otter Creek this morning (Following Jesus), I have been thinking about this conversation I had about a year ago.

In an interview I conducted with well-known Christian thinker and author Brian McLaren, I asked what he meant by his conviction that Christianity was a way of life more than a set of beliefs. McLaren responded:

I was interviewing Dr. Peter Senge, who does not portray himself as a Christian. . . . I was interviewing him by       satellite. “Dr Senge, what would you like to say to to a group of Christian pastors?”

“Well, I was in a bookstore the other day and I asked the bookstore manager what the most popular books were. He said the most popular books right now were books on eastern religions. So, I want to know why that is the case in America?”

I turned the question back on him and said, “Dr. Senge, why do you think this is the case?”

“I think it’s because Christianity currently presents itself as a system of beliefs and Buddhism presents itself as a way of life.”

Now, that one sentence was the one sentence we’d all come to hear. It was a powerful moment. For many of us, we can’t imagine Christianity as anything other than a system of beliefs. We use phrases like a “Christian worldview”—we’ve never questioned what we mean. And what we mean is a kind of intellectual system that has an answer to every question and a solution to every issue. Well, if you believe that is what the Christian faith is, then it shouldn’t surprise you when Christians are viewed as arrogant, narrow-minded and judgmental. We’ve set up the whole system to give us the ability to give quick answers. But this idea of a way of life has to do with how we are formed as human beings and how we live our daily lives, and how we see our very being transformed and changed. That, to me, is what Dr. Senge was doing . . . he was calling us back to Jesus because, that’s what his followers were first called, followers of The Way.