Kevin DeYoung on "Christianity and McLarenism"

Some of you may have noticed a little box on my sidebar, just under the blogroll. It's a nifty feature that's part of Google Reader, whereby I can choose to "share" certain posts by other bloggers. I've used it for almost two years now, with two main purposes in mind: (1) To share notable blog posts with others (2) to provide easy access to posts that I may want to find again later.

But this post isn't about Google Reader. I say all of the above to explain why I so rarely make my own post to recommend another blogger's post: I just share it with Google Reader. This time, however, I wanted to provide a stronger recommendation than just clicking "share."

No group can exist without a devil, McLaren says at one point (175). This is probably true. In which case I suggest the best devil is the devil. But for McLaren, the devil appears to be fundamentalist conservatives.
--Kevin DeYoung

I first heard of Kevin DeYoung a few years back when he co-wrote Why We're Not Emergent with Ted Kluck. Although I have not read the book, I remember it making some waves (in a good way).

But over the past year I've really come to appreciate Kevin -- reading his new book Just Do Something, hearing him speak at Next (where he'll be speaking again this year), and keeping up with his blog (via Google Reader, of course) -- not only doctrinally, but also because he is insightfully witty. Case in point: the above quote. [Note: Blogger is telling me that insightfully is not a word. Maybe that would make him wittily insightful.]

This week he has put together an insightful (yes, witty too) review of Brian McLaren's new book, A New Kind of Christianity. I strongly recommend it to you. Even if you've never heard of Brian McLaren, you will face liberal Christian arguments in some form or another, and DeYoung does an excellent job deconstructing them.

CHRISTIANITY AND MCLARENISM: Ten Questions and Ten Problems