Beyond Purity Codes

Just tonight I stumbled across an essay that is several months old. I found it from a link on Brian McLaren's blog. I've just finished reading McLaren's The Secret Message of Jesus, and I've been poking around the Web to learn more about him. So far, I like what I see.

This item is not by McLaren, but it is by a Christian, and one who challenges Christians who take an esclusivist approach. Money quote:

Speaking as a Christian, you can find plenty of ammunition in the Bible and in the tradition to insist that the point behind faith in Jesus is to be “pure” for God, with Jesus’ blood being that special reagent that will purify us in the ways that we are incapable of purifying ourselves. Okay, that’s one way of looking at it. But it is just as possible, just as logical, just as spiritually coherent to see in the Christian tradition an arc of wisdom that calls us to move beyond the purity codes that defined our ancestral religious practices, instead embracing hospitality, which includes everything from welcoming the stranger, to opening our hearts to those who are “different” from ourselves, to embracing non-oppositional or non-dualistic consciousness, consciousness that celebrates the action of the Holy Spirit in the most unlikely of places, rather than seeking to judge and divide all things into that which is “good enough for God” and that which is not.