The trouble is Mike, ‘results’ are largely a function of what ‘motivates’ people. And so we can’t divorce motivation (the story that drives us) from action (the pieces of that story). Viewing God as ‘the ground of all being’ hardly qualifies as ‘theism’, so I’d be interested in hearing how you would describe your own view of God, since you don’t like the label ‘deism’.

Further, I think you misunderstanding McLaren. Since ‘Everything Must Change’ is, by Brian’s own admission, ‘The Secret Message of Jesus part 2’, you must have overlooked Brian’s insistence in the Secret Message of Jesus that Jesus’ ‘signs and wonders’ cannot be understood within a naturalistic worldview. As far as I can tell, Brian is walking pretty much in step with NT Wright. Sorry… :-/ I think you must have misunderstood one or the other of the two.

If the Creator does not care enough about his Creation to empower his followers to genuinely re-create reality… how is that not deism? And how is that a reason to act?

Just pushin’ back a little bit… ;-)

 Cheers,

 -Daniel-