The following is from a conversation on a Christianity Today blog where Brian McLaren explains how he is certainly Biblical in his thinking, but that “being Biblical” doesn’t always jell with the “Biblical-ness” of those who often offer the public prounouncements of what constitutes “Biblical”, particularly in America.

Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question 4: McLaren’s Response

Please be assured that as a pastor and as someone who loves and seeks to follow the Bible, I am aware of Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and related texts. Believe me, I have read them and prayerfully pondered them, and have read extensively on all the many sides of the issue. I understand that for many people, these verses end all dialogue and people like me must seem horribly stupid not to see what’s there so clearly to them. I wish they could understand that some of us encounter additional levels of complexity when we try honestly and faithfully to face these texts.

I agree with the above, and I also want to , and often have said to my more conservative Biblical friends that it seems “rather clear” to me that Jesus said “Love your enemies”. They are often all too willing to “contextualize” and “qualify” on such sayings of Jesus, and remain quite unwilling to do so on their favorite prooftexts, unless it leads them to be able to affirm the pre-determined dogmas. I myself tend to START from the sayings of Jesus and the Gospels, and interpret the rest of Scripture from those “dogmas”; those ESSENTIALS. There is no Leviticus over Jesus for me; there’s rather a reading of Leviticus in the context of a history that culminates and finds its center in Jesus as God’s proclamation of his direction and lorship of history.