Christianity as a package deal

I can’t help but feel that my previous posts have not done justice to Dave Tomlinson’s The Post-Evangelical. Another quote:
…the evangelical gospel tends to be much too “refined.” In other words it is a systematized “A-Z of Everything You Need to Know about Life, Death and Eternity” - it is a “big story” approach to the Christian narrative. It is generally assumed that this “package” represents New Testament Christianity, and yet nowhere was it presented in this way, either by Jesus or the apostles. The pre-packed gospel is really a systematized stringing together of lots of little pieces which in their original context were presented as they stood, without being fitted into a coherent scheme. For example, the young ruler asked what he might do to inherit eternal life: a question almost designed for a modern evangelistic response. Yet Jesus told him to keep the commandments and sell all that he had and give to the poor (Luke 18:19-22). Not a very well rounded gospel messge! No mention of faith. No mention of salvation by faith and not works. No mention of “making a prayer of commitment”!
We need to take seriously Brueggemann’s idea of “funding the postmodern imagination”. He says that when we offer a full alternative world to people, we are acting in the imperialistic style which postmodern people are actually rejecting. Rather than offering truth in the form of a dogmatic grand scheme, we must offer “a lot of little pieces out of which people can put life together in fresh configurations.” (p142)

This is what I was trying to paraphrase earlier, but couldn’t, so I just decided to quote the whole page. Perhaps this is one of the most valuable insights of the whole book, that we need to fuel the imagination and assist others on their journeys, rather than try to sell them a package deal. After all, the gospel is not “Repent and be baptized and become a republican and get married and have kids and own your own home.” It’s “Follow me.”