Hope for the World: The Message of Everything Must Change

There are so many significant points made in Brian’s new book, Everything Must Change. I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to consider this one of the most important books in the last 50 years. I would certainly call it the most significant contribution coming from within the ranks of the growing emerging church movement.

And why? Well, unlike so many books and blog entries previous, Everything Must Change is about more than deconstruction, about more than conversation – as essential as these points on the Emergent timeline have been. This book is perhaps best described as a manifesto; a vision statement for revitalized, re-energized, re-centered 21st century followers of Jesus. Simply put, it is a way forward.

In Everything Must Change, Brian begins by painting a powerfully frightening, yet realistic picture of our present global infrastructure, labeling it the “suicide machine”. He then calls for a fresh, holistic approach to justice that touches upon the interactive realms of security, capital, and resources. Only a holistic approach, Brian argues, is sufficient to take us off our present course. He also argues, effectively so, that many previous approaches have failed for the very reason that they have not identified the truly interactive nature of these various aspects of the world system.

Not only is this approach reasonable and hopeful, but it is also biblical. And I think that touches upon Brian’s most significant achievement in Everything Must Change, as well as in the earlier the Secret Message of Jesus. In short, Brian has rescued the Bible from the hands of fundamentalists. Rather than distancing himself from the Biblical texts, or suggesting (at least implicitly) that the message is arcane and irrelevant (as mainline churches did in response to perceived modern pressures at the onset of the 20th century), Brian has shone a light at the very heart of the gospel- which of course, is the very heart of the Bible.

And the end result is a challenging call that cannot be ignored- not for those who claim to take the message of Jesus seriously. Notice that I didn’t write “the message about Jesus”, the one-sided systematic view that led to so much gospel truncation, but “the message of Jesus”- the one that calls us to trust, humility, dependence, obedience, and boldness in pursuing a lifestyle of comprehensive, integrated change; change for the individual, change for the community, change for the society, change for the world.

Does this sound like too much for us frail, finite, imperfect human beings? The vessels Scot McKnight has aptly labeled “cracked icons”? Not so, according to Brian. Towards the end of the book he writes,

It’s interesting- astonishing, really- that Jesus doesn’t simply say “Nothing will be impossible for me,” or “Nothing will be impossible with God.” Instead he says, “Nothing will be impossible for you.” This is our call to action, our invitation to move mountains and so reshape the social and spiritual landscape of our world. Yes, change is impossible through human effort alone. But faith brings God’s creative power into our global crises, so the impossible first becomes possible and then inevitable for those who believe.




Everything Must Change: Re-imagining the World as We Know It

There are people out there who would like to paint Brian McLaren as a naïve, neo-hippy, whose ideas are completely impractical for the contemporary world. I think this is a misguided summation of McLaren, both in terms of his imagined means, and his desired ends.

Take American politics for instance, I see Brian as a person who is very aware of the shaping narratives of the “Left” and the “Right” of American society. And I sense that he sees both as bankrupt; specifically because both still function (and were formed) within a doomed system, what he in the book calls the Suicide Machine. “Do what you’ve always done and you’ll get what you’ve always gotten” – as the saying goes.

People who continue to paint McLaren in such light will no doubt be frustrated by the middle section of Everything Must Change. For it is in this section of the book that Brian really begins to throw out the peace rhetoric- only, I don’t think its rhetoric, I think its deadly serious commentary on the systematic folly of our world.

Of course, some people focus on McLaren, conveniently declaring him leftist- (or what-have-you), to avoid addressing the real problem, the problematic question of: what is Jesus really getting at, and- will we take him seriously? The alternative is to continue to ignore him, claiming (perhaps, opportunistically?) that most of the time he was speaking about the next world, the religious hypocrites, those going to Hell, etc… Anyone, but us- especially us good Christians, the ones who wear his name- like an escape clause from the very teachings Jesus tells us are necessary to transform the world!

Brian refuses to let the reader turn this into a “Right” versus “Left” debate. Instead, he constantly throws the spotlight back on Jesus, saying

Please, please don’t make what I’m saying ridiculous by calling it “flower child" theology or relating it to some kind of idealistic, romantic nonsense. Please ask yourself: What is Jesus isn’t being cute and romantic in the Sermon on the Mount? What if he is completely serious and means to be taken seriously? What if he is proposing the ultimate deconstruction- the deconstruction of all human structures, whether scientific preanalytic visions, governments, economies, ideologies, civilizations, and the framing stories that drive them- so that we can be recomposed in our true identity, resituated in God’s primal framing story of creation?

This doesn’t seem like pie in the sky stuff to me. Quite the opposite actually. It’s sobering. Yes, it’s promising, inspiring even… but first and foremost, it is sobering. Because as we reflect on the words and deeds of Jesus as recorded in the gospels, I don’t think any of us can rest comfortably. Because we know, on some deep, soulful level, that what Jesus came to announce and inaugurate was no small, religious clarification, but an all-out revolution that touches, reorients, every aspect of our lives (both individually and collectively) as human beings.




Everything Must Change: Initial Thoughts

Well, my copy of Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope has arrived. I’ve been delving into it for a couple of days now. While I’ll probably write a full review within the next week or so, I wanted to begin to share some thoughts that are “emerging” in real-time.

First off, this book definitely seems to be the logical progression of Brian's last book, The Secret Message of Jesus. In the new book, Brian begins to tackle some of the implications of the ideas explored in TSMOJ. Close to the opening of EMC Brian shares two thoughts that have dominated his thinking for quite some time now, thoughts that arise out of the deeper, richer message of Jesus explored in his previous book. These are:

1.) What are the major problems the world is facing?

2.) What does the teaching of Jesus have to say to possibly address those issues?

Now, such questions seem common-sensical enough, don’t they? And yet, I think many of us would share the sense that these questions have been rarely (if ever) voiced in our various religious contexts. And why? Well, as Brian explains in more detail in the book, because in our conventional theology the assumption is that the problems of the contemporary world are not really the problems the gospel is attempting to address. The problem the gospel is addressing, at least according to the conventional view, is supposedly a greater problem- because it has eternal implications.

The gospel, we were told, addresses the eternal destination/fate of the individual. And as such, the gospel only addresses the world indirectly, in the sense that the world is a collection of individuals. And even then the gospel (in conventional form) has almost nothing to say to the contemporary world- with all its sociological, economic, ethnic, political, religious strife- prior to its supposed inevitable destruction. Now, emerging thought has done much in recent years to question such thinking. And truth be told, there have always been many variations of this dominant, evangelical, conventional theme.

In reading various early responses to Brian’s book, it seems that some see his portrayal of the conventional model as a bit of a caricature- as a straw man who’s easy to knock down. There may be something to this. After all, it is very difficult to hide our biases in such a situation; especially when we’re trying to paint a picture in a paragraph or two. In such instances, we are forced to use broad strokes. Still, I think the fact that many of us shift in our seats when we read such descriptions of the conventional view suggests that the description is hitting pretty close to home; in other words, we recognize it.

When I step back and reexamine this issue a thought occurs to me: with all this talk of good news, doesn’t it seem that the conventional view, as described by Brian in the book, is just not good enough? Now, I know some people might be standing to tear their newly dawned autumn sweaters after reading such a sentence, but please… understand me. I don’t mean to judge God and the goodness of His news. My point is to question if that news is reflective enough of the goodness of God.

After all, God is omnipotent and God is love. So doesn’t it stand to reason that He can do (and would want to do) more than merely save a few of the many, while the rest of humanity and the rest of Creation spiral towards inevitable torment or annihilation? The conventional expression of the good news might be good news of a sort, in a qualified sort of way. But somehow, based on who God is- rather than what I think I am/we are and deserve, it just doesn't quite suffice.

To me, it does stand to reason that God would want to and could do more. And I trust that, because God is above all else-LOVE, that He has done more- that He is constantly doing more; that He has always been about the business of doing more. And I agree with Brian that, as we pay close attention to the words of Jesus, we realize this is what the gospel’s been saying all along. It’s just that our expectations were too small to contain the fullness of the good news.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on Everything Must Change over the coming days… Oh, and by the way, only four days left until Precipice takes on new skin.




McKnight on the Gospel: Identifying the Problem to Which the Kingdom of God Speaks

I think something that anyone postmodernly-sensitized and schooled in church history and biblical studies notices as strange about certain evangelical attitudes about the gospel, is the apparent conviction (and I mean CONVICTION) that the evangelical view being held is historic Christianity- full stop. The people expressing these attitudes see any shifts taking place, or even considered, within the emerging church journey therefore as steps outside of the fold, a dangerous dance with heresy, etc. Of course, much (if admittedly, not all) of what is being considered in the EC conversation is actually much older than many of the roots that birthed much of evangelicalism.

Now, first off, we should point out that evangelicalism has become a much more multi-faced entity than many people give it credit for. However, my guess is that many within the “evangelical church” don’t even realize this. And not only do these people think their one view is evangelicalism incarnate, and the gospel rightly understood, but they also assume it to be the dominant (most widely held) paradigm. Of course, each of these assumptions is misguided.

Scot McKnight (of Jesus Creed) recently helped to draw attention to this apparent blindness in a response to one commentor’s understanding of church and of the gospel. When this poster described the gospel (rather narrowly) as God’s resolution of His own wrath, McKnight responded by writing:

The perspective of the gospel which you outlin(e) didn’t even arise until the Reformation. And even then, the particular formulation you gave is unique to a subset of the tradition flowing from the Reformation. I assumed that was common knowledge and was more interested in discerning why those who hold that perspective believe most Christians are and have been wrong. It didn’t even occur to me that you thought the formulation you gave was common to much of the church today and throughout its history.

For the formulation of the gospel in the ancient church, I would start with Irenaeus and Athanasius and move probably to John Chrysostom and probably one of the Gregories. For the formulation in the Western medieval church (at this point in time the divergence between the East and the West became more marked), I would start with Anselm and Aquinas. Of course, you can’t really ignore the present-day catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, which preserves an extension of that formulation.

And then you have the various formulations flowing from the Reformation which formed the Protestant tradition in the West, one of which is the one you articulated. Neither the Orthodox nor the Roman Catholic tradition would agree with your formulation, which by itself makes it a minority perspective. However, even within Protestantism, it’s just one of several strands, which makes it even more of a minority perspective.

None of which makes it wrong. It’s just a simple statement of the reality. My question, and the one I’ve asked for some years even as I’ve inhabited a Protestant tradition, is simple: What privileges that particular interpretation over the interpretation of the majority of the Church, past and present?

I will also add that if the problem is “sin” (and as I understood you to also say God’s wrath at humanity for introducing sin into creation), I’m not sure I see how “Kingdom of God” is the answer or solution.

This last point of Scot’s is partly in reference to a discussion stemming from Brian McLaren’s new book, Everything Must Change. In EMC Mclaren explores what problem the Kingdom of God is supposedly the solution to in the first place. It appears that the individual that McKnight is responding to is so entrenched in his particular view that he doesn’t even see that his apparent solution doesn’t really even jive with his expression of the problem.

That’s an important point. Logically, if we’re to proclaim that the Kingdom of God really was what Jesus came to speak about, demonstrate, inaugurate, etc, then surely we should know what problem this move was meant to address in the first place.

By the way, I believe my copy of Everything Must Change is in the mail. I’m very much looking forward to reading this book. Brian himself describes this work as the one all of his previous books and study have been leading up to. When asked about Everything Must Change in a recent interview I did with him, Brian said the following,

It's by far the most challenging writing project I've ever taken on. I try to answer two questions in the book: What are the top global crises that we face today? And what does the message of Jesus mean for those global crises? Obviously, I build on my work in 'The Secret Message of Jesus' - and in Luke and Acts with the Voice Project. But I also did a lot of research in the global crises literature. The intersection of the two areas of research is absolutely fascinating, encouraging, and life-changing. I think Jesus' life and message comes to light in a powerful way when you understand it in relation to the top crises of his day. Then, when you bring that message to bear on our top crises, you can feel the electricity sparking ... maybe thunder and lightning would be a better image.



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