Tag: Brian McLaren

What Jesus Meant

The popular Christian question “What would Jesus do?” is not an especially useful one, Wills notes, for Jesus did many things we would not, and should not, do. Should Christian believers today, Wills asks, “like Jesus, forbid a man from attending his own father’s funeral… or tell others to hate their parents?… Are they justified in telling others, ‘I come not imposing peace, I impose not peace but the sword’…? Or ‘I am come to throw fire on the earth’…?” Such moments in the Gospels, Wills writes, “were acts meant to show that he is not just like us, that he has higher rights and powers… [as] a divine mystery walking among men.”

– John Meachum reviewing Garry Wills’s book What Jesus Meant

“We must ask what Jesus meant by his strange words and deeds. In other words, if we focus on what Jesus said without determining what He meant in his original context, we run the risk of misquoting Jesus even when quoting His words.”

– Brian McLaren Everything Must Change

re: Everything Must Change

Some more thoughts from Chp 3 of Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change:

Trying to spur some more discussion for our book club….

In Chp 3 McLaren talks about his visit to Bujumbura in Africa. As a meeting he was scheduled to speak at began he writes that the guy who brought him to the conference says that as a son of a preacher and going to church all his life, sometimes five times a week, in all his childhood he “only heard one sermon.”

Ouch! He says that one sermon was heard over and over again every week. “You are a sinner and you are going to hell. You need to repent and believe in Jesus. Jesus might come back today, and if he does and you are not ready, you will burn in hell.”

Growing up I can’t say that this was the case for me, but then again I can’t say I remember any sermons from my childhood through probably high school.

After graduating high school I began attending Baptist churches, including on very conservative Baptist church and I would say that that was almost the case for that particular church – only mixing in sermons about the importance of tithing.

How does that compare to your life growing up? How does that compare to English and Scottish churches or churches around the rest of the world? How do messages like that help Christians grow?

Is that typical in other churches? Do our churches continue to ignore ideas like hatred, distrust between tribes/neighbors, poverty, suffering, corruption, injustice? I feel that at encounter we’re closer to addressing these issues but we could be doing more.

“They told us how to go to heaven. But they left out an important detail. They didn’t tell us how the will of God could be done on earth.”

McLaren suggests this isn’t just an African problem – and I would tend to agree. Did North American church leaders teach the early colonists to treat the Native Peoples with love and respect? Did they consistently and with one voice appose slavery? Did they express outrage over the exploitation of factory workers or the second-class status of women? Did they/do we stand up for refugees and immigrants? Did they oppose white privilege, segregation, anti-Semitism, stereotyping or Muslims and other forms of ethnic prejudice? Did they see the environment as God’s sacred creation that deserves to be cherished and conserved?

Lots of places I believe the church has failed and continues to fail…

Jesus continued to talk about “the kingdom of God.” McLaren says this idea – contrary to popular belief – was not focused on how to escape this world and its problems by going to heaven after death, but instead was focused on how God’s will could be done on earth, in history, during this life.

McLaren continues and says the Gospel is not just a message about Jesus that focuses on the afterlife – but that the Gospel is the core message of Jesus that focuses on personal, social and global transformation in this life.

What does that mean to you? Is that idea contrary to your beliefs? Does it help answer some of the questions about your faith?

Interview with Brian McLaren


Scott tipped me off to Next-Wave Ezine, where I found a recent interview with “Everything Must Change” author Brian McLaren.

Here’s a preview:

Question: At the beginning of the book ( p.3) you write: “And not only am I often unsatisfied with conventional answers, but even worse, I’ve consistently been unsatisfied with conventional questions.” One interpretation of this remark might be, “conventional questions produce conventional answers.” Is it your position that a large proportion of professed Christians have succumbed to a convenient living out of their faith that is askew with the teachings and life of Christ?

McLaren: Well, I think many people are doing their best to live out their faith in sync with the teachings and life of Christ, but it’s not easy to figure out what that means, especially in changing times. Some things are easy – like knowing you shouldn’t hate or commit adultery or kill. But pretty quickly, it gets complex – like knowing whether pre-emptive and hastily-launched wars fit under killing, for example. And that gets to what I mean about conventional questions. We have lots of religious arguments about the origin of the species, but far fewer dialogues about the extinction of species and what we can do to save species that we all agree are precious parts of God’s creation. We have lots of religious arguments about homosexuality, but far fewer conversations about the growing gap between rich and poor and what we can do about it. We argue about what to do about abortion, but we seem much less concerned about what to do about racial disharmony and political polarization and how we can be peacemakers and reconcilers. I’m not saying the common arguments are unimportant, only that less common questions deserve a lot more attention. I hope my book will help in that regard.

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Everything Must Change: Chp 1 :: Hope Happens

As I mentioned earlier, I finished the first section of Everything Must Change by Brian D. McLaren last night. It’s part of our book club reading for the month.
At the end of every chapter are several questions to consider, mull over. I posted my answers to all of them within the book club forum but thought I’d share some of them here as well:

Q: As you begin this book, what are you most excited about? Confused or curious about? Eager to learn more about? What feelings has this chapter elicited in you?

A: I’m excited about the idea of changing the world. Often times I feel like Evan Almighty though and I want to change the world, but I’m not totally sure how. Then God comes along and tells me to build an ark – or whatever it might be and I buck at his idea and think well that’s not how I want to do it.

I’ve been a big fan of the idea I’ve been reading/seeing more and more lately of bringing God’s Kingdom to earth. Isn’t that what’s going to happen in the end anyways (Revelations)? But what if we could bring about such change that our world/life really is “on earth as it is in heaven.” Wow!

Some of the thoughts that stood out to me:

…”a new kind of Christian” – not an angry and reactionary fundamentalist, not a stuffy tradistionalist, not a blase’ nominalist, not a wishy-washy liberal, not a New Agey religious hipster, not a crusading religious imperialist, and not an overly enthused Bible-waving fanatic – but something fresh and authentic and challenging and adventurous.

(one of my favorite Mike Huckabee quotes was when he was on the Daily Show – something to the effect of: “I’m a conservative but I’m not angry about it.” he also said, ““I think life begins at conception but I don’t think it ends at birth. We have to be concerned about a child’s education, and health care, safe neighborhoods, clean water and the access to a college education. That is pro-life. To care about a child’s entire life.” I think that’s right up with what McLaren is getting at.)

… the versions of Christianity we inherited are largely flattened, watered down, tamed… offering us a ticket to heaven after death, but not challenging us to address the issues that threaten life on earth.

Jesus’ message is not actually about escaping this troubled world for heaven’s blissful shores, as is popularly assumed, but instead is about God’s will being done on this troubled earth as it is in heaven.

Q: How do you react to the summary of global crises in this chapter – environmental breakdown, the growing gap between rich and poor, the danger of cataclysmic war, and failure of the world’s religions to address the first three crises? think of the issues you’ve seen in the headlines lately. How do they fit under these four categories?

A: I think I’ve seen all of those rampant in our world and I think it’s a good tight summary of what we’re seeing.

Q: This chapter introduces the subject of hope. How would you describe your level of hope about global crises as you begin this book?

A: As an American in the middle of a presidential election I can see glimpses of hope in people and politicians. There are candidates that offer me hope and an ideal that things could actually change for once. I pray that happens.

Bush’s ungiven speech

On October 1, 2001, President George W. Bush did not give the following speech to a special
session of Congress. The speech did not interrupt regularly scheduled broadcasts on television
and radio. It did not interrupt and change the current of history either…

But what if he had…

Read Bush’s ungiven speech, as written by Brian McLaren, author of Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, which we plan to read this month for Headphonaught’s Book Club.