The 2 Questions...Everything Must Change (2)

Brian asks himself and us the two big questions:

#1 What are the biggest problems in the world today?
#2 What does Jesus have to say about these global problems?

Unfortunately, too many of today's Evangelicals would answer #1 as something to the effect of "people are dying and going to hell." And there's no question that's a problem. But the tendency is to focus on the "going to hell" part and not the "dying" part. I think Brian's trying to change that tendency. We have allowed the kingdom of God to be redefined as going to heaven when you die. But Jesus talked about the kingdom at hand, the kingdom here and now, the good news for us today. I have adopted as my own metaphor Brian's use of "God's dreams coming true" as how I try to describe the kingdom of heaven. God has dreams for this world, as we have dreams for our kids. He wants those dreams to become reality. But they don't always do so. I think that this is better than talking about God's "will", which can be a confusing topic, especially when you deal with evil and suffering. But talking about God's dreams for this world brings a fresh perspective into the discussion. Yes, he could snap his fingers and make his dreams come true, but he's not into that. For some reason, he has chosen to work in and through us to make his dreams come true, his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

For Brian some of this came to a head when he was visiting Africa to speak in a pastor's conference. He had many discussions with those pastors, and they referred to the kingdom of God often in terms of colonial and post-colonial worldviews. Colonial thinking led to certain attitudes and actions from both the colonizers and the colonized. Post-colonial thinking changes those radically for both groups of people. Put yourself in either group, and let your imagination wonder for a few minutes, and you'll get the picture.

In the same way, colonialism is like "the gospel of avoiding hell" and post-colonialism like "the gospel of the kingdom of God." The reason "everything must change" is because the old way of looking at the gospel as hell-avoidance led to many wrong conclusions about how to approach this life. As one participant in the African conference said "Today, for the first time, I see what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. I see that it's about changing this world, not just escaping it and retreating into our churches. If Jesus' message of the kingdom of God is true, then everything must change. Everything must change."

So what does Jesus have to say about the world's greatest problems? What does he say about war, poverty, slavery, human-trafficking, AIDS/HIV and other epidemics, and the like?

Everything Must Change

It's no secret that Brian McLaren is one of my favorite writers. When a friend recommended "A New Kind of Christian" to me years ago as being reflective of my own journey in following Jesus, I immediately knew I had found a close friend (only in writing; I've never met Brian, but I will use his first name a lot because McLaren is harder to type...). In the semi-fictional New Kind of Christian series, Brian introduces us to some characters that are grappling with following Jesus without the constructs of modernity. Some of his other books regurgitate earlier material, but last year's "Everything Must Change" is, I think, a groundbreaking work for what followers of Jesus ought to be doing in our world today.

So since I'm nearly finished reading the book, I want to spend some time blogging on it as a review for myself and hopefully a challenge for you, the 3.4 readers of this blog.

In chapter 1, Brian introduces some of his (awesome if you ask me) metaphors used throughout his speaking and writing. He talks about our "framing story" or worldview, or what Lesslie Newbiggen called "plausibility structures" as what really needs to change. Throughout the book he confronts us with places where we've bought into an unbiblical, even ungodly framing story and somehow baptized it with a few Christian pieces and claim it as belonging to Jesus.

He also uses the term "suicide machine" to describe the corrupt systems that infiltrate our world--particularly the economic, political and military systems--and reprograms them to work for evil instead of good. He alternatively uses "an undetected storm, an undiagnosed disease, an unacknowledged addiction, or a machine that has gone destructive" metaphors to describe "our plethora of critical global crises" in our world today.

What are those crises? Let's end today's post with Brian's list:

1. Environmental breakdown directly caused by corrupted, unsustainable economic systems in the suicide machine (prosperity crisis).

2. The huge and growing gap between rich and poor (equity crisis).

3. The danger of cataclysmic war we constantly live with (security crisis).

4. The failure of the world's religions to provide a framing story capable of healing or reducing the three previous crises (spirituality crisis).