I have a great deal of sympathy for what Brian McLaren is trying to do, even if I don't always agree with what he has to say as he is doing it. This is the second book of his that I've read; I bought (on a gift card) his A Generous Orthodoxy when it came out. I have sympathy for his project because he is at least recognizing a need to bring the Gospel to a culture which by and large does not hear it.
One of the keys to this book is understanding just who McLaren thinks this book will benefit. He is aiming at a "broad, non scholarly, and in many cases nonreligious audience" (xiii). With that in mind, I suggest that McLaren's book itself has a "secret message" - it is aimed at gradually nudging those who might consider themselves outside the Kingdom to move towards a chink in the city wall.
In this sense I think this is the sort of book I could use with a group of university students: folks who grew up 3 generations from the church and generally think that Christianity is the caricature that McLaren often presents. It is the kind of book that will bring up questions: particularly if all you've ever been exposed to is the 4 Spiritual Laws. I would consider it a refugee camp for those fleeing certain kinds of church experience. It is a stopping place, and hopefully will propel you further.
The book is about "the kingdom", and specifically what McLaren thinks has been either "unintentionally misunderstood or intentionally distorted" in Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God. He divides the work into 3 parts.
First he gives some brief sketches of the historical, and particularly political, background to Jesus message. He does this against what he sees as a backdrop of individualism in contemporary culture and within the modern evangelical churches. As he says, "although Jesus message was personal, it was not private". (10) The stress is laid on Jesus teaching that the kingdom of heaven is "at hand". This stands in contrast to what Oliver O Donovan calls the Protestant preference for maintaining the distance between heaven and earth.
McLaren is big on the "hiddenness" of Jesus' teaching about the "public" nature this "at hand" kingdom. For him, this is part of Jesus' desire that the message of the kingdom
wasn't obvious, wasn't easy to grasp, wasn't like a simple mathematical formula that can quickly be learned and repeated. [T]he message of Jesus was less like an advertising slogan...and more like a poem whose meaning only comes subtly and quietly to those who read slowly, think long and deeply, and refuse to give up... (34)
I can guess who he's talking about in a few of these references. Part of what he does in the first section of the book is draw attention to caricatures, or accurate descriptions - take your pick - of modern American Christianity. The church didn't get the message, but now we are slowly beginning to understand it.
In the second part of the book, entitled "Engagement: grappling with the meaning of Jesus' message", McLaren takes us on a selective tour of Jesus' ministry and teaching, followed by some brief references to Paul. Here he focuses on what he sees as the method of Jesus' message: parable, signs and wonders, story and personal encounter with the disenfranchised. This personal approach of Jesus is coupled with a nod to the challenge to wider political and economic structures. The focus again is that the message is personal but not private: it always has a public dimension.
It is in this second part that McLaren lays out one of his key points: "God isn't positioned outside the universe, reaching in occasionally, but rather God is here, in it with us, present, near." (60) It is this immanence of God, this collapsing of the traditional distance between heaven and earth, that McLaren sees as the thrust of Jesus' message of the kingdom. We are under a "gentle, compassionate assault by a kingdom of peace and healing and forgiveness and life. Could Jesus' secret message become any clearer than that?" (60)
If, horror of horrors, McLaren's book is like a three point sermon, then the last section is about application. I'm sure he can forgive me for using the term. His starting point is the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) which he calls Jesus' "kingdom manifesto". (117) He challenges his readers to look at the Beatitudes as prescriptive - a kingdom way of living.
He introduces his reading to a "revolutionary, counter cultural movement" (134). In opposition to the present kingdoms of money, sex and power, he invites his readers to consider the practices of generosity to the poor, fasting as a means of resisting mere physical gratification, and prayer as a means of humility.
McLaren also has concern around the language of the kingdom (138 ff.) and although I think his concern is genuine, the alternate metaphors he proposes (God's dream, revolution, dance, etc) tend to take away the essential nature of kingdom - and that is the person of the King. There is probably much in this last section that will provoke criticism, He is unabashedly pacifist, although he holds out an olive branch to Christians who may hold other opinions. He seems to reject the claims of some of his critics in his treatment of the "borders of the kingdom" - his is not an easy going universalism. His treatment of prophecy in general and the book of Revelation in particular is sure to challenge a few Tim LaHaye fans. He takes a roundabout stab at the traditional notion of heaven and the afterlife, mainly through the writings of C.S. Lewis. McLaren ends the book with suggestions for putting the kingdom into practice, as if to reinforce again that it's not about "getting into heaven when you die", but living the kingdom life here and now, because it is at hand.
The Money Quote:
If you are part of this kingdom, you won't curse and damn the notorious sinners and scoundrels to hell, instead...[you will be] less afraid of their polluting influence on you than you are hopeful about your possible healing and ennobling influence on them" (18)
As he warned not everything has been said in this book. And I would hope that it is the Holy Spirit (a neglected character in this book) who effects both the courage in me to act, and the healing of the world.
ps - don't be surprised to find an edit or two on this tomorrow; I'm in between providing glasses of water and finding favorite blankets as I'm finishing...
Posted by: joseph | July 18, 2006 at 10:07 PM