McLaren's New Book 'Everything Must Change'

[Sing4Him]

HERE IS A REVIEW OF MCLAREN'S NEW BOOK:

October 16, 2007
McLaren's New Book 'Everything Must Change'
- Part 1

Brian McLaren's new book 'Everything Must Change' marks a significant turning point in the Emergent Conversation. This book, unlike McLaren's previous works clearly DEFINES emergent thought and theology. McLaren is apparently finished with his deconstruction and chemotherapy on the 'cancer' of American Evangelicalism and he is now ready to reveal the new religion that he has been constructing all along.

'Everything Must Change' is a manifesto. Having just finished the book, the best way that I could condense and describe McLaren's ideas is that he has created a hybrid of Theism and Neo-Utopian Marxism. McLaren's 'new religion' is globally pragmatic and re-imagines Jesus' life and message so that they can be applied to solving the Earth's most pressing problems (as identified by the United Nations). In order to do this, McLaren completely retools the Biblical message and Jesus' life in particular in terms of social, political and economic struggles and injustices.

In "Everything Must Change" we learn that in McLaren's way of thinking, the primary problem that the Bible is trying to solve is mankind's injustice to mankind. In the opening chapters McLaren warns us that humanity is about to commit planetary suicide through the selfish misapplications of our security, prosperity and equity systems. Since THIS problem is the 'real evil' that we face (not our sinfulness), Jesus' actual reason for coming to Earth was to call mankind to defect from the Imperialistic framing stories that justify oppression and resource hoarding and call humanity to adopt His new 'framing story' of peace, non-violence and social / economic justice.

In McLaren's theology Jesus' death on the cross wasn't a sacrifice for our sins. Instead, Jesus' death demonstrated the injustice and brutality of the Imperial System. Therefore, according to McLaren, the real solution for all of our problems is for us to defect from Imperialism and Theo-capitalism and follow Jesus' example and adopt Jesus' new framing story. McLaren believes that if humanity does this, we will be able to eradicate global poverty, end social and economic injustice, heal the planet's eco-system and achieve God's original vision and dream for mankind. In short, McLaren argues that WE can build 'The Kingdom of God' on Earth. All we need to do is adopt and implement Jesus' 'framing story' of peace, justice and an economy of love.

To give you a taste of McLaren's thinking, here is a passage from his book where he warns us of the evils of 'Theo-Capitalism' by reinterpreting the early chapters of Genesis through an economic / class warfare lens. Said McLaren:

"It's interesting to consider the importance of consumption in the biblical narrative. When the crisis of human evil is introduced in a passage beginning in Genesis 1:19 and ending in 2:20, forms of the words "eat" and "food" are used about twenty times. Consumption is closely linked with human evil. Adam and Eve live in harmony with creation in a garden, surrounded by food-bearing trees. But to be a human being is to live within creaturly limits in God's creation - reflected in self-restraint in regard to eating the fruit of 'the knowledge of good and evil' (Genesis 2:17). If they break the limits represented by the fruit hanging on that tree, they will taste death (or as we said earlier, they will decompose).
Eve exceeds the limit, drawn to consume a fruit that "was good for food and was pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom" (3:6). Adam joins her. As a result, an avalanche of alienation crashes into the human story - alienation from God, alienation from one another, alienation from oneself, and alienation from the creation.

In the following chapters, brother is alienated from brother and a form of class violence enters the story, as the class of pastoralists (symbolized by Abel) are exterminated by the class of agriculturalists (symbolized by Cain). Soon new forms of institutionalized violence arise in great cities, so horrible that they are swept away by a flood of judgment. Eventually empires emerge, reflecting the imperial dream of unifying people under one dominating language and culture in Babel. Genesis provides a genealogy for all the pain and evil in the whole social structure of humans on planet Earth: it can be traced back to a problem of consumption beyond limits." (pages 209-210)


Notice that McLaren is injecting a Marxist framework into his interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis. Gone are the ideas of sin, rebellion, disobedience against God, the fall of man, and the Lord's solution to our sin in the promise of a savior. McLaren has replaced those Biblical themes with the economic & political categories of consumption, class warfare and imperialism.

In "Everything Must Change" we are finally able to see what McLaren has really been up to. In this book we are witnessing the emergence of a North American Protestant strain of Liberation Theology and a resurgent "Religious Left" that will have a twisted Biblical 'framing story' that they can use to impose their interpretation of the 'common good' upon all of us in the name of God's new 'Love Economy'.

CONTINUES IN PART 2
http://www.extremetheology.com/

[Sing4Him]

October 17, 2007
Part 2 - McLaren’s “Everything Must Change”: Jesus’ Second Coming

Since Jesus’ ascension (Acts 1:6-7) Christians have been waiting and hoping for Jesus’ promised second coming in order to judge both the living and dead and visibly establish His Kingdom on Earth. This doctrine has such an important place in Christian thinking that it is confessed in both the Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed.

The Apostles Creed confesses:

He (Jesus) ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

The Nicene Creed confesses:

And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.

Jesus’ return in glory has been the hope of Christians for two millennia. But we learn in “Everything Must Change” that this is NOT Brian McLaren’s hope at all!
Brian McLaren has re-imagined and re-crafted a kinder and gentler Jesus who WOULD NEVER return to judge the world and forcefully establish His Kingdom on Earth. The "Jesus" that McLaren has created is more like Ghandi. McLaren's "Jesus" works by subverting Imperialism through the use of non-violence and would never utilize the methods of Imperialism to establish his own kingdom.

Said McLaren:

“The phrase “the Second Coming of Christ” never actually appears in the Bible. Whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers deserves re-thinking, a popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and rejected. If we believe that Jesus came in peace the first time, but that wasn’t his “real” and decisive coming - it was just a kind of warm-up for the real thing - then we leave the door open to envisioning a second coming that will be characterized by violence, killing, domination, and eternal torture. This vision reflects a diversion, a return to trust in the power of Pilate, not the unarmed truth that stood before Pilate, refusing to fight...
If we remain charmed by this kind of eschatology, we will be forced to see the nonviolence of the Jesus of the Gospels as a kind of strategic fake-out, like a feigned retreat in war, to be followed up by a crushing blow of so-called redemptive violence in the end. The gentle Jesus of the first coming becomes a kind of trick Jesus, a fake-me-out Messiah, to be replaced by the true jihadist Jesus of a violent second coming.

This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John’s Apocalypse are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral.” (page 144).:ohno


McLaren’s newly re-imagined "Jesus" didn’t come to Earth to die for the sins of the world. (Mclaren and other emergents like him reject and ridicule the Penal Substitionary Atonement). Instead, McLaren’s "Jesus" is a blend of non-violent civil rights leaders like Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bishop Desmund Tutu. In McLaren's thinking, Jesus’ death on the cross, much like Martin Luther King Jr.'s assination, exposed the brutality and injustice of the Imperial System. The mission of McLaren’s "Jesus", much like Ghandi's, was to teach us a 'new framing story' that would topple imperialism through the practice of non-violence and defection from empire. Since the historic Christian teaching that Jesus ‘will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead’ requires Jesus to utilize violence and imperial tactics to establish His kingdom on Earth, McLaren concludes that the historic Christian doctrine regarding the Second Coming is a false and immoral eschatology that turns Jesus into a jihadist rather than an unarmed non-violent peace maker.

Let’s review what the scriptures teach regarding Jesus Second Coming and then we can determine which teaching is false and immoral.

Since McLaren thinks that dubious interpretations of book of Revelation are to blame for the formation of these immoral eschatologies I’ll only quote passages from other books of the Bible and will start with the Jesus’ words from the gospels.

In John 5:28-29 Jesus says,

“Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”
In Matthew 24:27, 29-31 Jesus says,

“For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.... 29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
Jesus continues in Matthew 25:31-33 by saying:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.”
Jesus says that He will then judge the sheep and the goats. Regarding the goats Jesus ultimately says, “And these will go away into eternal punishment”. Regarding the sheep Jesus says they will enter into ‘eternal life’ (v46).

The Apostle Paul writing about Jesus Second Coming says this in 1 Thess 4:15-18:

“For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord,* that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
Paul continues in 1 Thess 5:1-3 by saying:



“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”

Finally, the author to the Hebrews writes, in Hebrews 9:28:

“So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”:lol2

Every one of the passages quoted above make it perfectly clear that the Historic and Biblical Jesus promises and intends to return to Earth a second time. When he appears, HE SAYS that He will come in glory with the angels and will judge the living and the dead. McLaren doesn't like this inconvenient Biblical truth. It contradicts the nature of the "Jesus Idol" that he has created for himself. That is why he attacks the Biblical Jesus by calling Him an immoral Imperialist and a Jihadist.:ohno

So I ask you, who is truly being immoral here. Is it immoral for Jesus to return a second time in power and glory to judge the living and the dead (afterall, Jesus is God)? Or is it immoral for Brian McLaren to refashion Jesus in such a way that McLaren could call the Biblical doctrine of Jesus’ second coming an evil act of jihadi imperialism?

More to Come in Part 3:ohno

[farmgirl]

IMO 'Everything Must Change' says it all. Our God does not change.

[billiefan2000]

Mc Laren= 2 Timothy 4:3-4


For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

[WhitemoonG]

Just more evidence that Mclaren's theology is that he doesn't have any theology.

Maybe he should write scripts for the next version of Star Trek.

[goinghome]

HERE IS A REVIEW OF MCLAREN'S NEW BOOK:

October 16, 2007
McLaren's New Book 'Everything Must Change'
- Part 1

Brian McLaren's new book 'Everything Must Change' marks a significant turning point in the Emergent Conversation. This book, unlike McLaren's previous works clearly DEFINES emergent thought and theology. McLaren is apparently finished with his deconstruction and chemotherapy on the 'cancer' of American Evangelicalism and he is now ready to reveal the new religion that he has been constructing all along.

'Everything Must Change' is a manifesto. Having just finished the book, the best way that I could condense and describe McLaren's ideas is that he has created a hybrid of Theism and Neo-Utopian Marxism. McLaren's 'new religion' is globally pragmatic and re-imagines Jesus' life and message so that they can be applied to solving the Earth's most pressing problems (as identified by the United Nations). In order to do this, McLaren completely retools the Biblical message and Jesus' life in particular in terms of social, political and economic struggles and injustices.

In "Everything Must Change" we learn that in McLaren's way of thinking, the primary problem that the Bible is trying to solve is mankind's injustice to mankind. In the opening chapters McLaren warns us that humanity is about to commit planetary suicide through the selfish misapplications of our security, prosperity and equity systems. Since THIS problem is the 'real evil' that we face (not our sinfulness), Jesus' actual reason for coming to Earth was to call mankind to defect from the Imperialistic framing stories that justify oppression and resource hoarding and call humanity to adopt His new 'framing story' of peace, non-violence and social / economic justice.

In McLaren's theology Jesus' death on the cross wasn't a sacrifice for our sins. Instead, Jesus' death demonstrated the injustice and brutality of the Imperial System. Therefore, according to McLaren, the real solution for all of our problems is for us to defect from Imperialism and Theo-capitalism and follow Jesus' example and adopt Jesus' new framing story. McLaren believes that if humanity does this, we will be able to eradicate global poverty, end social and economic injustice, heal the planet's eco-system and achieve God's original vision and dream for mankind. In short, McLaren argues that WE can build 'The Kingdom of God' on Earth. All we need to do is adopt and implement Jesus' 'framing story' of peace, justice and an economy of love.

To give you a taste of McLaren's thinking, here is a passage from his book where he warns us of the evils of 'Theo-Capitalism' by reinterpreting the early chapters of Genesis through an economic / class warfare lens. Said McLaren:

"It's interesting to consider the importance of consumption in the biblical narrative. When the crisis of human evil is introduced in a passage beginning in Genesis 1:19 and ending in 2:20, forms of the words "eat" and "food" are used about twenty times. Consumption is closely linked with human evil. Adam and Eve live in harmony with creation in a garden, surrounded by food-bearing trees. But to be a human being is to live within creaturly limits in God's creation - reflected in self-restraint in regard to eating the fruit of 'the knowledge of good and evil' (Genesis 2:17). If they break the limits represented by the fruit hanging on that tree, they will taste death (or as we said earlier, they will decompose).
Eve exceeds the limit, drawn to consume a fruit that "was good for food and was pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom" (3:6). Adam joins her. As a result, an avalanche of alienation crashes into the human story - alienation from God, alienation from one another, alienation from oneself, and alienation from the creation.

In the following chapters, brother is alienated from brother and a form of class violence enters the story, as the class of pastoralists (symbolized by Abel) are exterminated by the class of agriculturalists (symbolized by Cain). Soon new forms of institutionalized violence arise in great cities, so horrible that they are swept away by a flood of judgment. Eventually empires emerge, reflecting the imperial dream of unifying people under one dominating language and culture in Babel. Genesis provides a genealogy for all the pain and evil in the whole social structure of humans on planet Earth: it can be traced back to a problem of consumption beyond limits." (pages 209-210)


Notice that McLaren is injecting a Marxist framework into his interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis. Gone are the ideas of sin, rebellion, disobedience against God, the fall of man, and the Lord's solution to our sin in the promise of a savior. McLaren has replaced those Biblical themes with the economic & political categories of consumption, class warfare and imperialism.

In "Everything Must Change" we are finally able to see what McLaren has really been up to. In this book we are witnessing the emergence of a North American Protestant strain of Liberation Theology and a resurgent "Religious Left" that will have a twisted Biblical 'framing story' that they can use to impose their interpretation of the 'common good' upon all of us in the name of God's new 'Love Economy'.

CONTINUES IN PART 2
http://www.extremetheology.com/


Sounds like the current liberal left bible. Will they be handing these books out in exchange for votes?

[goinghome]

October 17, 2007
Part 2 - McLaren’s “Everything Must Change”: Jesus’ Second Coming

Since Jesus’ ascension (Acts 1:6-7) Christians have been waiting and hoping for Jesus’ promised second coming in order to judge both the living and dead and visibly establish His Kingdom on Earth. This doctrine has such an important place in Christian thinking that it is confessed in both the Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed.

The Apostles Creed confesses:

He (Jesus) ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.

The Nicene Creed confesses:

And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And He will come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.

Jesus’ return in glory has been the hope of Christians for two millennia. But we learn in “Everything Must Change” that this is NOT Brian McLaren’s hope at all!
Brian McLaren has re-imagined and re-crafted a kinder and gentler Jesus who WOULD NEVER return to judge the world and forcefully establish His Kingdom on Earth. The "Jesus" that McLaren has created is more like Ghandi. McLaren's "Jesus" works by subverting Imperialism through the use of non-violence and would never utilize the methods of Imperialism to establish his own kingdom.

Said McLaren:

“The phrase “the Second Coming of Christ” never actually appears in the Bible. Whether or not the doctrine to which the phrase refers deserves re-thinking, a popular abuse of it certainly needs to be named and rejected. If we believe that Jesus came in peace the first time, but that wasn’t his “real” and decisive coming - it was just a kind of warm-up for the real thing - then we leave the door open to envisioning a second coming that will be characterized by violence, killing, domination, and eternal torture. This vision reflects a diversion, a return to trust in the power of Pilate, not the unarmed truth that stood before Pilate, refusing to fight...
If we remain charmed by this kind of eschatology, we will be forced to see the nonviolence of the Jesus of the Gospels as a kind of strategic fake-out, like a feigned retreat in war, to be followed up by a crushing blow of so-called redemptive violence in the end. The gentle Jesus of the first coming becomes a kind of trick Jesus, a fake-me-out Messiah, to be replaced by the true jihadist Jesus of a violent second coming.

This is why I believe that many of our current eschatologies, intoxicated by dubious interpretations of John’s Apocalypse are not only ignorant and wrong, but dangerous and immoral.” (page 144).:ohno


McLaren’s newly re-imagined "Jesus" didn’t come to Earth to die for the sins of the world. (Mclaren and other emergents like him reject and ridicule the Penal Substitionary Atonement). Instead, McLaren’s "Jesus" is a blend of non-violent civil rights leaders like Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bishop Desmund Tutu. In McLaren's thinking, Jesus’ death on the cross, much like Martin Luther King Jr.'s assination, exposed the brutality and injustice of the Imperial System. The mission of McLaren’s "Jesus", much like Ghandi's, was to teach us a 'new framing story' that would topple imperialism through the practice of non-violence and defection from empire. Since the historic Christian teaching that Jesus ‘will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead’ requires Jesus to utilize violence and imperial tactics to establish His kingdom on Earth, McLaren concludes that the historic Christian doctrine regarding the Second Coming is a false and immoral eschatology that turns Jesus into a jihadist rather than an unarmed non-violent peace maker.

Let’s review what the scriptures teach regarding Jesus Second Coming and then we can determine which teaching is false and immoral.

Since McLaren thinks that dubious interpretations of book of Revelation are to blame for the formation of these immoral eschatologies I’ll only quote passages from other books of the Bible and will start with the Jesus’ words from the gospels.

In John 5:28-29 Jesus says,

“Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”
In Matthew 24:27, 29-31 Jesus says,

“For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.... 29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
Jesus continues in Matthew 25:31-33 by saying:

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left.”
Jesus says that He will then judge the sheep and the goats. Regarding the goats Jesus ultimately says, “And these will go away into eternal punishment”. Regarding the sheep Jesus says they will enter into ‘eternal life’ (v46).

The Apostle Paul writing about Jesus Second Coming says this in 1 Thess 4:15-18:

“For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord,* that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.”
Paul continues in 1 Thess 5:1-3 by saying:



“Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”

Finally, the author to the Hebrews writes, in Hebrews 9:28:

“So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”:lol2

Every one of the passages quoted above make it perfectly clear that the Historic and Biblical Jesus promises and intends to return to Earth a second time. When he appears, HE SAYS that He will come in glory with the angels and will judge the living and the dead. McLaren doesn't like this inconvenient Biblical truth. It contradicts the nature of the "Jesus Idol" that he has created for himself. That is why he attacks the Biblical Jesus by calling Him an immoral Imperialist and a Jihadist.:ohno

So I ask you, who is truly being immoral here. Is it immoral for Jesus to return a second time in power and glory to judge the living and the dead (afterall, Jesus is God)? Or is it immoral for Brian McLaren to refashion Jesus in such a way that McLaren could call the Biblical doctrine of Jesus’ second coming an evil act of jihadi imperialism?

More to Come in Part 3:ohno

Satan himself has inspired this. Unbelievable!

[Cloud Watcher]

Just a bunch of hogwash.

[Sing4Him]

bump

[StarryEyedLad]

I said this in the previous post on Mr. McLaren's book and I'll say it again!

EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE?

No thanks, Mr. McLaren. I'll take a pass.

I like my faith just the way it is, thank you.