Brian will be revisiting the Mars Hill GR community in August, and it'd been a long time since I read A New Kind of Christian and The Story We Find Ourselves In, so I wanted to refresh my memory on Brian's perspective. The Secret Message of Jesus had been sitting on the bookshelf for, oh, at least two years. I guess it was the natural best choice (as opposed to buying a new book -- you can't buy a new one when an old one is still unread, right?)

Some of you may have read this years ago, so what I am about to say is probably late to the game. And much of this material has been used here by Rob Bell in his teaching on Philippians earlier in the year, so some of the ideas I am already being swayed toward anyway. But, for me and where I'm at right now, there is some mind-boggling and at times earth-shattering stuff in here. I just finished it tonight and plan to read it again soon.

Simple ideas like, "What is the secret message of Jesus?" Years ago I would've answered that it is to have a relationship with him and try to share the good news with others because they need to go to heaven and live in eternity with God. And that is a nice, easy way of understanding the Gospel. But what McLaren (and NT Wright and many others I am now finding) is unpacking is a Gospel that is so much stronger than I've ever understood. I feel like I am becoming a Christian, or perhaps a "new kind of Christian," yes, that is certain.

McLaren says that the secret message of Jesus is that the Kingdom of God is at hand. And that his parables and teaching play into this secret, central message. It is the most hopeful message ever introduced to the human need, and it is a message that we are to play a huge role in no matter where we are on the social scale.

Because Jesus bled and agonized and fully gave himself, even forsaken by the Father at the time of his death, because of this we are able to bring the kingdom of heaven here, now, in any way we can. Spoken truths, networking, shared meals, kindness, social justice -- these are all ways in which we can participate in bringing God's kingdom to this earth. We are freed to do so because Jesus has already introduced us to it.

The kingdom of God, Brian says, "is a revolutionary counter-cultural movement -- proclaiming a ceaseless rebellion against the tyrannical trinity of money, sex, and power..." And he shows us over and over again that many of the verses we once thought to understand, placed in their day and original context, were actually huge political reactions against Caesar and his brutality.

Understanding the story of Jesus and his secret message in the context of which the time the story took place leads to a greater appreciation for everything Christ said and did, for those people, as well as for us.

I can't recommend this book enough if you haven't read it yet. I actually flipped through my Bible over and over again, rereading Jesus' words and the original stories, with I think a greater understanding than ever before. It was beautiful.

Now a question: In the sense of advancing many of these new concepts and thoughts, what should my first NT Wright reading be?

I'm sure my initial reaction is in some way colored by my general dislike for McLaren's work, but I'm pretty sure I would want to throw any book titled "The Secret Message of Jesus" out the window regardless of who the author was. Was Jesus's message supposed to be a secret? And if so, is McLaren concerned that he might get in trouble for revealing it? Or was Jesus just such a bad communicator that no one got his message until McLaren showed up to clear things up for him?

I'm glad you got so much out of it stef, really. And I haven't read it myself (I've read ANKOC, part of TSWFOI, and Everything Must Change.) But I find a general arrogance in his work that astounds me, and a title like "The Secret Message of Jesus" only serves to reinforce that perception in my mind. (And "A New Kind of Christian" isn't far behind...) Unless it's tongue-in-cheek and I've missed the irony, I'd put it right next to my copy of "Six Easy Steps to Being a Better Christian." What's the title of his next book going to be? "Twenty Things About God That Only Brian McLaren Knows"?

Sorry for the rant. Hopefully some other folks who have read and enjoyed the book will chime in. I'd honestly hate for my comment to be the only buzz-kill reply you get to your enthusiastic, well-considered post.

First N.T. Wright? I haven't read his "Simply Christian" but that looks to be a good overview of his last 20 years of work, focused at a popular level--an effort is being made to market it like a new "Mere Christianity".

The real meat is in his "Christian Origens and the People of God", starting with "the New Testament and the People of God", then "Jesus and the Victory of God", and currently at "The Resurrection of the Son of God".

Several thousand life changing pages, there.

Stef, if you hadn't said it had been sitting on your shelf for two years, I'd have said it sounded like an attempt to capitalize on The Secret. (Come to think of it, maybe it was. How long has The Secret been out? I didn't think it was two years, but maybe . . . )

It does sound a bit like an attempt to capitalize on The Da Vinci Code, though, or on anything else that hints at special secret knowledge that isn't for everyone. I'm not trying to be offensive, but I find myself questioning any suggestion that anything Jesus said for all to hear can somehow be called "secret." It's possible that's an overly literal interpretation of the title, but it sure sounds like that's what McLaren was going for.

That plus a renewed call to the social gospel, which is a whole other can of worms.

There's nothing gnostic about what McLaren is doing. He's pointing out that Jesus' teaching was often couched in parables, intended for "those who have ears to hear," and that he warned those who witnessed his miracles not to reveal his identity as the Son of God. It's "secret" in the way that a hidden treasure is secret. You have to seek it out.

And although McLaren's basic message -- that salvation entails more than fire insurance, and that it ought to impact how we work for justice on the planet -- is hardly new or "secret," you'd have a hard time convincing most of the American evangelical church of the past 100 years of that fact.

I disagree--am reading "Divided by Faith" by Emerson and Smith on how (predominately) white evangelicals have interacted with race, racism, and society over the last 200+ years, and would tend to agree that the key issue is not that evangelicals are not interested in social justice, but that the approach that evangelicals take towards accomplishing social justice is individualistic in nature.

Evangelicals work towards social justice seems to take place in the context of interpersonal relationships because the key Problem of life, the universe, and everything takes place in terms of an individual interpersonal relationship--btw God and man, Jesus and sinner, man and Satan, and thus man vs. man.

Witness the work of the Promise Keepers in the nineties--whatever flaws you can point out in their ministry, their work (structurally, and at the individual level) focused on reconciliation--fees were slashed to the conferences, African American speakers were promoted, worship (though mildly boring) was cross cultural (or at least a melting of many ethnic styles), and participants were encouraged to confess sins of racism and work out a relationship with a brother of another hue.

I think if you'll look back through the history of the evangelical church, you'll find similar efforts at individualistic social justice--reconcile and triumph over social ills at the personal level (abortion, alchohol, racism). The issue, of course, for an individual approach to social justice is that for the vast majority of white evangelicals, their social contexts do not facilitate many opportunities to impact the culture for social reform.

That the work for justice must take place at the corporate, or structural, level is, I believe, now starting to happen--even if in fits and starts. Where the social gospel fails is it subsumes everything in terms of "social"--time will tell if evangelicalism can maintain its (rightly so, in my opinion) challenge in terms of personal repentance and submission to Jesus while taking on structural issues such that demand reform in terms of creation-scale reconciliation.

Sorry for the tangent. Just wanted to offer up a bit of a contrarian point that evangelicals aren't interested in justice. They are, but maybe not in the most impactful ways possible.

It's not arrogance, it is a searching, an introspection. It's a general feeling that something somewhere in our practice of the faith is not being played out right, and it's going back to the stories and trying to figure out where we may have misinterpreted things. Which I consider not only one of the bravest approaches -- rebuttals like yours are huge against McLaren because he challenges the core of our thinking -- but also genius. Genius in a willingness to question over and over what the Bible wants from us, what certain passages really mean in the context of the day they occurred in, what the Gospel message is.

I guess for me a large part of the problem happened when I realized that Jesus never asked anyone if he could "come into their heart," and he never led anyone in a sinner's prayer. And I don't think Peter or Paul or the lot of the other apostles did that either. But, as discovered in the book (no doubt after a lifetime of searching these things out), McLaren points out how many times Jesus spoke in parables, and how many times he told people not to reveal his identity, and how many times he announced that the Kingdom of God is at hand... And then this is how you do it: take care of the poor and oppressed. Turn the other cheek in a show of non-violent, willing protest. Carry the coat an extra mile. Strip until you are naked to show the greediness of your oppressor.

We forget that he spoke to a certain people in a certain time, and we instead try to understand him as a white guy in our own culture. The book simply tries to unpack this, and when read right along with the Bible passages (I had this book and my Bible side by side, so it took me a while to get through the book), it really is a remarkable new view into a very old concept that at least the churches I've known over the years have left behind.

I don't really have a desire for a point by point discussion on McLaren, because I'm pretty sure that's ground well tread already. I was mainly just showing some snarkiness borne out of my exhasperation with the particular title of this book. But I'll answer a few points in brief. McLaren may well have gone through a period of searching or introspection. Maybe he still does. That's certainly not what comes across from the title though. What comes across is "I know something no one else knows about Jesus's message. Why don't you buy this book and find out what it is?" Personally, it comes across as arrogant. It might roll off a little easier if the same mentality wasn't present in so much of his work. (We all have to be "new" kinds of Christians, because none of the existing Christians out there are getting it right... Everything Must Change, because everyone's got everything wrong... etc.)
I prefer to think that rebuttals like mine are prevalent because they're accurate. But of course I'm biased. ;-)
That's all well and good, but to a point. Wasn't it Chesterton who said that the purpose of an open mind was to find something to close it on again? If genius is a willingness to continually question over and over again what the Bible wants from us, at what point do we actually realize what the Bible wants from us? I assume McLaren has the answer to this - that that's the "secret message?" I suppose it's fair then to question what McLaren's telling us as well, right? I don't have a problem with questioning the accepted thinking - heck, I'm protestant right? But I'd like to think that at some point in the last 2000 years some of the pretty "genius" followers of Christ who have come before have been able to settle some of the core issues already. Even the "context of the day" part. And there's value to being able to stand on those shoulders. Instead of, you know, getting tossed around like a wave in the sea...
Obviously, "asking Jesus into your heart" isn't a direct quote, but an idiom that's pretty much lost it's meaning today, but was nonetheless a useful word picture in its day. These are the kind of comments that bug me though. (Not your comment, but the argument McLaren's making that your comment is based on.) McLaren does a whole lot of finger pointing, and usually misses the mark completely on the evangelical circles I've been a part of for the past 30 years or so. I'm sure that depends a lot of each individual's experience, and I imagine the closer your experience is/was to the fingers he points, the more his stuff will resonate. But the fact that there are huge swaths of even evangelical Christianity that don't fit his stereotypes causes titles like Everything Must Change and The Secret Message to rub the wrong way.

Back to the "asking Jesus into your heart" and "sinner's prayer" comment though. To throw that noose on evangelical Christianity by proclaiming that (gasp!) Jesus and the disciples never uttered those words, is suggesting that "traditional" evangelicals have been teaching that they did, or at least that they consider them to be the teaching of the gospel in its entirety. More accurately, those phrases have been used as convenient idioms used to represent the fuller reality of a broader idea - that Jesus (and the disciples) taught people to throw down everything and follow Him. They're overworn and have become over-simplified, but it's absurd to suggest that those literal statements are the totality of what "the church" today considers the gospel to be. (If someone did pray the sinner's prayer with Jesus by the way, what exactly would that look like, considering that they'd be praying to Him? I bet it would look an awful lot like the thief on the cross, who basically prayed to Jesus: "I know that I'm a sinner and that I deserve judgment for my sin. Please forgive me and save me." Which Jesus seemed to take pleasure in.) Oh, and not that it's a big point, but the word picture of Jesus in our hearts comes directly from Ephesians 3:17 ("...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith...") so it's not an altogether meaningless phrase.

Yes, he did. And he also talked about sin, repentence and eternity, about coming not to bring peace but a sword, and about Himself as the only way. These don't make up the entirety of the gospel, but they're just as likely to be ignored or rejected by McLaren as the previously mentioned aspects of His message are by those he's criticizing.
Again, the "white guy in our own culture" thing is something I've heard lobbed by emergents frequently, but something I've never experienced in my good ol' fashioned modern evangelical experience. It's a straw man, just like "They think Jesus just told people to invite him into their heart through a sinner's prayer. Can you believe how wrong they've gotten it?" Yeah, we struggle to understand scripture outside of our own frame of reference, and sometimes we're going to see as if in a mirror dimly. But to hold it up like it's the bogeyman of evangelical Christianity is giving it way more than its due.

Like I said before, I appreciate and am thankful that you got so much out of the book. If he were able to simply present his ruminations as contributions to the discussion that we're all having about how to love God and live for Him well, it wouldn't get such a rise out of me, even if I disagreed with some of his arguments. But the very "question everything" mentality that he espouses suggests that he has no interest in throwing out the bathwater and not touching the baby. He seems content to throw the baby out as well, then when the tub's good and empty of any and everything, go find the baby, pick it up and bring it back (hopefully still breathing). And of course, to complete the haphazard analogy, to tell us all what an amazing secret baby he's discovered.

(Wow, look at that. I've [almost] managed to comprise the entire response without mentioning any of his heresies. Ooops... )

I am not going to argue with you on any of your points. You haven't read the book yet you want to tell me what it is about. I was excited about the book and it's message from where I'm at in life. You are obviously in a place in life where you can tell me more about an experience I had with an author that I read and you didn't.



This quote however is crap. If you were thankful I got so much out of it, you wouldn't go to the lengths you did to challenge me on why I shouldn't be interested in the author or any knowledge he might even have. You obviously have more understanding than him or I, so I'm not about to make a fool of myself by engaging you anymore.

I have never read any of McLaren's books, but I just want to note here that the titles of books are very often the work of the PUBLISHER and not the AUTHOR. This applies even when the author is pretty famous and well-established in his field. The publisher is thinking of titles that will help to SELL the book, and they sometimes come up with titles that don't necessarily reflect the author's own inclinations. It's similar to how EDITORS, not WRITERS, usually come up with the headlines on newspaper and magazine articles. So, don't read too much into the title of any of McLaren's books ... not without seeing how it is fleshed out within the book itself.

Heh. I met historian Anne Chambers in Ireland just before publication of the second edition of her biography of Grace O'Malley. Against Chambers' wishes, her publisher decided to title that edition (and, it appears, the subsequent third edition as well) Pirate Queen. This is insulting on a couple of levels: (1) there are a dozen or so dreck-filled "historical fiction" and "historical romance" books about O'Malley, and more being published all the time, and somehow they've ALL got "pirate queen" in the title; whereas (2) Chambers' book is the only scholarly biography of O'Malley, and one of Chambers' main arguments is that her subject wasn't even a pirate!

Books shouldn't be judged by their titles any more than by their covers. What I get from popechild's remarks is that he doesn't need McLaren to tell him stuff. Fine, but, y'know, OTHER people might need just that.

True, I've got a good friend right now who's in continuing discussions (arguments?) over exactly what her first book title will be.

Woah. Okay, I must've come across as more personal than I intended. I apologize if you felt I was ever attacking you. I described my experience with the author. I don't think I ever assumed or said anything at all about your experience. As far as not reading the book, I tried to be very clear that my specific annoyance in my first post was with the title (and how it fed into what I'd previously read). As noted above, it's possible that he didn't come up with it. But it certainly fits in a pattern with a) other titles of his, and b) the content of the books I have read, so I'm not speaking completely from ignorance. I have read two books of his, and most of a third, and most of the response I composed to your response was of a general nature, and/or specific responses to your comments. There's only one place I assumed anything at all about the content of this book ("I assume McLaren has the answer to this - that that's the "secret message?"") and I phrased it as a question exactly because I hadn't read it myself, and was willing to be corrected on the point.

Crap? I don't understand why this is so incompatible? Different strokes, right? Again, I feel like you took my post as a personal attack when I didn't mean it in any such way. My experience with this forum is that people post about movies, books, musicians, or authors that they like and appreciate all the time, and inevitably there are others don't like or appreciate those movies, books, musicians, or authors. Is it only appropriate to respond when you're in agreement with the OP? Again, I apologize for anything in the content or tone of my post that you felt was directed at you personally. Hopefully my sincerity will be more evident this time.

Well, it kind of depends on what the stuff is. If it isn't theologically sound, no one needs it.

You'd already been told, very eloquently, by Andy what the secret message was. And that from the title of the book, it has more to do with Jesus' approach to sharing the Gospel than it does with Brian McLaren coming up with something new.

So you didn't need to assume anything, it was already on the table.

And FWIW, I've always liked how Andy can sum up in ten seconds what would take me a half an hour of typing and editing to articulate.


You have a valid point about this forum, and I appreciate you trying to clear things up.

I guess I get a little muddled when we carry things over from film to art, to various ideas and views and holdings to faith. Negative criticism of a work of fiction or a film or a documentary or a band is really not that big a deal in the end. If anything, it helps an artist to grow. But in my experience with this book, and also being in the Bible as I read it, I had something larger than simply an enjoyable or challenging work of art. In fact, in this case, I had and have been having a change in my faith in how Jesus helps me to perceive and relate to creation, which kinda sorta makes me the work of art.

This new view has helped me to confront my own ugliness, to cop to it, and to be more open and honest with people than I ever have. It has brought more grace and more peace, and thus a desire to be that grace and peace to anyone, anywhere that I can.

So if I took it more personally than usual, I guess it is because this thing has engaged me and changed me, and as far as I can see, in only good ways. And I guess I just wish there were more that were willing to drop the pride and go in on the ride.



Translation: "If it isn't my version of what is theologically sound, then it isn't offered a place in the room."

Which is one interpretation claiming absolute truth over another interpretation.

Sorry. Life is not so black and white.

I want to respond to just a couple of points here. I realize that Andy had sort of explained the "secret message" part, and you seemed to be referencing it as well in some of your post, but I wouldn't claim to completely "get" the full message of the book simply based on those few comments, so I don't see my qualification ("I assume...") to be particularly out of place in the context of what I was saying. Anyway...

Well, given the last day or so of our posting, it's probably not wise to move directly into a discussion of this point, but...
The concept of absolute truth (and interpretations - or perspectives - on it) and whether or not it exists, and if so whether it's possible to know it, etc., is certainly one of the points of underlying contention in the typical discussions between supporters and critics of the emerging movement. I'd simply point out that by saying "life is not so black and white" is to imply that your understanding of the ability (or lack thereof) to know absolute truth is superior to Gina's understanding of the ability to know absolute truth. So it's kind of a self-defeating proposition if you think about it. And practically, as a Christian (I like SDG's definition (paraphrased) as "believing that God has acted in the world in a unique and definitive way through Jesus Christ") wouldn't you by definition be claiming that belief to be an absolute truth superior in value to that of a non-Christian (one who would say "God has not acted in a unique and definitive way through Jesus Christ")?

But I suppose that's probably a separate religion thread anyway.

<<I'd simply point out that by saying "life is not so black and white" is to imply that your understanding of the ability (or lack thereof) to know absolute truth is superior to Gina's understanding of the ability to know absolute truth. >>

No, absolutely not. I believe, and am actually practicing in my house church, that the goal of the Christian practice isn't to make people believe like me, or for all of us even to believe a certain way, but that collective individualism is a goal, one that is to be shared in love. That love is to be placed in front of doctrine and belief, and that whether there are people in my house church that don't practice or believe the same way that I do isn't a problem, in fact, it is a hope, and in our differences we will actually be united.

This can only happen when Christ helps us to love first, and place the need to be similar on a different plane.

It can only happen when we all realize that we are subjective first, and that the thing that binds us together is the common love we can have in our differences through Christ.

I think that one of the goals, said like I child, for I have no other way to utter this, is that we each search out our faith in Christ as individuals, and then pray for each other's unique and different qualities, even unique and different perspectives, to help us to be united in the faith that Jesus reconciles all of these things one day, in the restoration of all things on this earth.

The difference I would hope, between my belief in Jesus and a non-Christian's disbelief in Jesus, is that I would be willing to sacrifice of my life to give to that person. I am hoping as I continue in this journey that eventually someone else sees this difference, and wants to bleed with me in the agony of Christ, ready to die together.

I guess I now see consumerism and individualism as the enemy of the true faith, if that makes any sense. I certainly see these things as a greater problem than someone who thinks differently than I do. In understanding how a person who is different than me thinks, I grow closer to objectivity, closer to absolute truth. Until Jesus returns for the restoration of all things, none of us knows anything outside of ourselves, therefore, why not love everyone, and practice the Kingdom here and now?

No, not at all. What I meant was, "If it isn't theologically sound according to the Scriptures and the Christian creeds based on the Scriptures, no one needs it." Why on earth would my version have any importance? Who am I that I should claim the superiority of "my version" of anything? Not an apostle, nor a church leader, and certainly not Jesus Christ!

With that established , let me backtrack to something else you said. You raise a very interesting point about criticism of art vs. criticism of faith. But it's not quite so cut and dried as your shift from the first subject to the second appears to imply, I (humbly) submit. Works of theology can and should be criticized (or critiqued, if you prefer), even if they do bring new spiritual experiences and ideas. Perhaps especially if they do. Art does the same thing, after all. It causes intense experiences and changes lives, but we still feel free to criticize it. We have to be willing to be subjective and objective.

I'm not going "on a ride" unless I'm convinced that it's the ride on which God wants me to go. And McLaren has done very little to convince me of that.

In regard to the need to critique faith, I am in 100% agreement. I think that's a large part of what happens when you look at things and find that something is off, something is missing. That's when you go back to the drawing board and try to figure out what the higher truth is.

In regard to your claim to not having your own interpretation of what is " theologically sound according to the Scriptures and the Christian creeds based on the Scriptures," I can't believe you would be claiming to understand objectively what this is, 100%, when there've already been hundreds if not thousands of interpretations, of which you are either following one, or are following your own.

Apparently I'm not being clear. This isn't about me at all. I never said or thought that I was capable of understanding Christianity objectively 100 percent. All I'm saying is that we all have to be willing to try to be as objective as we can.

Gotcha. And my only point is that



"If it isn't theologically sound" isn't objective, but rather an idea that many people come to in many different interpretations.

And I encourage those interpretations, as they have now been interpreted and re-interpreted for two-thousand years.