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| Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope | 
 enlarge | Author: Brian Mclaren
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Category: Book
List Price: $21.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 3197
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0849901839
Dewey Decimal Number: 261
EAN: 9780849901836
ASIN: 0849901839
Publication Date: October 2, 2007
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Product Description
What do the life and teaching of Jesus have to say about the most critical global problems in our world today? Acclaimed author and Emergent church leader Brian McLaren states, "More and more Christian leaders are beginning to realize that for the millions of young adults who have recently dropped out of church, Christianity is a failed religion. Why? Because it has specialized in dealing with 'spiritual needs' to the exclusion of physical and social needs. It has focused on 'me' and 'my eternal destiny,' but it has failed to address the dominant societal and global realities of their lifetime: systemic injustice, poverty, and dysfunction." McLaren asks, "Shouldn't a message purporting to be the best news in the world be doing better than this?" What he sets forth in this provocative, unsettling work is a "form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, balanced, that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God's grace at work both in this life and the life to come, both to individuals and to societies and the planet as a whole."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 35 more reviews...
 McLaren Changes Everything September 25, 2007
368 out of 490 found this review helpful
Those of us who have been keeping a wary eye on the Emerging Church know that to understand the movement we must understand Brian McLaren. Though it is not quite fair to label him the movement's leader, he certainly functions as its elder statesman and his writing seems to serve as a guide or compass for the movement. Where he leads, others follow. And so it is with interest that I turned to Everything Must Change. This book is shaped by two preoccupying questions: what are the biggest problems in the world and what does Jesus have to say about these global problems? They are valid questions and probably questions to which Christians should devote more attention. In this book McLaren address them head-on.
According to McLaren, we live in a societal system consisting of three subsystems: the prosperity, equity and security systems. These are all guided by a framing narrative. The world was made in such a way that these should function in perfect harmony as they are guided by God's framing story, but unfortunately they have become misaligned so they no longer function as they should. When the framing narrative is destructive, this system can go suicidal, ultimately self-destructing. This is society as we know it now--a society that is completely suicidal. And this is the problem Jesus came to address. Having thought long and hard about the world's problems, McLaren says this: "Our plethora of critical global problems can be traced to four deep dysfunctions, the fourth of which is the lynchpin or leverage point through which we can reverse the first three." These three crises are linked in a very tightly integrated system that functions as this "suicide machine."
Jesus, says McLaren, stepped into this dysfunctional system and proposed an alternative in both word and deed. Jesus' solution was to confront society's suicide machine, to redraw and reshape the framing narratives by proposing a radical alternative. He says Jesus' message, His good news, is this: "The time has come! Rethink everything! A radically new kind of empire is available--the empire of God has arrived! Believe this good news, and defect from all human imperial narratives, counternarratives, dual narratives, and withdrawal narratives. Open your minds and hearts like children to see things freshly in this new way, follow me and my words, and enter this new way of living." Jesus took that message to the cross, an instrument of torture and cruelty that He used "to expose the cruelty and injustice of those in power and instill hope and confidence in the oppressed."
McLaren's utter disdain for Protestant theology is evident throughout, but perhaps nowhere so clearly as in his rendition of Mary's Magnificat, rewritten in such a way, he says, that it can now be consistent with traditional theology.
"My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my personal Savior, for he has been mindful of the correct saving faith of his servant. My spirit will go to heaven when my body dies for the Mighty One has provided forgiveness, assurance, and eternal security for me--holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who have correct saving faith and orthodox articulations of belief, from generation to generation. He will overcome the damning effects of original sin with his mighty arm; he will damn to hell those who believe they can be saved through their own efforts or through any religion other than the new one He is about to form. He will condemn followers of other religions to hell but bring to heaven those with correct belief. He has filled correct believers with spiritual blessings but will send those who are not elect to hell forever. He has helped those with correct doctrinal understanding, remembering to be merciful to those who believe in the correct theories of atonement, just as our preferred theologians through history have articulated."
But the Bible, he says, teaches none of this. Rather, "Mary celebrates that God is going to upset the dominance hierarchies typical of empire so that the nation of Israel can experience the fulfillment of its original promise."
After reframing Jesus and His message, McLaren reintroduces Him through a new lens. This Jesus, as we might expect, is radically different from the one Protestants have known and honored and radically different from the Jesus of the Bible. McLaren continues to systematically dismantle Christian doctrine. "With no apologies to Martin Luther, John Calvin, or modern evangelicalism, Jesus (in Luke 16:9) does not prescribe hell to those who refuse to accept the message of justification by grace through faith, or to those who are predestined for perdition, or to those who don't express faith in a favored atonement theory by accepting Jesus as their `personal savior.' Rather, hell--literally or figurative--is for the rich and comfortable who proceed on their way without concern for their poor neighbor day after day." Jesus "calls them to grow their good deeds portfolios for the common good, especially the good of the poor and marginalized."
McLaren seems particular incensed with the biblical concepts of heaven, hell and atonement. Rather than being eternal realities, heaven and hell become states we create on this earth as we pursue or deny the kingdom of God. Because Jesus' message is not one of sinful men becoming reconciled to a holy God through an atoning sacrifice, those of any creed can seek and participate in the kingdom. People of other creeds may well be participating in it more fully and more purely than ones who claim to be Christians. Men and women of all creeds can be followers of Jesus living out the kingdom of God even if they have never heard His name.
With this book McLaren further draws a line in the sand between traditional Protestant beliefs and the Emerging Church. He declares, increasingly unequivocally, that this Emerging Church bears little resemblance to the church as we know it. This book is, in my opinion, McLaren's first real attempt to reconstruct the "Christian" theology that he has dismantled in his previous books. But what he has rebuilt bears little resemblance to the Christianity of the Bible.
 Indeed, EVERYTHING must change. October 2, 2007
104 out of 161 found this review helpful
In Everything Must Change, Brian McLaren lays out a critique of human civilization. Such a task would seem impossible for its scope, but through McLaren's macro-lens exploration, the reader walks away with a diagnosis that feels eerily accurate to our modern situation: that human civilization has become its own suicide machine. This metaphor of a system gone destructive against those it was intended to serve is the central image of McLaren's diagnosis. The machinery of our society falls into three main subsystems: the prosperity system, which provides us with the goods, opportunities, and experiences we feel we need to be happy; the security system, which seeks to protect the existence and the standard of living of those who prosper; and the equity system, which seeks to distribute the goods of the prosperity system and the costs of the security system in fair and equitable ways.
Each of these systems fulfills a useful and worthy goal. But each also faces a crisis. Our global prosperity system, McLaren asserts, has grown without regard for limits or sustainability, irresponsibly consuming resources and producing waste faster than the environment can compensate while producing a disproportionate amount of wealth for one third of the world's citizens. This great disparity between the haves and the have-nots strains the equity system to the breaking point, and breeds tension, fear, resentment, and distrust between the two groups. These feelings of antagonism make the wealthy nervous about the security of their goods and lifestyles, prompting them to further secure their assets and resources from the disgruntled majority. As a result, the have-nots become even more antagonistic toward the wealthy, leading to another increase in security. Eventually both sides become so antagonistic toward one another that the resulting militarization and pre-emptive strike power is enough to ensure the mutual destruction of both sides. Our systems are locked in a downward spiral, driven by and fueled by the fourth and greatest crisis, the spiritual crisis, "the failure of the world's religions, especially its two largest religions, to provide a framing story capable of healing or reducing the three previous crises."
Our framing story, the story that tells people "who they are, where they come from, where they are, what's going on, where things are going, and what they should do," is the linchpin in our whole mess. Our societal systems - prosperity, security, and equity - serve the ends that our framing story dictates.
"If our framing story tells us that we humans are godlike beings with godlike privileges...we will have no reason to acknowledge or live within limits, whether moral or ecological. Similarly, if it tells us that the purpose of life is for individuals or nations to accumulate an abundance of possessions and to experience the maximum amount of pleasure during...our short lives, then we will have little reason to manage our consumption. If [it] tells us that we are in life-and-death competition with each other, that only the fittest will survive, that each species and group is in a violent struggle to outcompete and gain independence and safety from or dominance over all others, then we will have little reason to seek reconciliation and collaboration and nonviolent resolutions to our conflicts."
We have, as a result, our current situation, where the prosperity system threatens to outproduce the planet and leave us in a pile of our own waste, where the equity system serves fewer and fewer people (the gap between rich and poor in America continues to grow, let alone between the global rich and poor), and the security system, rather than ensuring us of our own survival, now only ensures that if we go down, so does everyone else.
The result? Suicide, says McLaren with no lack of gravity. Indeed, there are chapters in Everything Must Change that will require some time to process if we seek to maintain hope for our future. We need more than tweaking the system here and there to fix a squeak or to grease a cog. We are in need of a radical new story that tells us something different about who we are and what we are here for.
Enter Jesus and his good news about the kingdom of God. The "good news" is a phrase we're all familiar with, whether from our days in Sunday school or from the man preaching on the street corner. There are multiple versions of the good news, but all share the same nuts and bolts: "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 forever in hell." It is safe to say that a significant number of people, both within and without the church, have found this "good news" to be rather uninspiring and unconvincing, and have chosen not to adopt it as their framing story. And so McLaren observes, "a message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this."
McLaren argues that we in the 21st century have nearly entirely lost any idea as to how radical Jesus was in his own day, and how much we have co-opted a neutered version of Jesus' message in order to justify and round off the harsh edges of our current system. McLaren spends a significant portion of the book reframing and reintroducing Jesus, painting a picture of the world Jesus was born into and exploring just how different the kingdom of God is from the kingdom of this world. Jesus' radical message changed and challenged everything, including some things we were comfortable with. "The kingdom of God is not simply a new belief or doctrine that can be patched into an old way of life; it is, rather, a new way of life that changes everything."
McLaren spends the last portion of his book imagining what this radical Jesus would say to us were he to visit us today. What would Jesus have to say about the system that currently runs our world? Probably much the same thing he had to say about the system of his own day, since they are essentially the same machinery. His call to us is the same: "Repent! Rethink your whole way of life! The kingdom of God is here! I am the new Way! Believe in me and the good news I bring about a new, fuller, everlasting life."
To believe, McLaren says, is the most radical thing we can do. When we realize what true belief in Jesus' way requires of us (complete defection from the dominant framing story of our current existence), belief in its reality and possibility is no mere intellectual exercise. Instead, it is a work of faith on the part of our whole being, as we learn what it means to live in the kingdom of God and follow Jesus into everlasting life.
 The Wrong Jesus October 18, 2007
58 out of 97 found this review helpful
McLaren in this work completely redefines the Christian faith. Gone is Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for our sins. In its place is the idea that Jesus died to show the brutality and cruelty of the Imperial System. Gone is the hope that Jesus will come in glory to judge the living and the dead. In its place is a man-made 'eutopia' that is supposed to signify the Kingdom on God on Earth.
For all his sensitivities to the poor and those who've been oppressed by the unfair systems of the top western nations. McLaren is dangerous because he mocks and attacks the Historic Christian faith and attempts to refashion Christianity as merely a religion of social activism.
McLaren doesn't believe that men are sinful by nature, therefore he suggests that the solution to all of mankind's problems is a mere defection from imperial framing stories to the embracing of Jesus framing story of peace, non-violence and an economy of love. In other words, all we have to do is adopt the right philosophy or framing story and this will lead us to take the right actions that will ultimately end social injustice and poverty around the world.
This is not Biblical Christianity. It is a radical and dangerous departure from sound doctrine. As the popular saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
McLaren's intentions, although VERY good and VERY noble, will ultimately send people to hell because he's changed Jesus into a mere philosopher or social activist. McLaren's Jesus didn't die for the sins of the world. McLaren's Jesus instead is a mix between Ghandi, St. Francis and the Rev. Martin Luther King. McLaren's Jesus is not the Jesus of the Holy Scriptures and is therefore powerless and false.
Since McLaren is not telling us the truth about the Biblical Jesus, we cannot trust him to give us the right solutions to the vexing and terrible problems that this book seeks to address. For all of its grand ideas, this book is nothing more than a beautiful house built on sand.
A Revolution of Despair December 1, 2007
58 out of 77 found this review helpful
I've read many of McLaren's books ... and he always seemed to ask questions without giving many answers, which I guess is what the "Emergent Conversation" is supposed to be. However, in this book, McLaren appears to begin answering some of his questions and I was finally and profoundly disappointed. While I agree that contemporary American Christianity is NOT what it is supposed to be ... the "hope" of a social Eutopia in the thoughts of Brian McLaren appears to be just a rehashed liberal worldview, with a the story of Jesus being "re-told" to inspire us towards Global Socialism (I know it is so non-emergent of me to categorize). McLaren's universe has relegated the truth of God's Creative act to little more than a mythical allegory ... and the triumph of the return of Christ as apparently something that isn't going to "really" happen. Our future is essentially up to our collective willingness to become better people ... inspired by the "good news" of Jesus (which is just a better "story" than the self-destructive "story" we have believed up until recently). While I do give credit to McClaren for bringing up some interesting questions about the pro-war pro-corporation mentality of the U.S. government (and some of our religious leaders) I'm left with an impression that whether or not the Bible is "true" is inconsequential, as long as we can extract the correct themes that make us want to be better people. His repetitive use of emergent post-modern jargon, also left me with the impression that he was trying too hard to convince the reader that he is brilliant ... instead of using language that normal people use. If you really want to buy a McClaren book, I would recommend "Generous Orthodoxy" which I felt was much more compelling and better written than either "Everything Mus Change" or "The Secret Message of Jesus" (which I also didn't like). If you would like to read a book that deals with Global Crisis from a biblical perspective ... you'll have to keep looking ... and let me know when you find one.
Just one other thing. I've read a lot of McLaren's responses to his critics ... and his defense is often "I didn't say that, they are misrepresenting what I said". Ironically, I think this might be what Jesus would say if He read this book. Several times, McLaren imagines Jesus making statements that surprisingly use the same post-modern deconstructionist jargon as McLaren ... and not-so-surprisingly, Jesus' words, in McLaren's paraphrase, verbalize the Emergent ideology. This book is an "Adventure in Missing the Point".
My Kingdom is Not of This World January 3, 2008
45 out of 71 found this review helpful
To be honest, the book was an easy read and well-constructed.
What I got out of reading it was how disappointing it was to find the writer's focus so earth-bound and missing Jesus' whole message. After all, the Lord Jesus declared, "I Am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." Without repentance of sin and faith submission to King Jesus, there is zero access to the Father's Kingdom of Heaven, to escape the eternal punitive judgment of God on the ungodly. "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."
Jesus Himself said, "My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, My servants would fight for Me. But now My Kingdom is from elsewhere." (John 18:36)
Since people have such differing opinions about the writer's truth quotient (for real or pseudo-preacher), check out how Jesus' disciples and apostles carried out the Mission of their Master.
If you can find any correlation between what Peter & John, Stephen, Philip, Barnabas, Paul, Lydia, Luke, Apollos said/did in Book of Acts to bring in global revolution, and what this writer claims is Jesus' secret kingdom manifesto to engage global crises, I couldn't find it.
The Biblical Key to confirm whether this social justice prophet's agenda is a subchristian plot would be Acts of the Apostles, authored by the Holy Spirit's eyewitness agent, Dr. Luke.
Faith Undone: The emerging church - a new reformation or an end-time deception.
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