Mudshot Eyes

The following is what I am calling the take-home from the book. This doesn’t cover his every point, but these are the things that hit home the most with me.

It sounds obvious to say it, but the message of Jesus was revolutionary in every conceivable way. Why?

First, it presented not just a potential future reality, but a present reality. The gospel was good news for the first hearers because it meant a new way of living, immediately. For those who followed Jesus, ideas about God’s radical new kingdom were quickly turned into decisions that altered the way they did things, not just the way they thought about things. If it was an immediate message for them, then it is most certainly the same for us. Jesus’ message invites us to be transformed now, not just in the someday hereafter.

Second, it was inclusive of people who had not yet received it, a point made obvious by the fact that Jesus often ate dinner and interacted with prostitutes, social outcasts, and other “sinners.” What this means for me is that I am looking at people differently. I’m exploring my social-isms, and have found that they are many. For example, Jesus’ message of inclusion means that God may choose to use me to show the gospel to the segment of society that I loathe the most, whoever that may be. This will require a transformation within me that only God can accomplish (with my participation, of course).

Finally, the social and political backdrop of the gospels reveals that Jesus’ intended not only personal implications, but also implications for our social and political decisions. McLaren says it well in this passage from chapter 2:

“. . . This carpenter’s son from Galilee challenges every existing political movement to a radical rethinking and dares everyone to imagine and consider his revolutionary alternative.” That alternative is the kingdom of God, and “if you’re part of this kingdom, you won’t be blindly patriotic and compliant, . . . instead you’ll be willing to confront injustice, even at the cost of your life. You won’t nestle snugly into the status quo, but you’ll seek to undermine the way things are to welcome the way things could and should be” (p. 17-18).

Secret Message placed the message of Jesus uncomfortably close to my real life. I was reminded again that the gospel isn’t a museum where we look at what is presented and say “ooo” and “ahhh.” Instead, it is a living word, moving through our veins to transform us.

(Part 3 of 3 coming on Sunday…)

My first impressions of Brian McLaren’s book, The Secret Message of Jesus, were dead wrong. In fact, I must confess that I made some assumptions about where he was headed. Those assumptions tainted my reading of the first portion of the book, because I drew his conclusion before he did. As I previously wrote, I thought the title and initial portion of the book seemed pretentious. However, “the secret message of Jesus” is simply another way of describing the Gospel. I’m glad I pressed on to the finish––it was well worth it. Before I get into a summary of the book, here are a few general observations:

Throughout the book, I got the feeling that McLaren was reacting to something, but I spent a third of the way through trying to figure out what message he was responding to. The only definitive answer to that is “religious broadcasting,” which he specifically mentions as one of the culprits in spreading an inaccurate picture of Jesus’ message. My best guess is that he is also responding to Christian “pop theology” and your basic run-of-the-mill Christian fundamentalism. There were some points in the book where he went to unnecessary effort to point these things out. I doubt that there are any significant numbers from that crowd who are reading this book, so I felt that it was a waste of time.

Fortunately, his cynicism about their message led him to look at the Bible in its historical context. The view he gives into the stories which surrounded the writing of Scripture is what I appreciate most about McLaren’s book. There’s more to understanding the Bible than just the historical background, but it is an area that has been often overlooked in popular Christian theology.

For example, he discusses the idea that the book of Revelation is not primarily a book about specific future events, but is a book about the challenges of the immediate present. The early church was under heavy persecution from the Roman government, and needed a message of hope; hope that the reality of God’s kingdom was the source of their confidence and joy, even when facing death. John’s Revelation provided that hope for them and gives every generation a beautiful picture of God’s ultimate victory over any evil “principalities and powers.”

Because I already agreed with a lot of what he wrote, McLaren’s interpretation of the gospel didn’t feel as ground-breaking to me as it seemed to be to him but I was thankful for the way he articulated it with Scriptural and historical support. It helped me clarify some questions I had about how the message of Jesus was meant for first and twenty-first century people.

(Part 2 of 3 coming on Friday…)

If you’ve read any portion of The Message, Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, then you know how dynamic it is. In this month’s issue of Relevant Magazine, there’s an excellent interview with Peterson in which he gives some answer to those who believe his translation is too dynamic. Pick up a copy of the print magazine to read the whole article. Here’s an excerpt:

A lot of people criticize The Message, saying that you changed the meanings of certain passages. They say it isn’t a “literal” translation.
There is no “true” translation of the Bible because one language doesn’t translate literally to the next. Hebrew and Greek don’t translate literally into English. There is a context with each language, there are colloquialisms, there is the language of the street. Jesus used the language of the street in His day. I tried to do the same for our day.

But don’t some critics say, “Translation is betrayal”?

They do. But we’re translating all the time. Preachers translate Scripture every time they preach. Reading is a type of translating. I have come to believe that people who call for “literal” translations prefer unthinking to thinking.

This quote from Philip Yancey’s book, The Bible That Jesus Read is a good follow-up to a discussion regarding what Genesis 1 is really all about. He’s speaking about the Old Testament in general here, but I think it applies:

Like a drumbeat that never stops, in the pages of the Old Testament we hear the consistent message that this world revolves around God, not us. The Hebrews had incessant reminders built into their culture…. A devout Jew could barely make it through an hour, much less an entire day, without running smack into some reminder that he or she lived in God’s world. Even the Hebrew calendar marked time by events such as the Passover and Day of Atonement, not merely by the harvest cycle and the moon. The world, they believed, is God’s property. And human life is “sacred,” which simply means that it belongs to God to do with what he wills.

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By the way, feel free to join the discussion from Saturday’s posting…

I remember when evolution was presented in science class during my high school days in the late eighties. We were instructed on how the cosmos came into being through natural means, which, from my perspective, took God out of the picture by default. It was like my science teacher was saying, “Everything you’ve heard is wrong.”

I was mad. Nobody, I mean nobody, was going to tell me that Genesis was wrong. This was more than a science class; God’s very existence was being called into question!

Since then, I’ve continued a layman’s interest in the theory of evolution and how to reconcile that with the creation account in Genesis. The evidence suggests that the process of the earth’s formation was a long, natural process of change where every species came into being slowly, not in the snap of a divine finger. Some scientists call God’s existence into question, since the process was a natural one. Add the reaction from select prominent Christian figures, and we end up with the kind of head-butting we’ve seen in Kansas and other state governments.

As Rick pointed out in his comments on my previous post, it seems that “both communities tend to act as if the other community’s body of knowledge cannot inform the other.”

Could it be that scientists are reading God’s ancient playbook when they pull fossils from a spot of ground in northern Canada? As Stan Guthrie noted in Christianity Today, an increasing number of scientists are seeing design in their evidence. It makes me wonder if God is showing his hand one card at a time.

Reflections of God’s creative power are all around us, and every “breakthrough” scientific discovery is another glimpse into His wisdom. We can’t convince every scientist to see God’s handiwork in their discoveries, but His signature is there, nevertheless.

Theories about the earth’s creation shouldn’t cause any fear in the heart of a Christian. The evolution debate is not a debate over God’s existence for those of us who believe in Him. Think about it: if you found out that evolution was God’s way of creating the universe, would you stop believing in God? I agree with Guthrie’s answer; If evolution is true, “then God is more mysterious than I imagined—but no less God.”

In my college days at Samford University, I argued and debated theology like it was a recreational sport. One evening, Mark Watkins and I locked horns on the long enduring debate over human free will verses God’s sovereignty. It was a classic duel between two over-confident college students who believed that winning this argument had cosmic importance.

Once our discussion had dragged about an hour beyond its usefulness, there was silence between us. We had defended our ground and both sides were bloodied and word-weary. Our common ground came only by appealing to the mystery of God, realizing for the first time that we had missed the point.

Theology is a mystery to explore, discuss, and experience, but we used it as a weapon for intellectual posturing. As such, it had no life-giving quality. We were exhausted and discouraged until we reflected together on our own inability to fully grasp these things. Then I began to experience something like humility, and it was a relief.

Most of us are defensive about our religious persuasions until we reach the point of being willing to discuss our theology instead of defending it. I recognize that there are many belief systems with tenets that are contrary to my faith, but is Christian theology so frail that I have to defend it? I think not. The source of our confidence is not in our ability to defend the faith. Our confidence comes from God as we “hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience” (1 Timothy 3:9).