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Telling Secrets
A Review of The
Secret Message of Jesus – Uncovering the |
Fans of Brian McLaren will find a lot to love about his latest book, The Secret Message of Jesus.
Critics of Brian McLaren will find a lot to condemn about his latest book, The Secret Message of Jesus.
McLaren seems to elicit such polarized response whenever he puts pen to paper and his latest offering is no exception. Polemicists on either side of the divide between Evangelicals and Emergents have plenty of ammunition now that McLaren has clarified much of the doctrinal ambiguity in his previous books. To the satisfaction of some and chagrin of others, he has finally taken a firm position on a number of issues that were previously open to discussion. Little of what McLaren reveals about his beliefs is new, surprising or unanticipated for those who are familiar with his other works. It is simply nice to know where he stands on a number of topics.
Rather than lauding or criticizing Brian McLaren (since others will be more than happy to do that) this review will highlight some of the important considerations in the book that may get lost once all the shouting starts. One of the most important parts of the book is the introduction where McLaren captures evangelical angst - that quest for The One Thing, the "It" that will fully realize all the aspirations and longings that fill our hearts. Many within the Christian fold express a sense of dissatisfaction at their experience with Christianity so far. "For many of us, we feel we've been watching the movie attentively, but we haven't gotten to that moment of clarity yet. We wish it would come." (p. xii) The Secret Message of Jesus offers us that moment of clarity.
In 1959 George Eldon Ladd, long-time professor at Fuller Seminary, published The Gospel of the Kingdom, which provided one of the most widely regarded evangelical definitions of the Kingdom of God. In 1978 John R. W. Stott published The Christian Counterculture, which has been re-released under the title The Message of the Sermon on the Mount. In that book, Stott compared the hippie counterculture of that decade to Christianity and what it means to be truly counter-cultural. The Secret Message of Jesus continues in the same vein of enlarging on the topic of God's Kingdom and what it means for us today. What sets McLaren apart from Ladd and Stott is not his open theism or reconstructivist postmillennialism, although these do separate him from mainstream evangelicalism. Rather, he writes in a populist, conversational style. Instead of appealing to academics and seminarians, McLaren writes for those who have never heard the message of the Kingdom. Ladd and Stott wrote for those who are already subjects in the kingdom while McLaren seems to be aiming his book largely at those who are looking for a Kingdom whose builder and maker is God, whether in the faith or out of it. McLaren asks:
Wouldn't it be interesting if the people who started discovering and believing the hidden message of Jesus were people who aren't even identified as Christians, and wouldn't it be tragic if people like myself, identified as Christians, were unwilling to consider the possibility that they have more to learn (and unlearn) about the message of Jesus? (p. 8)
Curiously, it was the religious establishment of Jesus' day that was most resistant to His message of the Kingdom. I anticipate that the religious establishment of today will be most resistant to the challenges McLaren articulates in his book.
The book is divided into three parts. The first deals with "Excavation: Digging Beneath the Surface to Uncover Jesus' Message." Here McLaren divulges the political, Jewish, revolutionary and hidden message of Jesus. Most intriguing is the notion that Jesus' gospel of the Kingdom is hidden, but hidden in plain sight. It is so well hidden, that it is hidden even to us who claim to be a part of it. The second section called, "Engagement: Grappling with the meaning of Jesus' Message" is where McLaren engages the reader in the nature of the message. Using winsome illustrations and repetition of themes from earlier books, he draws the reader more deeply into the story he is weaving. Readers of his Dan & Neo trilogy (A New Kind of Christian, The Story We Find Ourselves In, and The Last Word and the Word After That) will recognize this thought:
But the ancient Jews, like their more recent monotheistic colleagues, often devolved into being preoccupied with being blessed themselves, forgetting or suppressing their calling to be a blessing to others. They, too, often saw their calling as exclusive ("We are blessed to the exclusion of all other nations") rather than instrumental ("We are blessed for the benefit of all other nations") (74).
What the character Neo articulates in bits and pieces becomes a more overarching strategy in The Secret Message of Jesus.
McLaren expressed the key thought of the book best on page 84 where he says:
When we drifted from understanding and living out the essential secret message of the kingdom, we became like flavorless salt or a blown-out lightbulb – so boring that people just walked away. We may have talked about going to heaven after we die, but not about God's will being done on earth before we die. We may have pressured people to be moral and good or correct and orthodox to avoid hell after death, but we didn't inspire them with the possibility of becoming beautiful and fruitful to heal the earth in this life. We may have instructed them about how to be a good Baptist, Presbyterian, Catholic, or Methodist on Sunday, but we didn't train, challenge, and inspire them to live out the kingdom of God in their jobs, neighborhoods, families, schools, and societies between Sundays.
The point of all of this, though, is that Jesus’ message is secret. In McLaren's opinion, the greatest workers in the Kingdom are not the celebrity Christians on TV and in the magazines but they are the ones nobody has ever heard of. They are working quietly, secretly, behind the scenes like yeast hidden in a lump of dough, to effect a change that is world-transforming. That is what makes up the third portion of the book, "Imagination: Exploring How Jesus' Secret Message Could Change Everything."
Many will find this book offensive because they will see a serious departure from orthodox Christianity and a challenge to their traditional Evangelical beliefs. Others will be disturbed by its populist style. Some will take exception to his decidedly unconventional and nontraditional gospel message in chapter 13 that is utterly unlike yet recognizable to any who have heard the more common "4 Spiritual Laws" approach. McLaren summarizes the chapter with, "Rethinking, believing, receiving, going public, and practicing a new way of life – these seem to be the basic elements of what it means to get in on the secret and let it get into you." (113). Many get the impression that the moment of salvation is the end, the goal, what Christianity is all about. For McLaren, this is not the end of the story but only the beginning. Where many Christian books finish with a call to salvation, he places it squarely in the middle and then goes on to talk about what this decision means for those who choose to enter the Kingdom. It is what he describes within the Kingdom paradigm that makes the book worth reading. The Secret Message of Jesus presents a challenge to entrenched evangelical interests and complacent Christianity that we would all do well to face. G. K. Chestterton sums it up best: " The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."
by Rick Presley
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