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"Provocative", The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything by Brian McLaren is a book that assumes the church did not understand Jesus' `secret message." McLaren argues that when Jesus said "the kingdom of God is here now," He meant it literally. McLaren wants us to live this word by being peacemakers and trying to love each other.
There is a beautiful new book about Jesus, God , faith and what you will do after death entitled "The Enlightenment, What God Told Me After One Million Prayers: A Message for Everyone," by John H. Eagan. I just finished it. It's really great and deals with God, the creator, Jesus' teachings, and His Passion. It brought me to tears. I think the readers of McLaren's book will really enjoy The Enlightenment.


"Political Jesus", I recently read Brian McLaren's bold and challenging book: The Secret Message of Jesus, which was generously provided to me by the publisher in order that I might write about it on this blog.

Let's start with points of agreement. We can affirm much of "the secret message" that McLaren "recovers" in this book. Okay... forget the hyped-up title for a moment (the title sounds more like something from the Gnostic Gospels, or a new Da Vinci Code). If you can get past the McLaren's implicit claim to be just now, after 2000 years, recovering the original message of Jesus, you might just find a lot to agree with.

I appreciate the emphasis McLaren puts on the Kingdom of God as a central component to the gospel. This is missing in many evangelical presentations of the gospel, and its omission is glaring once we read the Gospels in their original context. McLaren is right to bring us back to the idea of God's reign and Christ's lordship as being central to the gospel.

I also affirm the aspects of the gospel that transform life on earth here and now. McLaren does a terrific job of reminding us that Christians should be working to see life here and now look more and more like life in the new heavens and new earth. He challenges us out of complacency to begin working to bring that future into the present. He rightly corrects several mechanistic views of "heaven" and shows how the biblical portrait of God's presence is so much greater than what we have settled for.

But it's here that McLaren swings the pendulum too far... way too far. McLaren's passion for seeing the Kingdom at hand, in the here and now, leaves hardly any hope for the hereafter. You won't find much here about hell or judgment or God's wrath. Instead, you will find an agenda for social action to make our world a better place. Not to say that this advice is useless, but McLaren's social agenda divorced from personal conversion through faith in Christ as the means of salvation leads us to the same cliff as last century's social gospel liberalism.

McLaren frowns on the evangelistic mentality that focuses on "saving souls from hell" because it conflicts with his embrace of inclusivism, which oozes out of this book at every point. Notice how many times he mentions Jesus' "inclusiveness." Not to say that he is altogether wrong when he speaks of Jesus' building bridges to outsiders. Evangelicals can too easily build walls between us and the people we're called to minister to. And in this sense, our exclusivist attitude is an affront to a loving God.

But if inclusiveness means embracing and accepting anyone (including Muslims, Hindus, and Jews) as part of God's Kingdom, we are far from the biblical picture that demands allegiance to the King (Jesus).

McLaren is delightfully counter-cultural when it comes to our capitalistic, consumerist, Western-soaked mindset. He shows how our worldviews fall short of the biblical picture. That is why it is so frustrating to watch him then capitulate so quickly to postmodern culture by refusing to preach Jesus as the world's True Lord and the only way to God. Where's the counter-cultural claim that Jesus is Lord and that His lordship is exclusive? Where's the counter-cultural biblical teaching on human sexuality? McLaren is counter-cultural in some ways and woefully culture-embracing in others.

Also troubling, he redefines repentance as "discovering you may be wrong." Is that it?

I thoroughly enjoyed much of McLaren's book, but I kept wanting him to say more, to be bolder in confronting our pluralistic, postmodern worldviews, not just the comfortable evangelical ghetto we inhabit.

That brings me to my final critique. The church and her role in salvation history is completely missing in this book. McLaren rightly condemns church abuses in the past and how Jesus' followers have botched His message. But McLaren never comes around to speak of the importance of the local church for God's Kingdom. McLaren advocates small group discussions of his book. But nowhere does he direct his readers to the broken, fallen, but nevertheless divinely commissioned followers of Christ found in churches all across the world.

I come away from this book saddened. Does theology have to be "either-or" all the time? Is there anyone who can effectively bring together the present implications of Jesus' message without neglecting its future implications? Is there anyone who can counter both evangelical culture's love affair with modernist assumptions and our world's blind leap into postmodernism's arms?

"False teaching", What a louzy book. There is no secret message of Jesus. What Jesus has to say is completely found in God's Word, the Bible. It is the message of repentant faith found solely in the Savior, Jesus-- only one way for salvation. McLaren is very misinformed and trusts humanistic/ecumenical ideas and reinterprets sola scripture. Stay away from this book. It is completely flawed. God to God's Word. It alone is sufficient!

"Too safe by far", This is the type of book that spiritually immature readers will castigate as they will perceive it as being anti-Christian or even anti-Jesus. In reality, it reads as a harmless, non-threatening, sermon.

Clearly, the author is frustrated with the current state of Christianity, and the world at large, and is trying to get his readers motivated enough to make changes. He correctly states that Jesus came to change the world, but regrettably, and owing to his own theological presuppositions, the author does not face up to the Big Lie of the Church - that Jesus came to die for our sins.

Honesty is what is now required from Christian leaders. Not more of the same. The forced and myopic interpretations of the past no longer wash. Honesty is the absolute prerequisite before any meaningful transformation can occur anywhere. But the author skirts around all the essential issues. Without a rejection of the manipulative and misleading concepts about Jesus himself, then Jesus' message can never be understood and will always be subject to confusion.

"Great Introduction to the Kingdom of God", This book is written on a level that is very accessible and easily understandable. Therefore, I would recommend it if you haven't read much on the Kingdom of God and/or Jesus' message before. You may find McLaren's writing to be somewhat less "loaded" or profound than other writing on similar themes (take, for instance, that of N.T. Wright or Donald Miller). However, it still strikes some very relevant chords and makes some inspirationally "radical" observations. The thematic strands are very well laid out and easy to follow. A good read, all around.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"A great introduction", I have a hard time understanding how anyone who has read this book can find Mclaren to be "an emergent heretic not affirming the physical resurrection of Christ." This book is a friendly and concise introduction to the study of the historical Jesus. It is illuminating and not at all heretical. Have the people who speak this way read the book or are they just going off of what their local homogenized Christian subculture says? N.T. Wright and Dallas WIllard are two of my favorite teachers, one reason why I resonated so strongly with this book as Mclaren thanks them for the majority of the content in his writing.

"This brother gets it right!", I believe Brian gets it right in so many ways. We have so shaped the Kingdom of God message by our long used-to Western developed Christian thinking that I believe it is so hard to be free enought to truely read and absorb the teachings of the gospels in a fresh way. We fail to see how 'american" our thinking about the revelation of God in Christ has become. As an evangelical and deep believer in the present reality of the "already" presence of the Kingdom of God as ushered in by Jesus, I was both challenged and encouraged by this "rediscovery". Reading this along with the writers who he indicates have influenced him, will potentially bring fresh passion to ones love of the good news of the Messiah - God with us.

"Thought-provoking and motivational", This book is thought-provoking and motivational. It has encouraged me to read the scriptures regarding Jesus' preaching and teaching. And, to follow those teachings.

"A Sign of Hope!", I've read the gospels of Jesus for over 40 years. It's clear that Jesus was very popular with most people and caused a stir wherever he went. His followers seemed to pick up where he left off and in a few generations spread the message of Jesus throughout the Roman Empire and finally, outlasting their persecutors, overcame the empire with the love of God in the message of Jesus. But when I ponder the church of Jesus that I know today I wonder what is missing. No only are we not moving our culture towards God's love in Jesus, we struggle to convince our own children to follow Jesus. For 40 years I've wondered where we are going wrong. And now in "The Secret Message of Jesus" I finally see some hope that maybe we can find our way back to what those first followers of Jesus experienced when they were transformed by the message of Jesus.
I recommend this book to anyone who has given up on the church, find it irrelevant, or are frustrated with it and long for more. To anyone who has dismissed Christianity because of Christians, I recommend this book. To anyone who wants to test the refreshing waters of the emerging church "The Secret Message of Jesus" will be a good taste.

"The Secret Message of Jesus: Not As Much Secret as Lost", This book is both revealing and challenging. It insists that we accept Jesus' teachings and life not as we read it through our world view and cultural biases, but as the culture that surrounded him would have accepted him. This book is full of historical insights and sociological investigations. If you are looking for a academic read that is written in plain English, with an open heart that covers the very basic truths within the Christian faith, this book is for you. I loved it! I am now reading back through it with my inter-faith small group of guys. They to endorse it.