Gain The Secret Message Of Jesus: Uncovering The Truth That Could Change Everything Portrayed By Brian D. McLaren Represented In E-Text

been listening to so many audiobooks about Jesus lately, and likely if I read "the Secret Message of Jesus" earlier in my life I would have liked it a lot more, but alas, most of the content all seemed so old hat to me.
Some is influenced by some good modern Jesus Scholarship, which McLaren employs from a confessional perspective, but for the most part I wasn't all that moved with how he expressed it.
I have this memory of just loving how McLaren wrote about Jesus in his book "Generous Orthodoxy", So I expected to like this a little more,

With that said, the chapter that was an exception for me, was the one that focused on the nonviolence of Jesus and the called to us to follow in His footsteps.
McLaren points out how
“Confessing “Jesus is Lord” means taking Jesus seriously as Lord, as the authority for the believer: Caesar commands us to kill our enemies, and Jesus commands us to love them.
Caesar makes use of torture and chains Jesus calls us to forgiveness and holiness, So Tertullian asked "Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when

it does not become him to even to sue at law And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs”"

Crucifixion was a primary means of executions for insurrectionist, anyone opposed to the Roman peace, any rebel, anyone in favor of a rival kingdom, could be crucified.
Likely the two hanging on the cross by Jesus were likely such folk, Crucifixion was so feared that few would consider the risk worth taking, that of taking a stance against Caesar,
Fascinating the cross became the primary symbol of the church,

“For the early church, it apparently meant that the kingdom of God would triumph not by inflicting violence but by enduring itnot by making others suffer but by willingly enduring suffering for the sake of justicenot by coercing or humiliating others but by enduring their humiliation with gentle dignity.
Jesus, they felt, took the empire's instrument of torture and transformed it into God's symbol of the repudiation of violenceencoding a creed that love, not violence, is the most powerful force in the universe.

It's no surprise in this light that the heroes of the early church were not Crusaders, not warriors, not men of the sword but rather martyrs, men and women with the faith and courage to face lion, ax, cross, chain, whip, and fire as testimony to their allegiancenot to the standards of this world but to the standards of the kingdom of God.
Like Jesus, they would rather suffer violence than inflict, Like Jesus, they showed that threats of violence could not buy their silence, that instruments of fear could not make them cower, "

Love these two quotes he includes in the chapter,

“Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder, Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth, through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate, Darkness cannot put out darkness, Only light can do that, ” MLK jr.

“the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world” Paul


feces I loved his focus on the message of Jesus.
His teaching to create the Kingdom of God here on earth through our actions and how we treat one another, My only complaint was his style of writing, In stead of coming right out and stating the message he hides it throughout the book, Revealing it has the book finishes, I appreciated the foundation he lays through historical background but at times it made me feel like he was trying to interest the page count, I still thought the book was worth reading for its message, All my life, Ive been excited by the Jesus of the Gospels, and thoroughly disappointed by the way those professing to follow him have behaved, and what they have emphasized in scripture.
The Jesus I kept encountering in the Bible seemed to be leading in one way, and Christians seemed to be going somewhere else, It seemed clear that Jesus is taking great pains to tell us how to act in the Beatitudes and in the Sheep and Goats parable, for instance, but Christians much prefer to talk about John:.
Yes, John:is important, but the emphasis has always felt wrong, Are we really to believe that the most important thing in our Red Letter bibles is a verse not printed in Red That doesnt make sense, And Jesus has always seemed at once much more loving and much more demanding than He comes across in a Church preoccupied with salvation and the afterlife,

While I can see how McLaren is a dangerous figure for many, his argument isnt that revelatoryits rather a commonsense one, in factfor those of us who have read the Gospels from a position outside of fundamentalist evangelicalism, outside of organized Christianity.
And nothing McLaren says really denies anything conservative fundamentalists believe, Rather, what McLaren does is call us to change what we emphasize in the Gospel, and how we try to follow Christ, I would say that this book should be read and used more of as a traditional children's story: Don't take it too seriously and you might end up with a good moral at the end.
McLaren's problem is that he neglects everything that disagrees with his perspective and thus loses out on huge and I mean HUGE theological necessities of Christianity, If I were to read this book as a strict theological text, I would have rated it a zero or given it an 'i' for incomplete,
However, if you take this book as simply one man expressing a farout idea for the purpose of proving a point or getting us to shift slightly more to his angle, it wasn't terrible.
I disagree with the very idea of making a hyperbolical viewpoint to force a paradigm shift think "the earth will end inyears" scare tactics to get people to do something reasonable like recycle, but McLaren is much more literaturebased than he is scientific methodbased so I can look past it.

Long story short, don't take this for what it says, That is, don't take this for what it says if you want to enjoy it at all without the need to rip your hair out in frustration, Although I enjoyed McClaren's book, it was the Appendix section that made me snap to and really pay attention,

Appendix I asks the question "Why Didn't We Get It Sooner" It being Jesus' secret message,

In this section, McClaren writes about the historical significance of the early church becoming separated from its Jewish roots within a century or two of Jesus ascending into heaven.
With much of the social significance of Jesus' message being lost to present day followers,

"Some might argue that the esoteric doctrinal arguments of Christianity were necessary otherwise Christian theology would have lost its doctrinal integrity and become a subset of some other ideology.
But if it did indeed succeed in saving its doctrinal integrity, one wonders, if it lost its ethical integrity in the process, . . "

Just as troubling is McClaren's assertion of the marriage of the established Christian church with the political state or, as what some current social justice writers call "the empire.
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"What we have seen with this alliance between church and empire came an endorsement of the use of violence in the service of the kingdom of God.
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Witness theth's recent seemingly offthecuff declaration to unload "fire and fury" on North Korea if they don't stop trying to be like the US and set up their own nuclear arsenal.


Oh well. What's that about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery

As if to offset the dilemma found in Appendix I, Appendix II offers a host of very practical, doable and fun activities to promote the spread of Jesus' secret message.
Even if you aren't a believer, I think you'd appreciate more than a few of them,

On a bibliographic sidenote, McClaren cites Walter Wink's "The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium, "

Sounds like a good one to put on the shelf!
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