EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope

Do you remember how you felt the first time you read a book that coherently captured and explained some deeply-felt desire of yours? And if you're religious, or spiritual, or whatever you want to call yourself, also spoke directly to an unfulfilled need within your soul? Brian McLaren's latest book does exactly that for me. It stirred me and moved me. I found myself saying "Yes!" repeatedly, especially as I progressed through the book and he began to bring his arguments to fruition.

McLaren's book takes precise aim at our flawed social and economic systems and blows them apart using the words of Jesus, words that are as revolutionary today as they were two thousand years ago. It's a staggering irony that so many people who call themselves Christians in today's world (particularly American Christians) are completely comfortable with our free-market system and how it affects the rest of the world, oblivious to the inequity and oppression it causes in other parts of the world. McLaren asks us to consider what’s free about it. Is it free from any constraints? Free from accountability and responsibility? Free from restrictions that would make it more equitable for all involved? If so, what then is the cost of this freedom?

To change the way we think we must first change the way we view the world. Our "framing stories," as McLaren calls them, must all change. The stories we tell ourselves, or allow others to tell us, shape the way we deal with the world. Until people of conscience act to revise and rewrite these framing stories, and get people thinking in a new light, nothing will change. Christ's "framing stories," His parables and teachings that we find in the Gospels, are at complete odds with the status quo of the worldly hierarchy of His time...mainly the pagan Romans and the spiritually-compromised Pharisees.

McLaren points out correctly that Christ's message of rejecting the status quo—in His time, the world of the Roman Empire—and living life in a new way that treated all with respect was in essence turning the world upside down. Those who wish to exalt themselves would be humbled, and those who humbled themselves would be exalted. Those who wish to be the greatest must first be the servants of others. This radical worldview, so at odds with the worldview of the Roman Empire, is also at complete odds with the worldview of so many modern-day Christians, those who are willing participants and supporters of systems that corrupt and oppress those at the serving end. It also takes to task those people of faith who support wars that trade violence for more violence, combating aggressive terror with retaliatory terror, all the while helping large corporations grow rich through the manufacture and sales of arms and weaponry. It's no small irony that the largest seller and exporter of arms and weapons is the United States, and that those sold weapons often end up being used against us at some point. God will not be mocked: we reap what we sow.

Without giving away the point of the book (I think everyone should buy it and read it themselves), I will say that McLaren presents the radical message of Jesus in such a way that will either leave you squirming in your seat as you realize your own complicity in the machinery of injustice, or find you looking for a way to get involved at a personal level. It's a very powerful and well-considered book with a radical message that we hear over and over yet rarely heed: You're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem. This wonderful book will help you find which side you're on, and then regardless of which side, will provide you with the next step in the right direction.