The Secret Message of Jesus: A Review

Is there any interest in a "Secret Message of Jesus" blog bookclub?
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The Secret Message of Jesus is Brian McLaren's new book. Here is my review:

First of all, this is McLaren's best book. It is more accessible than "A Generous Orthodoxy," but more straight forward than the "A New Kind of Christian" trilogy. It is filled with his best thinking as of yet. And whereas McLaren deconstructs Hell in "The Last Word...," here he is deconstructing the Kingdom of God. But here he does not leave us hanging in some kind of limbo about the Kingdom of God, he presses the message Jesus was trying to send all along - a message that people (Americans perhaps more so) so easily miss with our layer upon layer of culture, philosophy, addictions, and bias.

When you think about the Kingdom of God, some ideas probably come to your head. Many of them are probably good ideas that mesh with Jesus' meaning and some of them are probably a little whacked. The problem is that you don't know they are whacked.

In The Secret Message of Jesus, McLaren is at his very best doing what he does best - decontaminating. Here is what I mean: This book is about The Kingdom of God. Seems simple, right? Well, the further you get into it the more you realize that Jesus was set in a political context that brings vivid color to what "Kingdom" meant to him and the people who listened to him - friendly and hostile.

It is impossible to walk away from this book reading the gospels the same - or the letters of Paul for that matter. McLaren shows how Jesus selected his Kingdom language intentionally to provoke the powers and systems that were in place. Jesus did not accidentally disrupt and disturb the powers that be, he went after those in power with his language. Throughout the book, McLaren anticipates your questions, assumptions, and objections and addresses them gently, but convincingly.

What is most important about this book is that he takes the Kingdom of God from the ever after and places it into the here and now. He directly and forcefully confronts the notion that it's all about going to Heaven and reframes it with a more appropriate frame, it is all about what God is doing right here and now and how we can participate in that reality. The Kingdom of God is not waiting for the end of the world.

What was most frightening about this book is that Jesus calls us to lay down our defenses. Jesus was not using metaphor when talking about loving our enemies. With the current level of violence in the world, who is willing to take Jesus at his word? Can America love radical Islamists? That would be the end of America, wouldn't it? But then you have to go back and ask, does the Kingdom of God need America? It's very difficult to comfortable with Jesus.

Finally, with so many references to Roman power and empire and how Jesus responded to it, you know without a doubt that he begs the reader to look at the power structures of today and not to get to comfy with them. More pointedly - American power. He never names names, but he does not have to.

As is his custom, McLaren draws from C. S. Lewis and other theologians to advance his point about Jesus' Secret Message. McLaren is great at taking what brilliant theologians think and bring it to a level that is understandable, but not insulting. Somehow, I can see that the audience for this book is not only Christians, but people wanting to know about Jesus without all the religious and denominational baggage that seems to be attached all too often in talk of Jesus.

This book is a clean look at Jesus.

My favorite line in the whole book was this:

The Kingdom of God doesn't have to wait for anything else to happen.

If there is hope in this world it is found in that sentence.
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So is there any interest in anbook club blog discussing The Sercret Message of Jesus?

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