Saving the Planet One Left Wing Position at a Time (XIII)

Which Jesus: The Revolutionary or the Reformer?

Old Brian McLaren wants us to follow what he and Jackson Browne call “The Rebel Jesus.” Given his penchant for those halcyon hippy days, it isn’t too much of a stretch for old Bri to think of Jesus as Che Guevara without the beret. To Bri’s mind, Jesus was a rebel; a revolutionary. It’s more than just a little ironic that these were the precise words used of Jesus; some of us lived through those days. Christianity had, to the minds of some pastors, fallen on hard times and something was needed to—pardon the pun—resurrect it. Equally ironically, a number of those concerned pastors, wearing their earth toned turtlenecks and suede shoes didn’t believe in a literal resurrection, but that is another story for another time.

Fast forward to the early 21^st century and there’s old Bri, wearing his earth tones and Birkenstocks introducing us to Jesus the Revolutionary. You kind of halfway expect to see this rebel Jesus out in the streets of Berkeley demonstrating against the Marine Corps and carrying a sign that reads, “Draft beer, not men!” In fact, chapter 27 of his latest book is entitled “On the Side of the Rebel Jesus.” Cool. Hip. Bri is upset with “happy Christians” who are oblivious and who are out for little more in life than “The arrogant pursuit of wealth and the careless plundering of creation.”[1] Okay, we’re all opposed to the arrogant pursuit of wealth and the careless plundering of creation. Bri cites Jackson Browne, who “can’t help being cynical even about holiday charity. The seasonal giving of gifts among relatives contrasts with the locks and guns with which people guard their personal assets the rest of the year.”[2]

I think I get it: ole Bri and Jackson Browne are opposed to the Second Amendment. Key to Bri’s argument then is: Which Jesus?[3] When you’re striving to get the amahoro flowing, this is a crucial question. If you’re not certain what amahoro actually is, then clearly you’re not one of the thoughtful people that Bri hangs with.[4] In Bri’s world, you cannot simply ask the question: which Jesus? You must be in a packed room of young adults in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[5] You know intuitively that this is going to be something quite profound. Bri informs us that his is the Jesus pitted against the suicide machine—you no doubt remember this from the gospel accounts—drawn from the canonical gospels.[6] In other words, Bri is a strict biblicist. He continues, “Far from being an esoteric and speculative distraction, our beliefs about the end toward which things are moving profoundly and practically shape our present behavior. This is especially true in regard to violence and war, and is one of the reasons many of us have been increasingly critical in recent years of popular American eschatology in general, and conventional views of hell in particular. Simply put, if we believe that God will ultimately enforce his will by forceful domination, and will eternally torture all who resist that domination, then torture and domination become not only permissible but in some way godly.”[7]

Let’s pause here for a moment before we proceed in this discussion. First, it is noteworthy how certain Bri is that his position is correct and this from a member of the emergent chit-chat that constantly pounds the “uncertainty” drum. We cannot know; no meta-narratives—except the ones that suit my needs and purposes. Funny. Bri sounds like he really knows that what he’s saying is true. He is contradicting the heart of the postmodern rebellion. What is that? David Wells aptly puts it this way: “It turned away from meaning that is fixed and universal and turned toward meaning that is private and subjective. It shifted from absolute moral norms to those that are simply private.[8] Is the “conventional” view of hell wrong? Inaccurate? How do we know? Really, if meaning is private and subjective, why do we care? Is the conventional view of hell itself evil? Sinful?

I do want to point out the obvious: old Bri is a rank, lousy theologian. The man cannot differentiate between biblical sovereignty and “forceful domination.” A Bible Works word search using the ESV doesn’t show any results for the word “torture” in the Bible. This might wash with a packed room filled with young Buenos Aires adults trying not to step in the amahoro, but it doesn’t cut the mustard. There are several reasons why. First, as I have noted on more than one occasion, Bri loathes the word “sin.” In the first 200 pages of his latest book it is not found in his words. Finally, when he does use it, he is thoroughly apologetic.

Second, the Achilles’ heel of his latest book is that he falls into the postmodern trap of speaking of evil but not sin. This is an important distinction to understand. To Bri, the current status of the United States (suicide machine) is evil. Well, you might ask, why doesn’t he just say the United States is sinful or acting sinfully? According to this own pomo principles he realizes that he can’t. Why not? It’s all part and parcel of the “private-subjective-relative” scheme of things. Bri is leery of standards, even the Bible, although he talks about the Bible from time to time. Once we begin to parse his words and sentences more carefully than, say, a room full of pomos in Buenos Aires high on amahoro, we understand that since Bri has all but kicked sin out of the picture, he cannot reintroduce it arbitrarily. Sin, you see, is different from evil in many ways. Evil, in the pomo scheme of things, “has become purely privatized.”[9] That is to say, evil is what is “bad” for me. In Bri’s world, it is illegitimate to impose my private, subjective views on anyone else. So this begs the question: Why did Bri write his latest book—or any book for that matter—in such a rational, certain manner?

The problem, of course, is that if you deem something as evil (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot) there would need to be some standard of right and wrong that would act in an absolute fashion so that you could verify your statement. Again, Wells is very helpful here. He states, “Evil is badness at a deep level, one that we intuitively feel demands reparations and penalties because if offends against an inviolable norm. It is always wrong. It is not only wrong to me. It is wrong everywhere.”[10] Obviously, Bri and the emergents cannot and will not go there—explicitly. Just like the rest of mankind, however, they borrow capital from true Christianity when it’s convenient. So what is the decided difference between pomo evil and biblical sin? “Evil is simply badness. Sin, though, is altogether more serious because it sets up human badness in relation to God.”[11] This explanation is the “center” of traditional Christianity.

But have you noticed that postmodernism and the emergents love to talk about the lost “center” or, to use Rob and Kristen Bell’s way of putting it, the Bible is still the center, it’s just a different center. A cogent person might wait patiently for an explanation of what it means that the Bible is a different center. Don’t hold your breath, because Rob and his bride have had ample opportunity to explain what they mean and no explanation is forthcoming. Let the amahoro flow! Bri jettisoned the “center” long ago. What he and the emergent sillies fail to grasp is that “In the absence of a compelling external authority that enables us to draw the line confidently between right and wrong, true and false, we are left to fumble about with only our feelings to guide us.”[12] Consistency is not the long suit of the emergents, but their views trump everything and everybody. When it’s convenient for their purposes, they are as certain as the traditionalist or foundationalist they criticize. Otherwise, why would they attempt to convince us that their view is the correct one?

In a very real sense, Bri’s books are simply his worldview and in the emergent claptrap, worldviews are as different as the people who construct and hold them. By his own standards, Bri’s book must devolve to this: there can be no comprehensive purpose to life or any truth that is absolute and applicable to all in the same way—Buenos Aires notwithstanding.[13] Bri’s musings are ultimately no better, truer, or more helpful than any other so why bother to write; to attempt to convince? Besides, how can Bri’s Birkenstock and Starbucks world equate contextually with a bunch of young adults in Buenos Aires? He’s an old dude.

How can he know that the Jesus to whom he wants to introduce us is the real one? Is it simply because Bri claims that his Jesus is the Jesus of the gospels? Really? What is the (absolute) vantage point that Bri has from which he has the right to relativize all the absolute claims that centuries of theology prior to his birth legitimized? This is nothing more or less than the adage that absolute relativism can only exist if the relativists exempt themselves from their own razor, and that is what Bri, Wallis, and others have done. Isn’t it about time that people started realizing that and abandoning this silly, internally contradictory thing called the emergent conversation?

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[1] Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007), pp. 227.

[2] Ibid., 228.

[3] Ibid., 141ff.

[4] Just to cut to the chase, it means “peace.” Consider yourself enlightened.

[5] McLaren, EMC, 143.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 144.

[8] David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), p. 107. Italics mine.

[9] Ibid., 101.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., 109.

[13] Paraphrased from Well, TCBP, 110.

Pre-Order "Reforming or Conforming"

Amazon.com is now taking pre-orders for the book that Gary L.W. Johnson and I edited. It will be an excellent resource for understanding and critiquing the Emergent Church.
There is a wide variety of contributors and an introduction by David Wells. I also contributed an article on Herman Bavinck's notion of "community," which is integral in the Emergent conversation.

Saving the Planet One Left-Wing Position at a Time (XII)

Rejecting the Religious Right

There is a decided movement within what has historically been called evangelicalism to disassociate itself from the so-called Religious Right. This isn’t totally surprising for a number of reasons, not least of which is that evangelicalism has been moving to the left theologically and politically for a while. In addition, most Christians agree that neither the Democrat nor Republican parties represent Christianity. Unfortunately, there are some Christians that tend to identify being Christian with being Republican, but the two are not identical.

Christians do, however, have to make decisions with regards to certain public policies. For example, as a Christian, do you vote for a candidate that is pro-choice? Do you, or should you, vote for a candidate with poor foreign and economic policies? Is it wise to cast your vote for a candidate who is for big, ever-expanding government? How big of an issue is universal health care? Of course, we discuss these types of things all the time and Christians make decisions regarding them.

I preface my remarks this way because there is, among some who call themselves Christians, an aversion to the politics of the Religious Right. The phrase has almost become anathema in certain Christian circles. As a reaction to the RR, some who call themselves Christians have jumped on the global warming bandwagon, drive a Prius, and are in favor of “flex-fuels,” notwithstanding the fact that it takes a gallon-and-a-half of gasoline to produce one gallon of ethanol. That’s funny.

The reaction to the RR is producing its own brand of political animal under the guise of caring for the poor, destitute, and marginalized. In addition, they have formulated definite views on issues such as illegal immigration, “patriotic idolatry,”[1] drilling in ANWR or offshore, homosexuality, mysticism, universal health care, the death penalty, just war, no tax cuts for the rich, and a host of other matters dealing with the redistribution of wealth. My point here is simply this: These are all liberal, left-wing, typically Democrat Party issues, along with their two other favorites: evolution and abortion. You need to know this as a Christian in your decision-making process about political and economical factors.

A few names need to be mentioned here. In 1972, Eerdmans published John Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus.[2] Ron Sider has been a fixture in the cause for the poor and Third World countries for a while.[3] In the more recent past, J. Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh co-authored The Transforming Vision,[4] Glen Stassen and David Gushee co-authored Kingdom Ethics,[5] Jim Wallis wrote God’s Politics,[6] and has a new book entitled The Great Awakening,[7] with the Foreword written by Jimmy Carter, and Brian McLaren published Everything Must Change.[8] As another point of interest, I would mention the late James McClendon’s first volume of his systematic theology entitled Ethics.[9] Finally, Tony Campolo has written Letters to a Young Evangelical (Basic Books, 2006).

No doubt, young evangelicals will pick up Campolo’s book and find it “cool.” While McLaren, Wallis, and Campolo rail against the Religious Right, I would like to add a disclaimer and postscript to Campolo’s book that reads: Warning: you are being indoctrinated in Socialist/Marxist ideology. You see that is precisely the problem with these compassionate theologians. They demonize the RR without explaining to you that they are truly the RL (Religious Left). In one sense, this is an unconscionable approach. It’s fine to warn against the dangers that they believe are lurking in the RR, but they should be up front enough to be willing to lay their ideological cards on the table while they’re explaining life and their worldview to you.

By his own admission, Campolo desires to bring about God’s Kingdom by “progressive politics” (p. 3). Campolo and Wallis are in league together and Wallis even wrote a blurb on the jacket cover that reveals that Campolo is his favorite evangelist. That’s fine. We all have our favorites as well as those of whom we are less fond. Campolo and Wallis are joined by Sider and McLaren in their efforts. The net effect of the merry band’s “advice” is worse than the cure. If the Religious Right has embraced the Republican Party wholesale, this group has done the same thing with Socialism/Marxism. Unfortunately, in their zeal to demonstrate just how bad the RR really is and to convince young evangelical minds that it is their sworn enemy, they conveniently forget to mention that they are liberal, left-wing theologians whose views definitely have a profound impact upon our current political and economical structures. All of them seem to have let that little tidbit slip through the cracks, so I thought I’d bring it to your attention.

Like others in this camp, Campolo ostensibly uses the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) to give us the ethics of Jesus. This is a ploy used by many of these so-called “neutral” theologians/political commentators. One clear example will suffice. Old Mr. Starbucks with Birkenstocks himself, “Good Guy, Bri” gives us an explanation of the Sermon on the Mount that is completely bereft of exegesis, but is big on left-wing creativity. After introducing some select verses from Matthew 5, the Beatitudes, Bri opines that if Jesus were in a conversation with someone about the pervasive human pull towards war—what?—“I think he might say something like this:”[10] (Hold on, because this is going to be a bumpy ride in the imagination of the emergent church! What follows is only an excerpt of the whole page of fabricated words that Bri puts in Jesus’ mouth so that Jesus becomes a charter member of moveon.org.)

“My message of the kingdom of God is intended to replace the drugs of nationalism, tribalism, partisanship, ethnocentrism, and religious elitism—and the war addiction they support.”[11] Translation: America really isn’t as great as you’ve been led to believe. Moreover, some Bible-thumping Christians believe that Christianity is the only way to be saved. Finally, America is a war-mongering nation, delirious with the joy of inflicting as much civilian collateral damage as possible—unlike our peace-loving enemies, who go out of their way to avoid such casualties, with the exception of millions who were raped and tortured—, and addicted to building empires for the sake of self-aggrandizement.

But the Jesus of Bri’s imagination isn’t finished yet. He continues, “Instead of resorting to violence for national or other lesser interest, my kingdom invites you to defect from all war making and invest yourselves in peace-making for God’s global interests and the common good of all God’s creations on the planet.”[12] When you stop and think about it, this sounds just like the Sermon on the Mount, doesn’t it? Right. Then WMJS (What Might Jesus Say) ends on this high note: “So replace your craving for security with a passionate hunger and thirst for justice, and you will be immune to the temptation to snort the tempting white powder of war, or shoot the mysterious yellow syringe of war, or swallow the sparkling, bubbling, golden champagne of war.”[13]

Wow. There are only a couple of small, insignificant details that need to be ironed out and this might qualify as an addition to the canon. First, old Bri is already on page 178 and his readers don’t have a clue precisely what constitutes “justice.” It might have been somewhat helpful if Bri would have let us know what he thinks justice is. He could have given us some biblical references, but that would be asking too much because you simply cannot quote Scripture while wearing Birkenstocks. It’s so uncool. Besides, Bri might be mistaken for a Bible-believing fundamentalist, which is a fate worse than death for a theological liberal.

Second, he might have given us some specific information about who, exactly, is the war junkie. Is it the Republican Party? Is it Republicans in general? Does his definition include Democrats who voted for the war? We’re just not sure.

Third, Bri could have explained why when Jesus and the apostles dealt with those in the military that they never told them to go AWOL or otherwise to get out of the armed forces. At the very least, he could have told them to stop snorting and shooting up the opium of “rape, pillage, and plunder.”

It’s stylish to write books to people as if you’re just having a casual, neutral, and non-tendentious conversation with them. Or, like Bri, you can get your point across through a character in your book like Neo. If a person on the RR used such a name as Neo, it would have to be a nickname for Neo-Neanderthal. When Bri uses it, it means Neo-Cool-Cutting-Edge. Campolo’s characters are Timothy and Junia. Listen to what he instructs these two young mushy-brained evangelicals on page 265: “There was no question in our minds that in the struggle for justice, God sides with the poor and oppressed against the strong and powerful. For the first time, these students understood liberation theology, and they supported it—if by ‘liberation theology’ we mean the declaration that in the struggle to end injustice God sides with the poor and oppressed against their oppressors.”

We can only wonder why Campolo found it necessary to mention liberation theology and then try to weasel his way out of it. He could have simply stated that Scripture provides the true liberation man needs, both in terms of the doctrine that the Bible teaches and in terms of the ethics that flow forth out of that doctrine. Instead, Campolo conjures up images of Moltmann and Gutierrez. Their brand of “liberation theology” is thoroughly Marxist and it would take a Junia and Timothy with a lot of discernment to decipher what Campolo really means.

It seems that much of what Campolo writes is mere window dressing and a smoke screen to get unsuspecting young evangelicals, who have little or no spiritual discernment, to believe that all he is doing is unveiling the obvious errors in the RR. He isn’t. He, Sider, Wallis, McLaren and others like them have a definite agenda that pretends to usher in the Kingdom of God via left-wing politics.

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[1] That’s Brian McLaren’s term.

[2] John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972). The 2^nd edition appeared in 1994.

[3] Ron Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984²).

[4] J. Richard Middleton & Brian Walsh, The Transforming Vision, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1984).

[5] David Gushee & Glen Stassen, Kingdom Ethics, Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003).

[6] Jim Wallis, God’s Politics, (San Francisco: Harper, 2005).

[7] Jim Wallis, The Great Awakening, Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, (NY: HarperOne, 2008).

[8] Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope, (Nashville: Tom Nelson, 2007).

[9] James W. McClendon, Jr., Ethics, Vol. 1 in his series Systematic Theology, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002). What is striking about the order of McClendon’s work is that before he addresses the doctrines of Scripture and God, he begins with ethics.

[10] McLaren, EMC, 178.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

Saving the Planet One Left-Wing Position at a Time (XI)

The Emergents, Our “Framing Story,” and Reframing Jesus

I could have just as well entitled this section “Hi-ho, Silver! Liberal Theology and the Social Gospel Ride Again!” In 1988, Crossway Books published Carl F.H. Henry’s Twilight of a Great Civilization. Henry warned us in that work that the barbarians were coming. He also predicted that given the sad and dismal state of affairs in the modern Church that ironically the Church and the barbarians were getting increasingly difficult to identify, since they were looking and acting nearly the same.

Rather prophetically he wrote, “We are so steeped in the antichrist philosophy—namely, that success consists in embracing not the values of the Sermon on the Mount but an infinity of material things, of sex and status—that we little sense how much of what passes for practical Christianity is really an apostate compromise with the spirit of the age. Our generation is lost to the truth of God, to the reality of divine revelation, to the content of God’s will, to the power of His redemption, and to the authority of His Word. For this loss it is paying dearly in a swift relapse to paganism.”[1] That was two decades ago. What, if anything, has the modern Church learned in the interim? The short answer is: Nothing.

It is far more accurate to speak of a pilgrim’s regress. For whatever reason, the modern Church and many of its pastors cannot fathom the truth that the Word of God is sufficient. While people such as Russell Kirk (Enemies of the Permanent Things) have lamented the disintegration of institutions that have existed for more than a millennium and wonder whether the whole fabric of civilization can survive the present rate of economic and social alteration, the modern Church has been strangely, deafeningly silent on the matter.

Henry opines that “Institutional Christianity has dropped the last barricade to the return of the pagan man; preoccupied with the changing of social structures, it muffles the call for a new humanity, and in doing so forfeits a mighty spiritual opportunity at the crossroads of modern history. The organized Church that ought to have been burdened for the evangelization of the earth has been too busy either powdering her nose to preserve an attractive public image, or powdering the revolutionaries and reactionaries who need rather to be remade in Christ’s image.”[2] Once the Church drops the ecclesiastical barricades a flood of neo-paganism comes rushing in and physical and spiritual barbarism is bred in the Church.

In fact, Henry warned two decades ago that in the modern Church:

…a whole generation is growing up with no awareness of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, a species without clear ideas about sin and sacrilege, a race for whom God and the supernatural are virtually eclipsed, individuals with no interest in the imago Dei, no eternal concerns. The forerunners of these half-men are being nourished wherever a pulpit no longer preaches the commandments of God and the sinfulness of man, the ideal humanity of Jesus Christ and the divine forgiveness of sins, and the fact of saving grace. Obscure the vitalities of revealed religion, detour churchgoers from piety and saintliness, and in the so-called enlightened nations not only will the multitudes soon relapse to a retrograde morality, but churchgoers will live in Corinthian immorality, churchmen will encourage situational ethics, and the line between the Christian and the worldling will scarce be found. Even in the church barbarians are breeding.[3]

He had no idea how accurate his pronouncements would be. In general, Henry was referring to the deleterious effects of the mega-church movement, its bad theology, and its lack of a spiritual legacy to pass on to the next generation. The truth of the matter is that now with the addition of the emergent tribe and their silliness and the morass created by the mega-church, less that 10% of those who call themselves Christians possess a Christian, biblical worldview. This is the spiritual legacy that these two movements are passing along to their adherents. Are we surprised, though? The mega-church spun off into psycho-babble, feel-good theology, and tawdry entertainment that passed for worship. The emergent chit-chat had no substantive theology to begin with, but what little it had, old Bri has chipped away at it until he has no place left to go theologically except into the arms of the worn-out social gospel. And that is precisely where his latest book ends up.

Eschewing such troublesome doctrines as penal substitutionary atonement, the sinfulness of man, and the commandments of God, Bri wants to move his non-following following to a reframing of Jesus, our global crises, and a revolution of hope. Contagiously thoughtful Bri can’t seem to grasp that doctrine is practical, and practical material must be doctrinal if it is to be of any help or use at all. Foregoing doctrine, Bri wants to get on to the practical aspect of ethics. His problem, of course, is that he is attempting to build the second floor before the foundation is poured and the first story is built. The net results are disastrous and hazardous (spiritual HazMat) for those embracing the Emergent church movement. To parody an old Beatles song: it holds you in its arms ‘til you can feel its disease.

Bri is simply powdering the revolutionaries and reactionaries who need rather to be remade in Christ’s image. Given his theological methodology—and make no mistake his direction is intentional even though he would have the naïve believe that he is simply taking a pleasant, wandering theological stroll—he has landed in nothing eternal, but rather must focus solely on the secular, the here and now of saving the planet. He’s a quasi-Christian version of Al Gore. In a work that purports to be about ethics, it’s not until you are deep into the work that the word sin even occurs from Bri’s Starbucks stained pen. Rather than Bible, he gives his readers large does of Babel, which is different from babble. Instead of presenting biblical truth, Bri is more concerned about “the suicidal machine” and earth’s ecosystem. In point of fact, the entirely of this latest work contains precious little biblical truth, but is chocked full of revolutionary and reactionary drivel, putting words in Jesus’ mouth, and inane questions called “Group Dialogue Questions.” They are as tendentious as Bri’s biased writings. They’re also very funny. McLaren is a worse ethicist than Jim Wallis, although their conclusions are often quite similar: liberal theology, grossly distorted biblical hermeneutics, and a left-wing political agenda.

Historically, this is where these types of theologians have landed. The Bible really isn’t their standard for doctrine and life, so they seek profundity in caring more about the war, the poor, and sounding contagiously thoughtful. That is not to say that questions about the war, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the Christian family aren’t important, but they demand a truly biblical answer if you claim to be a Christian and you’re purporting to write a Christian ethics. A little Bible would go a long way. With both Wallis and McLaren, however, the texts are twisted and distorted to serve their purposes.[4] There is little or no exegesis either. Apparently for these two geniuses exegesis is a waste of time.

Here’s the deal: Ezekiel 33:1-9 paints a vivid picture of Ezekiel as appointed by the Lord to be Israel’ “watchman.” As such, he is to warn God’s people of impending danger. If they choose to give him the universal sign of peace and prosperity, so be it. He has done his God-given duty and warned them. If, however, he sees a danger coming and keeps his mouth shut, then God will hold him accountable for the death of that person. That’s a chilling thought and modern pastors—all of us—would do very well to heed those words.

In our next installment, we shall, Lord willing, begin to dissect this non-exegetical ethics book that supplies fodder not for Christian maturity, but for a secular opinion on a gaggle of social issues. It is little more than secular clap-trap with a quasi-Christian sauce thrown over it. I mentioned above that according to the “stats jocks” less then 10% of those who claim to be Christians possess a biblical worldview. Add the following to that fact: 66% of “born again” Christians assert that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Only 40% of those who claim to be Christians say that they are absolutely committed to the Christian faith. 44% of churched youth believe that human beings are capable of grasping the meaning of truth. That means the majority of Christian young people surveyed believe that truth cannot be grasped. One can only wonder how they were able to grasp that truth could not be grasped. 85% of churched youth agreed that what is right for one person might not be right for another person in the same situation. 85%! Finally,62% of churched youth agreed that nothing can be known for certain except what you experience in life. This is why reading and agreeing with theological liberals like old Bri and Jim Wallis is detrimental to your spiritual health, growth, and maturity.

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[1] Carl F.H. Henry, Twilight of a Great Civilization, The Drift Toward Neo-Paganism, (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1988), p. 15. Italics mine.

[2] Ibid., 16-17.

[3] Ibid., 17.

[4] For example, in Wallis’ book, God’s Politics he tortures texts in Isaiah (Isaiah’s Platform) and Amos (Amos and Enron) to suit his agenda. He does the same in his section “When Did Jesus Become Pro-War?” Asking “When Did Jesus Become a Selective Moralist,” without providing a shred of biblical support, Wallis concludes that Jesus was against capital punishment, even though YHWH prescribed it in the Old Testament.

Saving the Planet One Left-Wing Position at a Time (X)

Economics, Politics, and Ecology

Now that Bri has fried our puny brains with his complicated graphic, I want to warn you that he is going to add some more arrows and words that will, no doubt, tax the very limits of your abilities to follow complex diagrams. But before we examine this “brain buster,” let’s listen to how Bri opens the 8^th chapter of his book Everything Must Change.[1] He states, “A lot of us are very happy to go through life knowing as little as possible about economics, politics, and ecology.”[2] If he had added the words “and God” he could have been talking about Al Gore—who, by the way, failed God in seminary—or any of the presidential candidates. As it stands, however, he’s talking about those of us who struggle with his diagrams.

Bri has a low view of most of us, but remember that he’s used to hanging out with brilliant and contagiously thoughtful scholars and authors and not dullards like you and me.[3] He actually believes that all we’re really concerned about is paying our credit card bills, avoiding going to jail (I’ve been lucky so far), and a cold drink (scotch on the rocks or single malt by itself is fine), we’d rather not deal with the complexities of the societal machinery around us. Since he insists on bringing the presidential candidates into this discussion, I think we should move on to meatier less controversial segments of his book. A less controversial topic for Bri is “how the world works.”[4]

That’s a rather broad topic, but Bri promises, “That’s what this chapter is about.”[5] Wow! This must be a long chapter! Well, actually, it isn’t. It’s only five-and-a-half pages long. Bri, a former English teacher, knows how to write succinctly and compactly. His next book should be How the World Works in Less than Six Pages. Normally, this would be an impossible undertaking by any stretch of the imagination, but don’t forget that Bri has already given us his diagram of “The Societal Machine.”

Clearly, the graph at the beginning of this article is equivalent to thousands and thousands of pages about “how the world works.” It staggers the mind to contemplate the intricacies of this graph. So how do you account for the remaining complexities of life not covered in this diagram? Well, you have to have a little “filler” material if you’re only dedicating five-and-a-half pages to such an expansive topic. Therefore, it will require a brilliant and contagiously thoughtful mind to come up with a supplement to how the world works. Moreover, Bri comments that “The societal machine we introduced in the preceding chapter doesn’t float in a vacuum, suspended in space, hanging in an abstract dimension of ethereal concepts.”[6] Whew! That’s a relief! It’s nice to know that just when you’re on the precipice of how the world works, you’re going to be introduced to something specific, concrete like, say, sewage. Sewage! Hey, they are Bri’s words, not mine. Apparently, when you’re describing the way the world works, sewage is inevitable. After assuaging our consciences that we’re not going to be dealing with a lot of philosophical abstract junk in the next five pages, Bri says, “No, it (the societal machine) exists within the physical, visible ecosystem of planet earth. You can’t think of the societal machine apart from the earth’s soil and rain, photosynthesis and carbon cycle, glaciers and wind, sewage and sunshine.”[7] I’ll bet you thought I was kidding and just being mean to Bri about the sewage. Nothing abstract or vacuous about sewage.

I almost fell out of my chair laughing with Bri’s next comment. After the “sewage and sunshine” line, he continues, “With this new insight in mind, we can expand our diagram in several stages.”[8] Hold on tight, because this is where it really starts getting complicated. Explaining how the world works in five-and-a-half pages is complicated even with diagrams. This new piece of kindergarten work is going to situate the machine in its environment and then clarify how the societal machine “interacts dynamically with the ecosystem, constantly giving, constantly receiving (sewage—my addition).”[9] Now that Bri has prepared us for the new, improved graphic, I ask you to go back to the beginning and contemplate it again. I'll give you a few millennia to digest it.

Now I imagine that you’re experiencing what I did the first time I viewed this diagram: uncontrollable laughter. But I want us to get serious for a moment and try to find a way to understand this highly complex figure. I know you’re starting to understand substantially more than you ever have about how the world works, but there are still some areas that require explanation, elucidation. Bri explains, “Nearly all the energy available to the machine is ultimately solar energy (represented by the two line arrows in our diagram [just in case you hadn’t figured that out yet—RG]), which is the only significant resource entering the ecosystem.” The explanation of how the world works is progressing apace.

I’ll bet you’ve been wondering what the four bold arrows represent entering and exiting The Machine. Bri tells us that they are “critical resources” that we must monitor with special care “because of our dependence on them. The availability of these critical resources is depicted by the complicated and highly complex bar graph in the diagram. Try to stay with him. I know it’s hard, but if you want to know the way the world works, you must persevere. These four bars can represent almost anything—like sewage—but Bri give us his choices: topsoil, oil, swordfish, and timber.[10] Truly a logical selection, especially swordfish. He explains, “Some of these stores or supplies are non-renewable; once we’ve used them, they’re gone forever.”[11] Yeah, that’s kind of the idea behind “non-renewable.”

Ecologically speaking, we can plant more trees (did you know—and I am not making this up—that there are more trees in the United States right now than there were prior to 1920? It’s true.) and farm more fish, but we cannot “create more oil or topsoil—at least not very quickly.”[12] True. In case you haven’t noticed yet, Bri is headed towards oil and alternative fuels, especially as oil relates to global warming. An out of control “Machine” could easily go suicidal,[13] and no one wants that. For this very reason (the Machine going suicidal on us) Bri is convinced that “forward-thinking people are concerned about global warming and our addiction to the carbon-based fuels that contribute to it.”[14]

Clearly, forward-thinking people are those like Bri and the people he hangs with—the brilliant and contagiously thoughtful. To put it another way, forward-thinking people are “a new kind of Christian.”[15] They certainly are not the mental midgets that comprise the angry and reactionary fundamentalist, stuffy traditionalist, crusading religious imperialists, and overly enthused Bible-waving fanatics.[16] No, Bri’s kind of people are more concerned about sewage and swordfish. But even forward-thinking people can have some gaps in their thinking. Allow me one global example. These days we’ve been hearing a lot about alternative fuels and flex fuels. Corn is a key ingredient in many alternative fuels. Did you notice that the price of corn and corn-based products is on the rise? If you are concerned about economics like contagiously thoughtful Bri and the emergent tribe is, you might have noticed that the cost of corn and corn products has increased to the point where Third World countries can no longer afford them.

While it is patently true that we cannot create more oil,[17] we can drill in ANWR and offshore sites. One oil expert told me that there is more oil in Colorado and Utah than in the Middle East. But Bri is concerned about “why the issue of nuclear waste is so alarming.”[18] I’m not certain how we got to this subject, but I’m still trying to figure out Bri’s diagram and am still worrying about sewage. It seems that Bri is leading up to the fact that nuclear energy should not be a viable alternative for man. This is the way the world works. This is enough to shock you right down to your toes. Knowing how the world works has its drawbacks. I read last week that drinking single malt scotch was not only not good for you, it is downright dangerous. I was shocked to the point that I knew I had to take action, so I decided to give up reading.

That was simple enough, but what I am to do in the face of The Machine possibly becoming suicidal? I was at a loss, but Bri came to the rescue with what “most readers—like you and me—would do well” to do in light of the turning engine of our civilization possibly turning into a suicide machine. So get a pen and paper and jot these pearls of wisdom down. Here is what thoughtful people should do: “(a) stop reading and take a walk so they can think about it for a while, (b) call a friend or two with whom to process this chapter over a cup of coffee, or (c) immediately reread the chapter until they feel the wonder of the ecosystem in which we live and the danger of it being destroyed by a suicide machine of our own making.”[19]

And all this time I thought I was living on a planet that God was restoring by grace; a planet on which grace does not destroy nature but restores it, when in fact I’m living on a potential time bomb waiting to self-destruct. I realize that when you set out to write a description of how the world works in five-and-a-half pages you have to leave a couple of things out, but since Bri is ostensibly a pastor, I would have thought he might have left out sewage and saved a few lines for God.

---

[1] Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007).

[2] Ibid., 59.

[3] Ibid., 52.

[4] Ibid., 59.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 61.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., 63.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., 2.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., 61.

[18] Ibid., 63.

[19] Ibid., 64.

Saving the Planet One Left-Wing Position at a Time (IX)

Three Interlocking Systems

The uniformed, ill-advised, and un-initiated reader might think that Bri is considering paving his driveway, but in reality, his “three interlocking systems” are aimed at a far larger problem looming on the horizon than just some cracked asphalt. Remember: Bri is attempting to get us to think big thoughts like Jesus did. You have to read carefully and a little between the lines, but Jesus was a charter member of the Sierra Club and the reason he walked on water so much was that he was trying to reduce his carbon footprint. Jesus was keen and astute as these matters go and you would never find him giving a talk to his disciples about global warming on a cold day.

As large and complex as today’s global issues are, Bri firmly believes that we must keep reading and studying. There is one more ingredient that is crucial, essential. Bri kept “talking with knowledgeable friends.”[1] This leaves many of us out, since “knowledgeable friends” translates into “those who agree with Bri.” If you can ever find any of these knowledgeable dudes hanging around the vending machine waiting their turn to get their medicinal marijuana, you need to have a yellow legal pad with you—actually, any color will do, but to be a bona fide follower of the non-leader leader, yellow is the preferred color. Why is that? Well, that way you can sketch out “all kinds of diagrams and flow charts to capture the cause-and-effect interrelationships between problems.”[2] I thought the correct statement was among problems, but Bri’s the English guy and I’m just the theologian.

Even having an authorized Bri yellow legal pad doesn’t solve all your problems. With all that discourse among the knowledgeable friends old Bri found himself caught in “solution deadlock,” which is not a fun place to be. What happens when your knowledgeable friends and yellow legal pad leave you in the lurch? Then you turn to Dr. Leonard Sweet, who is an Emergent church darling. The difference here is that Dr. Sweet isn’t merely knowledgeable, but also brilliant and contagiously thoughtful.[3] That definitely helps. “Len,” as Bri calls Dr. Sweet made a passing comment that opened up the “solution deadlock” and seized Bri’s attention like an alarm buzzer. Here is what opened the bottleneck. Bri thought, “It’s like we’ve created some sort of suicide machine.”[4] He wasn’t alone. Other thoughtful folk had already spoken out stating how some ancient cultures “committed ecological suicide by destroying their own resource base.” He could be on to something here. If you read Daniel carefully—especially Daniel 3—there might be a case to be made for Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace emitting too many toxic gases thereby committing ecological suicide for Babylon. He should have—anachronistically—signed the Kyoto Accord where only privileged countries like China and Russia get to pollute the world.

Bri’s description of what’s happening to our planet was getting a little too scary for me—worse than any nuclear weapons device Doomsday Machine is the current Suicide Machine, which is a carryover from the ecological suicide of past generations and cultures. Thankfully, Bri explains, “Suicide machine is, of course, a metaphor.”[5] Whew! What an enormous relief! What exactly is the metaphoric suicide machine in our midst? According to Bri the words “can serve as a helpful metaphor (among others) for the systems that drive our civilization toward un-health and un-peace.”[6] Such a way of looking at and describing life can point us to how man can and has fouled “up the results of millions of years of evolution.”[7] That’s a powerful assertion. Here is evolution blindly, impersonally moving us forward, pulling us up out of the slime and man steps in and destroys millions of years of evolution. The follower of Jesus according to Evolution has every right to be indignant, especially if he or she knows knowledgeable, brilliant, and contagiously thoughtful people and not those angry and reactionary fundamentalists, stuffy traditionalists, crusading religious imperialists, and overly enthused Bible-waving fanatics.[8] By the way, this is the second time that Bri has mentioned talking to knowledgeable people.[9] If he’s not careful, he just might end up sounding like an elitist snob. He isn’t, of course, because all that he is telling us is born out of a feeling he discovered that he had something worth sharing.[10]

Back to the (Authorized) Yellow Legal Pad

With the suicide metaphor—again, I cannot express how thankful I am that it’s just a metaphor—on the front burner of Bri’s brain—oh, that’s just a metaphor too—he went back to all his (authorized) yellow legal pads that were full of diagrams, flow charts, lists, and other scribblings—with the emphasis on scribbling.[11] In a short while, Bri is going to share some of the products of his expansive legal pad meanderings. I tell you this to forewarn you and to prepare you for some heavy duty graphs and also so that you won’t split your sides laughing as such inane scribblings.

First, however, we must get down to the serious work of describing three subsystems of the supersystem. They are the Prosperity System, the Security System, and the Equity System. You and I have known these in the past under commonly understood names, but when you’re a thoughtful person, you need something a little catchier, a little trendier.

The Prosperity System

This describes what fulfills our desires to thrive and not merely to survive.[12] In other words, the Prosperity System “feeds civilization with the products and services that people want to obtain—or ‘consume’ if you will.”[13] The Prosperity System is comprised of a host of subsystems such as agriculture systems, manufacturing, energy, transportation, education, entertainment, communication systems, and so on. “So on” is a huge category. This is all well and good, but problems and jealousies arise “when some individuals or groups of people have a bigger share of desired products and services than others.”[14]

Communism and Socialism both know a great deal about this problem, but in the millions of years of evolution have not been able to solve it—but they’re working on it! This is an amazing piece of literature former-English-teacher Bri is giving us. He just surreptitiously and in a subtle fashion slipped in the notion of redistribution of wealth and prosperity. He will, in the course of this book return to this concept—repeatedly.

The Security System

“To protect a successful prosperity system from interference, a society develops a security system.”[15] Like the Prosperity System, this one also has a number of subsets or subsystems, such as weapons systems, intelligence systems, border control systems, policing and surveillance systems.[16] These systems are important, but they are also very expensive. That being the case, you’d think that old Bri would be pleased that we have a standing military that will prevent some Islamic jihadist from nuking his Birkenstocks, Starbucks gift card, and yellow legal pads, but being thoughtfully selfless, he is more concerned about the costs associated with the expanding security system.

Hidden within these words also is an agenda. Don’t forget that we’re discussing global issues and how Jesus would handle them and we all know that Jesus was a pacifist, in favor of open borders, anti-gun, and a full-orbed (and robed) revolutionary.

The Equity System

It’s here that Bri begins to spill the beans. He’s opposed to monopolies and it seems that we already have legislation with a view to monopolies. When Microsoft gets too big, for example, the government should mandate breaking it up into even more ineffective ways to build software—you know, platforms that crash every five minutes instead of just once or twice a year. One way that the Equity System thrives is when it “levies taxes to distribute the shared expenses of developing and maintaining all three systems.”[17] It? The only thing “it” can mean in McLaren’s word is “government.” By all stretches of the imagination, the government does a decent job at levying taxes. In fact, it has advanced degrees in that undertaking and to this point, “it” still doesn’t have enough revenues—especially when they continue to spend taxpayer dollars at an alarming rate. To this point, sensible economists have argued that the problem today is not with revenues—which are more than adequate—but rather with government expenditures, which are out of control.

But there is more for “it” to do: “it establishes or protects the press and court systems so they can investigate and report the truth about inequities.”[18] Boy, “it” is going to be busy. “It” establishes the press? Now I’m thinking that “it” must mean Democrat instead of government, because the Dems virtually control the media, with notable exception.

How does “it” protect the court system? Does “it” only appoint judges that meet a certain agenda? For example, does “it” only want judges who are pro-choice? Is protection calculated in whether or not a judge is in favor of open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens? Is it dependent upon affirmative action, pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, signing the Kyoto Accord, affirming a great deal of the junk science of global warming, or supporting universal health care? At this point, we don’t know. In fact, you’ll search Bri’s ethics book in vain for a sentient, biblical, or common sense answer. It’s all meaningless platitudes and generalities.

But Bri wants to make an important distinction here while he’s discussing the Equity System: Equity does not mean equality. “Equity means fairness and justice, the outcome of wise and virtuous judgment, without prejudice, favoritism, or corruption, but with a human sense of mercy and compassion.”[19] In other words, Bri is opposed to racial quotas like affirmative action and the minimum wage. What? Oh, I’m sorry, I thought he was. I guess I was mistaken. But other than those things he’s all for less government intervention and letting the free market police itself. Right. Even though he hasn’t said it, Bri believes that Jesus was in favor of the social gospel with substantially more emphasis on social than on gospel. We are sixty pages into Bri’s ethics where he announces (non-authoritatively authoritatively that everything must change and that everything must change. I know this is probably silly of me, but this sounds very much like a non-metanarrative metanarrative. Can’t we, don’t we tend to think of a word such as “must” as carrying some sort of authority with it? The second thing that is noteworthy is that we are sixty pages into this quasi-ethical work and there has been no Scripture. Third, the only time that we have encountered the “s” word, sin, is on the lips of other people. Bri doesn’t use it, but, hey, he’s just following Jesus, who rarely said anything about it at all. As a matter of fact, later on old Bri is going to give us a paraphrase on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount that makes The Message look like a translation.

There’s more weighty material in this section dealing with the Equity System. McLaren writes, “Or we might say that men and women should be paid and treated equally, but then we may agree that a pregnant woman or nursing mother should be given more leniency in regard to time off…”[20] Who is the “we” here? Is “we” synonymous with “it”? One thing is certain. “We” is to be taken “collectively” and it is clear that Bri is not referring here to “We the people…” Like Jim Wallis before him, Bri claims to have no particular political agenda, but then comes down in the left-wing camp on virtually every issue he discusses. Here’s something that needs to be said often: The Christians who carp about other Christians being aligned with right-wing politics ought to take a close look at their left-wing agenda. This is a double-edged sword and it cuts both ways. Unfortunately, the emergents and pomos only want it to cut only one way.

Before we end this installment, I want to share a very ,very helpful chart that Bri shares with his readers. I need to warn you going in that this is a very technical and highly complex graph that is the result of talking to knowledgeable, brilliant, and contagiously thoughtful people. It is the compilation of a number of authorized yellow legal pads chocked full of meaningful and caring “scribblings.” For most, you will not be able to plumb the depths of the profundity of this chart, but, for what it’s worth, It’s the graphic at the beginning of this post. I hope that you can make some sense of it. Bri’s assessment of this piece of technical graphic is that even though “this diagram takes us many steps forward in our journey of seeking to understanding global crises, we still have a long way to go.”[21] The diagram in question is located on page 57 of his new book and I’m sure you’ll agree that just looking at this will be like taking quantum leaps in understanding not only how Jesus was a charter member of the Sierra Club, but also how he was adamantly opposed to drilling in ANWAR.