Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope

Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope | Brian D. McLaren | A book to buy, not to check out.

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Everything Must Ch...

	Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope Brian D. McLaren Thomas Nelson, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Everything HAS Changed (once you've read the book)!

Don't even think about picking this book up in time to have read it before Christmas. As if shopping for your three teenagers wasn't difficult enough for a single mom on a government salary. Given the timing of publication, I feel as tho' Brian was obligated to include an appendix with alternative gift ideas for teens, as well as guidelines for the inevitable discussions when you have to tell your little one you're not going to gadgetize her at Christmas. Even if you are able to convey to her the covert curriculum behind the peer and advertising campaign, there's still heartache in her eyes. If Jesus hadn't intervened to grant us sweeping gratitude for the promise we have in him and for our family and friends, this book really would have been a grave disservice to our holiday.
Once you begin to grasp it, the concept of a covert curriculum is like an earworm - every advertisement that comes across your radar, every front page headline, every soundbite from a presidential candidate is ruined. You can't just enjoy them anymore. Reading this book is like instantly becoming a movie critic. You don't get to sit back and let the movies wash across your consciousness anymore because you're looking for the flaws.
Don't even get me started on the resulting surreal shopping moments when you find yourself practicing your parents' idiosyncratic and lifelong practice of inspecting the country of origin of the goods prior to purchase.
This book wakes something that will not go back to sleep. Who knew we could be so ravenous for truth and clarity?

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A book to buy, not to check out.

I have to confess that I'm not done reading it yet. I checked it out from the local library, and realized after 5 chapters that I had to own it, so as to pass it on to other people, as opposed to just giving it a quick read.

The ironic part is that I was writing a sermon, where I was saying a lot of the same things, when I started reading the book. While I tend to feel odd in those moments when I realize someone else has "said it first," it showed me that McLaren is onto something that is becoming increasingly obvious to the rest of us and needs to be increasingly voiced before it is too late. My faith has already been picked apart by politicians, pie in the sky evangelists, a self-induced complacency, an unjustified sense of superiority, and money-grubbing thieves. It's high time more of us got together to reclaim faith and make it relevant again.

I tend to struggle with Brian's books, but I read them in order to be able to share with my students and stay a part of the emergent conversation. So far as I can tell, this is easily his best work since Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture-Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel and it has me looking forward to hearing more from him.

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WONDERFUL!

I have read at least three other of Brian's books, and I believe he is one the greatest forces of good both in and outside Chistendom.

In the book before this one, The Secret Message of Jesus, Brian discloses the essence of Jesus' communication to us.

In this book -- he tackles the answers to two primary questions:

---What are the biggest problems in the world?

--- What do the life and teachings of Jesus have to say about the most critical global problems in our world today?

I expected Brian to have something significant to say about the answer to the second question.

However, I had already lowered my expectations for the significance of his description and analysis of the first question's answers.

What a surprise! He does a marvelous job of answering the first question. As good or better than those experts in more "relevant" disciplines whose books contain many more pages than McLaren's. And, McLaren is a tremendously engaging writer -- one who keeps you turning pages.

He sees our world as a machine -- The Societal Machine --- which in truth is a
"Suicide Machine".

There are three components of this machine: Prosperity System, Security System and Equity System. The black cog in the middle, Brian calls -- The Framing Story.

McLaren spends ample time discussing the problems and then makes a convincing presentation of how Jesus' message and life could be the antidote for the poisonous predicament prevailing today.

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