An Interview With Brian McLaren - Everything Must Change

I had the opportunity to attend the Off-The-Map LIVE conference November 1st - 3rd in Seattle a few weeks back. Brian was kind enough to agree to the following interview about his new book: Everything Must Change – Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope – Published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Nashville, TN Copyright © 2007 by Brian D. McLaren 327 pages.

In my opinion, it's Brian's most important book. I hope you enjoy the following that Charlie Wear at Next-Wave asked me to prepare for him in November 2007.

1. Question: I caught you in your kitchen tonight cooking dinner. How’s the family? How’s Brian? Any near term priorities you are focused on between now and the end of the year?

McLaren: Thanks for asking, Bill. My wife, Grace, and I are empty nesters, so this is a great time for us. We got married 28 years ago had four kids in six years, so it’s nice to be hanging out just the two of us. Our kids are doing well, thanks be to God. Personally, I feel so fortunate to be doing what I feel called to do and enjoy doing. The critique of some of my loyal critics gets tiring, but I feel sustained by the encouragement and prayers of so many people. Between now and year’s end? I’ll be in Texas, Germany, and Boston, and in between, I’ll be focused on preparing for the “Everything Must Change Tour,” which will bring people together in eleven cities between February and May.

2. Question: At the beginning of the book ( p.3) you write: “And not only am I often unsatisfied with conventional answers, but even worse, I’ve consistently been unsatisfied with conventional questions.” One interpretation of this remark might be, “conventional questions produce conventional answers.” Is it your position that a large proportion of professed Christians have succumbed to a convenient living out of their faith that is askew with the teachings and life of Christ?

McLaren: Well, I think many people are doing their best to live out their faith in sync with the teachings and life of Christ, but it’s not easy to figure out what that means, especially in changing times. Some things are easy – like knowing you shouldn’t hate or commit adultery or kill. But pretty quickly, it gets complex – like knowing whether pre-emptive and hastily-launched wars fit under killing, for example. And that gets to what I mean about conventional questions. We have lots of religious arguments about the origin of the species, but far fewer dialogues about the extinction of species and what we can do to save species that we all agree are precious parts of God’s creation. We have lots of religious arguments about homosexuality, but far fewer conversations about the growing gap between rich and poor and what we can do about it. We argue about what to do about abortion, but we seem much less concerned about what to do about racial disharmony and political polarization and how we can be peacemakers and reconcilers. I’m not saying the common arguments are unimportant, only that less common questions deserve a lot more attention. I hope my book will help in that regard.

3. Question: As you state in the book, our “framing stories” have an essence of momentum that seems to inhabit and sustain them --- they shape the way we view the world, think, develop normative practices, and live our lives --- including our Christian practices and beliefs. These framing stories tend to fuel the “suicide machine.” What are a few things you can identify that are presently interrupting this “inertia” I have referred to?

McLaren: A lot of us have been living by the framing story that says liberal democracy and consumptive capitalism are the “end of history” – the goal toward which everything inexorably moves. But then the war in Iraq comes along, and we realize that liberal democracy isn’t like a new software program you can easily install on an old computer. It’s more like a new way of living that may take generations to learn. Or global climate change comes along and tells us that we need a new kind of capitalism: one that values stewardship over consumption and waste production. In other words, reality keeps popping up to confront our faulty framing stories; we reap what we sow, and maybe we begin to wonder whether we should be sowing different seed, living by a different story.

4. Question: How does “fear” feed the suicide machine? On the flip-side how is a holy, healthy fear essential in motivating the change the book illustrates as so essential, or is it?

McLaren: This is a huge question, and so important. First, we need to realize that there is a very dangerous kind of fear in our culture today. Think of it like this: religious leaders have a vested interest in making people afraid so that they’ll keep attending services and contributing money. Political leaders have a reason to keep people afraid so they’ll vote for their party and support their policies which promise to keep us safe. And the media inflate all of this, because if a cable news station can keep you watching for another fifteen minutes to learn about the next danger … whether it’s chemically-tainted toys or an orange threat alert or whatever – they get higher ratings, sell more advertising, and make more money. So a lot of people profit by keeping us afraid.

Yet, as you suggest, that’s not to say that fear is always unhelpful. It’s like Scripture says – the fear of man brings a snare, but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This is where wise Christian leaders need to help people to discern what things are worth fearing and which threats are paper tigers.

For example, a lot of us Christians are really afraid of having the wrong doctrine about issue X or Y or Z, but we’re not very concerned about whether we care for the poor. My guess is that the Holy Spirit would like us to care about good doctrine and about the poor, and to realize that one of our doctrines should be that God is a compassionate and just God who cares about the poor and wants us to join God in caring.

5. Question: Would you be kind enough to describe a few ways that one might consider “defecting” from the “dominant societal framing stories” you illustrate in the book?

McLaren: The key issue is the issue Jesus constantly addressed, the issue of faith. If we believe the framing stories of our culture – a story of happiness through consumption, a story of peace through domination or revenge, a story of evacuation and isolation, and so on – then we’ll live by those stories. But if we simply stop believing those stories, and instead we have faith in Jesus and listen to his alternative framing story of the kingdom of God, then we’ll behave in a radically new way. That will flesh itself out in a thousand ways – from seeking reconciliation rather than revenge, to seeking to include and love rather than exclude and scapegoat, to seeking justice for all rather than domination for “us.”

6. Question: As I read Everything Must Change, it dawned on me that a tremendous amount of this book is encouraging people to consider the myths that continue to influence our lives as Christ followers. To use a term I made up, you seem to be urging people to immerse themselves in a “de-mythification” process. Can you describe a few of these myths for our readers?

McLaren: One of the powerful myths is the myth of our own righteousness. I may indulge in this myth as an individual, when I constantly talk about the “sinners” over there while congratulating myself for being so righteous. This is the kind of myth Jesus goes after in his parable of the publican and Pharisee. But groups can also indulge in this myth. Jesus confronted his contemporaries in this regard when he reminded them that their Jewishness didn’t automatically qualify them as good and just. God could raise up sons of Abraham from the local rocks, for example. James does something similar when people say, “But we believe in God!” James replies, “Yeah, big deal. So do the demons.”

In war time, this myth is especially contagious, because nations at war tend to paint their enemies as evil and insane, while painting themselves as good and sane and victimized. Jesus hit this myth when he told the story of the Good Samaritan, because the Samaritan who was supposed to be a bad guy turned out to be a good guy, and the Levite and priest, who were supposed to be good guys, turned out to be bad guys. If Jesus were telling the story today, it might be about a guy who gets mugged in the Middle East, and then a Catholic bishop walks by, and then a Baptist preacher walks by, but a member of the Taliban or Hamas or whatever stops to help the guy. The story, were it told today, might be called “The Good Taliban” instead of “The Good Samaritan.” That would certainly bring some of our myths to the surface, you know?

7. Question: The book spoke “sacrifice, change, reorientation, and transformation” on a personal level to me. Can you elaborate on the necessity for more lives lived as “living sacrifices?”

McLaren: First, I’d want to say that I believe the changes we need will not generally be in the category of sacrifice. For example, if we have derived pleasure over the last few centuries by plundering the environment and living against it, so to speak, I actually believe we’ll find more true joy in the next few centuries by healing the planet and living in sync with it. Scripture says that there is a pleasure in sin “for a season,” but in God’s right hand are “pleasures forevermore,” so I believe that if we begin living more in the way of Jesus, we’ll experience it less as making a sacrifice and more as experiencing life to the full.

But I think we have been so thoroughly brainwashed – or mis-discipled or myth-ified to use your term – that it comes as a shock to say that working for peace will lead to more security than preparing for war, or that living within environmental limits will be more fulfilling than living to consume, or that we’ll find more blessing in giving than in receiving and consuming and hoarding.

In my experience, when I believe Jesus’ word and seek to follow Jesus’ way, some people, including some of my fellow Christians, think I’m becoming less orthodox. But I think they’re mistaking a break from theological orthodoxy with a break from their ideological, political, or economic orthodoxy. My belief is that any orthodoxy that places itself above Jesus is an idol and should be promptly dethroned.

8. Question: As each chapter in the book includes a number of superb questions for further discussion, are you contemplating encouraging/providing a net based vehicle for the formation of groups of like-minded readers in various communities to come together for just that purpose, akin to what occurred with Jim Wallis’ book God’s Politics?

McLaren: Yes, and this is already happening. There are lots of groups forming to discuss the book. One pastor of a megachurch just told me that he’s having all his small group leaders read the book, and will encourage them to have their groups work through it. As well, when the tour ramps up in February, there will be a whole set of web-based resources to help people put the message of the book into practice. It will be a wiki-style thing, where people share ideas and experiences and new links, and so on. I’m very excited about seeing where that all leads.

9. Question: A quote from your book resonated particularly deeply, and personally with me. It reads (p. 279) “I realized that the simple action of one family --- not a big NGO, not a huge government program, but a simple project of neighborliness and humanity --- illustrated the kind of subversive faith and action that can stop the suicide machine and build, in its place, a better world.” What this quote confirmed for me is the reality that one life, one family, a few folks, embracing the opportunities before them in their everyday lives, MATTER….can contribute to making this world a better place. This quote breathed the “power of untapped potential” upon me. Do you agree? Is this an unrealized reality waiting to be birthed? Is this one of the themes you hope people will act upon as a result of reading the book?

McLaren: -- Yes, exactly, Bill. I know you’re doing this in your own family right now. Your decision to take in Muslim exchange students becomes, to me, a profound and powerful action toward peace-making, and as Jesus said, this is a blessed thing to do. A friend of mine recently met a Rwandan woman who had become a slave here – the people who brought her to the U.S. took away her passport and made her work without pay, threatening to deport her if she objected. My friend helped her find a lawyer and get free. Multiply stories like these by a dozen, then a thousand, then a million … and you get a feeling for what Jesus meant when he talked about the kingdom of God being like a seed that grows and produces thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold return, or when he said the kingdom spreads like yeast. The mound of dough can be huge, but even a little leaven can eventually make the whole thing rise. I think our actions are like that. It’s a beautiful conspiracy of love and hope. My friend Bart Campolo calls it “plotting goodness.”

10. Question: Deep Shift – Tell us about this initiative and your plans for 2008.

McLaren: My good friends Linnea Nilsen-Capshaw, Tracy Howe, Jo Hogland, and Denise Van Eck have teamed up to develop an eleven-city tour. We’ll be coming into eleven cities – Charlotte, Boise, Dallas, Tampa, DC, San Diego, Chicago, Seattle, Kansas City, New York, and Northern Indiana – for a Friday-night and all-day Saturday gathering. People will experience a whole range of input and inspiration around the theme of the book. I’ll give some talks – building on the main ideas of the book and relating them to our lives as individuals and in faith communities. There will be all-original music – also relating to the themes of the book.

We’ll have prayers and litanies and other resources that people can experience and then bring home to their church or small group or whatever. Plus there will be a beautiful art-and-poetry experience that I think will really blow people away. The goal is to let the change, the deep shift, that we need to see in the world begin in us … so this will be, we believe, a truly spiritual experience for everyone who comes, whether they’re pastors or church attenders or church drop-outs or seekers or spiritual-but-not-religious folks, or whatever. I hope folks will check it out at deepshift.org. And they can get more information about my work at www.brianmclaren.net.

--- Great questions, Bill!

Thanks Brian.

About The Author:

Bill Dahl is a freelance writer. Bill is published in numerous professional publications, magazines, websites, journals, newspapers and newsletters. You can enjoy Bill’s writing on his website at http://www.ThePorpoiseDivingLife.com.

Contact Bill at wsdahl(at)bendbroadband(dot)com.

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