The Secret Message of Jesus
Categories : Christianity, books |
I thought I’d post some brief thoughts on this book, which I finished about a week ago. Now I’m usually a big fan of McLaren’s work. Though I don’t always necessarily agree with what he says, I generally find his books to be both gracious and thought provoking, which I’d imagine is what Brian would want. Certainly those who jump to condemn him are not catching the spirit of humility and questioning with which he writes. Looking at the Amazon reviews for this book you can see the usual diverse spread of ratings, evenly split between the scathing 1 and 0 star reviews (many of who I suspect have not even read the book, or who read it with their minds already made up) and the gushing 4 and 5 star reviews (some of whom may be reading with their minds made up as well, but which usually represent more fair appraisals, at least in my opinion).
Anyway for some reason I just couldn’t get into this book as well as McLaren’s previous efforts. Maybe it was just that my head was not in the right place, but it just didn’t grab me in the same way as the New Kind of Christian trilogy for example. There was nothing I really disagreed with or found controversial (though no doubt others will find plenty of meat for their condemnation), and there was plenty of stuff I found myself nodding in agreeance with, but overall it just didn’t have a strong impact on me. It didn’t seem to flow as naturally as Brian’s other books, but once again that might be more due to where I was at than any inherent flaw in the book itself.
Overall it’s not a bad book, and I need to give it another chance with a re-reading at some point in the future, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the inspiring manifesto that it was hyped up to be. For a much better recent exposition of the heart of Christianity, I would recommend N. T. Wright’s Simply Christian, which I personally found to me not only more powerful and profound in it’s message, but more readable. Wright’s book is destined to be a classic, whereas there’s not much new in McLaren’s latest that hasn’t been said better elsewhere. I’m still a McLaren fan, but this is not his best work.
