Another post about Everything Must Change

In my first post about Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope, I summarized his four laws of "theocapitalism" -- the modern-day, veritable national religion in the U.S. that the current form of capitalism [which I would describe as having significantly socialized risk and substantially privatized profit - ed.] is the triumphant peak of history. (Or even the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama once famously suggested.)

Here is McLaren's list of the four ways in which "Jesus’s Gospel Confronts Theocapitalism":

1. The Law of Good Deeds for the Common Good


2. The Law of Satisfaction through Gratitude and Sharing


3. The Law of Salvation through Seeking Justice


4. The Law of Freedom to Prosper by Building Better Communities

And here is McLaren's reworking of the Beatitudes:

Don’t get revenge when wronged, but seek reconciliaion.
Don’t repay violence with violence, but seek creative and transforming nonviolent alernatives.
Don’t focus on external conformity to moral codes, but on internal transformation in love.
Don’t love insiders and hate or fear outsiders, but welcome outsiders into a new “us,” a new “we,” a new humanity that celebrates diversity in the context of love for all, justice for all, and mutual respect for all.
Don’t have anxiety about money or secuirty or pleasure at the center of your life, but trust yourself to the care of God.
Don’t live for wealth, but for the living God who loves all people, including your enemies.
Don’t hate your enemies or competitors, but love them and do to them not as they have done to you – and not before they do to you – but as you wish they would do for you.

Sounds good to me!

Maybe I could say more about all this, but I have an ear infection and some other duties to attend to. So, to finish this post though perhaps not the series, here's another quote I liked: You can get A in math and F in contemplation/self-knowledge and still be “a success” (p. 290).