pat loughery

Another quote from Brian McLaren’s newest, The Last Word and the Word After That. This one comes from a character who’s beginning to see a different emphasis in the Gospel message. Again, if you’re not familiar with this trilogy, realize that the characters involved are fictional – this isn’t McLaren talking in the “I”.

In my [previous] way of telling the Gospel, what you call the modern Western way, there were always two key questions:
1. If you were to die tonight, do you know for certain that you’d go to be with God in heaven?
2. If Jesus returned today, would you be ready to meet God?

Jesus is important because he paid for your sins when he died on the cross, so if you die tonight, or if Jesus returns today, you’ll be forgiven and can enter heaven.

But in this new understanding of the gospel, two very different questions come to mind:
1. If you were to live for another fifty years, what kind of person would you become – and how will you become that kind of person?
2. If Jesus doesn’t return for ten thousand or ten million years, what kind of world do you want to create?

Here Jesus is important because he leads you and forms you to become a better and better person, and the kind of people who truly follow his way will create a good and beautiful world.

This is found on p.171.