The author Brian McLaren has had a confused upbringing. According to his latest book, Life After Doom, he "had been taught that the purpose and focus of Christianity was to help people end up in a good place after they die". If only he had been brought up a Presbyterian and learned that our "chief purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever", then he could have saved himself a lot of pain, and avoided the road he has taken in his new book. And he would have spared us the teaching of his new syncretistic, pagan religion.
McLaren admits that his latest book is only for those who have already been converted to his new religion – the cult of climate catastrophism. "Life After Doom is not for you if you think that problems like climate change, ecological overshoot, economic inequality, racial injustice and religious corruption are nothing but a hoax." Personally, I have no problem with believing in human sinfulness in these areas – and in many others. But Brian takes a shallow, limited view – it is really the bad news without the Good News.
The doctrines of the new religion are quite explicit. Original sin is not in the Bible; Heaven and Hell were not taught in the Old Testament. Whereas we used to live as though the world would not end, now we are in a position where it will. "The world that we so love is ending, dying, being murdered by ignorance, being killed for convenience and profit."
This is all the fault of evil capitalists, racists and climate change deniers.
"We have been inducted into a religious money cult, a civilisational death cult; we have evolved into Homo theocapitus, people who worship the big bronze bull of Wall Street with his shiny, pendulous testicles."
Western civilisation is doomed – and so it should be: "To put it bluntly, our civilisation is colonialism, and colonialism is our civilisation. Our civilisation is supremacy (racial, religious, ideological, national or human), and supremacy is our civilisation. Capitalism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, and above all climate change are the major problems facing us."
All who are truly enlightened know that we are in deep trouble. If you are reading his book, you are already part of this enlightened community. However, you may need help and Brian offers you not Christ, but mental health professionals from the Climate Psychology Alliance.
But there is hope. As indicated by a 14 per cent increase in electrical cars and batteries that are 90 per cent cheaper. The greatest hope is "the resilience of both humanity and nature".
And there is hope in indigenous people, who before western civilisation came along, lived in perfect bliss, in harmony with nature and each other. Did you know that when Jesus said that the meek will inherit the earth, he meant the indigenous people? We don't need a personal God. God is just a personification of indigenous stories about creation.
As for the Bible, you have all been reading it wrongly. According to McLaren it is "the collective diary of an indigenous people who saw what the coloniser mindset was doing to humanity, to the Earth and to her creatures." Adam and Eve were just symbolic of one species and despite what we are told in Genesis 1 and 2, there is nothing special about them – God breathed his spirit into every species. The reason for the virgin birth is so that Jesus could be born apart from the "violent patriarchy of Earthly civilisation".
If you think this whole way of reading the Bible is ridiculous, then you need to stop reading the Bible - until you can read it through the anti-capitalist, climate catastrophist, CRT lenses of American progressivism. You need to listen to "indigenous, womanist, Black, liberation, ecofeminist and queer theologians and biblical scholars", in order to be able to understand the Bible properly.
And you also need to take seriously apocalyptic novels and movies − works that imagine the end of the world. Forget the Bible – go to Planet of the Apes, The Road, Don't Look Up, and other works of apocalyptic fiction to wake up complacent people. The capitalist Hollywood is the prophetic voice of today.
But Brian's 'good news' is not finished yet. He questions whether it might be a good thing if there were such a disaster that humans were wiped from the earth? We need to learn to see death as good – it's "a final act of generosity" - giving up your space and resources for others. No life everlasting here. Just an everlasting planet. "Dear Sister Death. She is not a failure or flaw in the universe. She is a feature of it, part of the beauty that will live on as long as this universe itself."
Why didn't Jesus see this at the grave of Lazarus? Why did he weep with rage in the presence of Sister Death? Didn't he recognise her beauty? As for Paul telling the Corinthians that death was the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15), he clearly lacked the indigenous insight of Brian!
Elsewhere, Brian declares that climate sceptics make his "skin crawl". Everyone who disagrees with him is guilty of propagating or believing 'misinformation'. If only we could invite the wisdom of indigenous people, the wisdom of St Francis and St Clare and the Buddha and Jesus, the wisdom of climate scientists and ecologists and spiritual visionaries from all faiths into our hearts.
When Jesus said he was 'the light of the world' he meant "you need to be your own light". And of course, follow the light from Brian's book. He even invites you to preach some sermons and lectures from the book – as well as focus on what comes from your own heart. That is what the church will want, not the Word of God, not the conviction of the Spirit. Not the teaching of Christ. Just Life After Doom and your inner light.
It is sad enough to see a former Christian preacher go down this pagan route. But I found it even sadder to hear Brian being interviewed on a UK Christian programme where all of his anti- Gospel statements were left unchallenged.
As well as repeating most of the heresies in the book, he also declared that those who didn't agree with him did so because they were enslaved to the tradition they had inherited, and didn't really want to face reality.
What astonished me was that the interviewer stated that Brian's book was not abandoning the Gospel or being syncretistic. Even with the most generous, post-modern interpretation of Life After Doom, it is impossible to come to that conclusion. The same interviewer stated that "in the UK you can be evangelical and hold to liberal theology without being handed over to Satan". I guess both Paul and Jesus got it wrong!
The interview seemed to work on the presupposition that the choice was between activism or saying the Sinner's Prayer. Like much of McLaren's dishonest caricature of evangelicalism, it is a false dichotomy. Believing the evangel makes you more of an activist. The more heavenly minded you are, the more earthly use you are. On the other hand, if you buy into McLaren's syncretistic mix of Christianity, paganism, climate catastrophism, anti-capitalism, indigenous spirituality, and Woke progressivism, you will end up with the Doom. No hope. No Christ. No Life. Only the cult of Death.
I prefer the real Gospel – which tells us that if we come to Christ, we get life everlasting, joy, hope, peace, forgiveness, love and beauty. You get a God who is in control. You will get a renewed heavens and earth. I know which 'gospel' I prefer!
David Robertson is the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales. He blogs at The Wee Flea.
