Glebe Road United

I'm not sure if anyone out there is reading this because this on-line version hasn't kept up with the weekly discussions we have been having at the church.  This week we are discussing "The Prosperity System", McLaren's take on how our obsession with money and what it can buy contributes to "The Suicide Machine".

The consensus of the discussion group seems to be that this is an interesting book but one with significant limitations, and this section seems to bear out that conclusion.  Chapter 23, "Capitalism as God" pursues a tortured analogy of the capitalist system as God, complete with prophets and a church.  The idea is not very original or even interesting after the first few pages, and is unlikely to change the behaviour of either religious or secular people.

Chapter 24 is an appeal to our self-interest to reduce our consumption.  He warns of disaster coming to future generations and urges us to care about that.  He suggests that our consumption might lead to wars and violence.  In my experience this is unlikely to work.  It is self-interest that the consuming economic system is using to change our behaviour for the worst, and I don't think the churches are going to have much luck using hte same strategy to push in the opposite direction.

Chapters 25 and 26 use selected teachings of Jesus to show that the Prosperity System is contrary to the fundamentals of our faith.  It is an interesting exercise if one has never experienced these ideas before, but there is nothing especially ground-breaking in these chapters.  The conclusion that I come to at the end of this section is that McLaren's analysis seems to be coming from someone who truly hasn't thought about any of this before, and regards these ideas as important and new.  They may be important to him but they aren't new in the mainline Christian community; in fact, they are kind of "old hat" to anyone in the United Chruch who has been paying attention for the last few years.