Life After Doom

Some authors capture my attention.  Brian McLaren is on my list of must-read books.  What follows is his latest contribution.  It’s entitled Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart. Relevant questions are: What does faith look like when cynicism seems more plausible? What does hope look like when hope seems irrational? What does love look like when hate becomes more popular?

First review: In recent years, author and activist Brian McLaren has sensed a widespread emotional shift among growing numbers of people. More and more friends, colleagues, students, and readers confess their sense of futility, their feelings of frustration bordering on despair. They feel that human civilization has passed certain tipping points and that a tide of doom is inexorably rising. This feeling creates a deep inner divide, a tension between a sincere and hopeful commitment to action for the common good on the one hand, and on the other, a feeling that no actions can prevent the arrival of an undesirable or even dystopian future.

Life After Doom is a sober analysis of how things stand in relation to climate breakdown, and a deeply insightful exploration of the challenge of living well, maintaining resilience and growing in wisdom and love in the face of nations, ecosystems, economies, religions, and other institutions in disarray. Brian McLaren is the author of Faith After Doubt and Do I Stay Christian? and is a leading and authoritative voice at the intersection of religious faith and contemporary culture.

Second review: For the last quarter-century, author and activist Brian D. McLaren has been writing at the intersection of religious faith and contemporary culture. In Life After Doom, he engages with the catastrophic failure of both our religious and political leaders to address the dominant realities of our time: ecological overshoot, economic injustice, and the increasing likelihood of civilizational collapse. McLaren defines doom as the “un-peaceful, uneasy, unwanted feeling” that “we humans have made a mess of our civilization and our planet, and not enough of us seem to care enough to change deeply enough or quickly enough to save ourselves.”

Blending insights from philosophers, poets, scientists, and theologians, Life After Doom explores the complexity of hope, the necessity of grief, and the need for new ways of thinking, becoming, and belonging in turbulent times. If you want to help yourself, your family, and the communities to which you belong to find courage and resilience for the deeply challenging times that are upon us — this is the book you need right now. (end)

Pollyanna attitudes are very ill-advised.  Brian McLaren helps us abandon those attitudes and face real-world problems creating feelings of doom.  Our world is falling apart in many ways.  Do we have the wisdom and courage to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. McLaren provides his honest opinion.

On this Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ we should give special consideration to what is truly holy - God's creation on which we tread and continue to despoil giving rise to our feelings of doom.

Deacon David Pierce