The Story We Find Ourselves In

This weekend I finished a book by Brian McLaren entitled The Story We Find Ourselves In. Like everything else by McLaren I was stretched and pulled in new directions in thinking about faith. Some of his points and ideas I agree with, while others I don't. I did like one excerpt in a discussion that the two main characters Dan, a pastor, and Neo, an ex-pastor and Ph.D high school science teacher, have about the grand story of God, life, and faith.

"Neo, I think I'm getting it. I think this is what you've been trying to help me see since...since I first met you. Jesus was not about creating an alternative religious world so we might escape from the world of history and science and culture and all that. He was showing how God enters our history, with all its craziness and pain and confusion, how God is with us in all our cultural breakthroughs and regressions, all our constructions and deconstructions and reconstructions.
I know you've said this to me before, Neo, but for some reason, it's finally dawning on me just now: Jesus really was, and is, about saving more than just human souls after they die. He really is about saving the world-human history, creation, the whole thing, the whole process from beginning to end, as you said, from alpha to omega. So I guess what you're helping me see is that the whole idea of the incarnation of Christ is far more radical than we realize. It's not just God entering creation, and especially human history. It's God taking creation, including human history, into his heart, and declaring eternal solidarity with it. He's really with us in the...process, the story, the unfolding."

This seems to be what Paul was talking about in Colossians 1:19-20 when he talks about all things being reconciled to God through the death of Christ on the cross. What would happen if Christians began to act as concerned about the whole person and the world as we are about the souls of men and women?