Free books for the eating

My bookshelf is stuffed like a holiday bird – and everyone knows the only grateful way to steward excess wealth is to eat it, give it away, or burn it spectacularly in true Potlatch fashion.

Of course, the burning of books has fallen out of favor in recent years, so these volumes are yours for the taking. One, ten, twenty, or the whole lot. Just name your titles.

If you’re in Southern California, shoot me a message and you can come pick them up. I’ll even throw in a cuppa coffee and a friendly chat, if you’re so inclined. If you hail from out of town, send me your address and the shipping fee and I’ll hurry them off (sans latté).

Most of these are assorted nonfiction Christian titles (we’re donating the fiction to our local library). Several are course books from my MAGL program at Fuller Theological Seminary, if that sort of thing interests you.

UPDATE: Titles already claimed are listed in strikeout.

General Theology & References

Who Needs Theology? by Stanley Grenz & Roger Olson (John Chandler)

An Introduction To Ecclesiology by Veli-Matti Karkkainen (Josh Hopping)

Portraits of God by Allan Coppedge

Desiring God by John Piper

From Eternity To Here by Frank Viola

Unprotected Texts by Jennifer Wright Knust

Reading Scripture With The Church Fathers by Christopher Hall (Josh Hopping)

Manners and Customs Of The Bible by James Freeman (Josh Hopping)

The New Ungers Bible Handbook

The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina Volume 1 by Daniel Harrington (Thomas Lyons)

New International Commentary on James by Peter Davids (Thomas Lyons)

Thru The Bible With J Vernon McGee (4 hardcover volumes) (Julie Mnaion)

Missional/Emerging Church

Church Next by Eddie Gibbs

The Good News Of The Kingdom by Van Engen, et al (Aaron Henderson)

The Church Between Gospel And Culture by Hunsberger and Gelder (Geoff Hsu)

The Missionary Congregation, Leadership & Liminality by Alan Roxburgh (Brandon Becker)

The Missional Leader by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuka (Brandon Becker)

God’s Missionary People by Charles Van Engen (Aaron Henderson)

A Credible Witness by Brenda Salter McNeil (Josh Hopping)

Transforming Power by Robert Linthicum (Jason Evans)

The New Global Mission by Samuel Escobar (Brandon Becker)

The Local Church, Agent of Transformation by Tetsunao Yamammori (Josh Hopping)

Announcing the Kingdom by Arthur Glasser (Josh Hopping)

The Power of Place by Dolores Hayden (Geoff Hsu)

The Continuing Conversion of the Church by Darrell Guder (John Chandler)

The Shaping Of Things To Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch

The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch

Exiles by Michael Frost

A Christianity Worth Believing by Doug Pagitt

The New Christians by Tony Jones

Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna

A Theology As Big As The City by Ray Bakke (Brandon Becker)

God So Loves The City by Van Engan, et al (Aaron Henderson)

Treasure in Clay Jars by Lois Barrett, et al (Jason Evans)

Permission Granted by Graham Cooke and Gary Goodell (Julie Mnaion)

Theology & Family

The Family Handbook by Anderson, Browning, et al

Theology and Families by Adrian Thatcher

Authentic Human Sexuality by Judith & Jack Balswick

Men at the Crossroads by Jack Balswick (Josh Kerkoff)

Beyond Sex Roles by Gilbert Bilezikian (Jason Evans)

Marriage and Modernization by Don Browning

Family Ministry by Diana Garland

On Justice

Justice, A Global Adventure by Walter Burghardt (Josh Hopping)

In Pursuit of Justice by James Skillen (Stephanie Struck)

With Justice For All by John Perkins (Josh Hopping)

Churches That Make A Difference by Ron Sider, et al (Thomas Lyons)

Leadership

Character Forged From Conflict by Gary Preston

Barnabas, Encouraging Exhorter by Bobby Clinton (Brandon Becker)

Connecting by Paul Stanley & Robert Clinton (Brandon Becker)

The Foolishness of Preaching by Robert Farrar Capon (Jeff Bassett)

Called to Holy Worldliness by Richard Mouw (Josh Kerkoff)

Lectures To My Students by Charles Spurgeon (Aaron Henderson)

Spiritual Formation

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard (Thomas Lyons)

The Little Flowers of St Francis by Raphael Brown (Josh Hopping)

The Year of Living Like Jesus by Ed Dobson (John Chandler)

The Mystery and the Fullness by Jennifer Abel

Jesus Brand Spirituality by Ken Wilson (Aaron Henderson)

General

Reinventing American Protestantism by Donald Miller

Under The Overpass by Mike Yankowski

Heaven by Lisa Miller

Generation Me by Jean Twenge

People of the Lie by M. Scottt Peck

A View From The Back Pew by Tim O’Donnell

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters by Meg Meeker

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, gifts, Giveaways, Theology

Book Review: A View From the Back Pew

By all accounts, Tim O’Donnell is the quintessential self-made Modern man. He built his own business, made his own fortune, constructed his own log-cabin in the wilderness to face-down his own private demons, and, subsequently built his very own religion. Now he’s written his own book about the experience (and self-published it too).

Not that A View From the Back Pew isn’t good.

Actually, Tim is a solid writer. He tells engaging and often funny stories about his journey of faith. His prose can get a bit labored at times as he guides the reader through the basics of various religions as he sees it, but that’s just because he wants us to accompany him on his journey.

Tim writes with a missionary zeal, partly because he wants to spare others the demons he wrestled for the better part of forty years. Tim understands that the nuns who so rigorously constrained him as a child in Catholic school were well-meaning, “But mostly fear prevailed. I was afraid of Hell, I was afraid of yardsticks, and I was afraid of nuns.” Tim doesn’t want that fear to be the prevailing spiritual condition for anyone else seeking God.

And let’s face it: he’s right. Fear is often the motivating dynamic in religions of all stripes.

What made this book so interesting for me was that Tim’s message is basically identical to the gospel of American Evangelicalism – “Knowing religion is not the same as knowing God” (xiv) – except Tim jettisons any and all blind allegiance to the authority of the Church (as he was taught as a Catholic) or Christian scripture (as he would have been taught if he were Protestant).

The end result is that Tim crafts a spirituality for himself, governed entirely by himself. Typical of Modernist thinkers, Tim requires a reductionist kernel; an epistemological foundation that can be unimpeachably and universally applied from the bottom-up to serve as the prime mover in a causal-chain that reliably governs his life. For Tim, that foundation ends up being, quite literally, a feeling in his gut – “that trusty vibration in my solar plexus” (233).

Many Christians will scoff that this as nothing more than subjective emotionalism (others will just call it heresy, since Tim is heavily influenced by the gnostic gospels), but, frankly, it’s not all that different from the fundamental rationale I’ve heard from countless other Christians (and leaders) over the years. Tim just has the courage to admit that he really is the final arbiter of truth according to his worldview. In reality, religious fundamentalists are no different; they’re just playing a mental shell-game where Descartes’ cogito ergo sum wears the guise of tradition or scripture (or tradition about scripture, really) and is re-imagined as a delusion of objectivity.

What Tim is lacking is a nuanced view of truth as a tapestry of meaning that weaves together threads of culture, tradition, enquiry,  relationships, and circumstances, etc., as well as personal experiences in a pattern of ever-emerging knowledge and wisdom. My hunch is that Tim would embrace the idea – right up to the point where he had to submit to it in the form of someone else.

Still, although I think he misses the mark theologically and epistemologically, A View From the Back Pew is full of culturally relevant and brutally-honest (and, I think, often true) critiques of religion. If you can read it through a sympathetically critical lens, I recommend it as a window into the world of hyper-modernist spirituality and a partial peek into the landscape of a post-Christian future.

(I received a galley copy of A View From the Back Pew free of charge by the publisher in return for agreeing to review the book. I was not asked to offer either a positive or negative review.)

Technorati Tags: A View From the Back Pew, Books, Christianity, Epistemology, Gnosticism, Religion, Tim O'Donnell

The Death Rattle of Christendom

She sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered, turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.

~ Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment

Dear Fyodor,

It’s getting rough for the old girl. Despite the rattle of death in her chest, there’s still a hint of the former beauty and dignity behind those eyes and, as anyone would tell you, she’s as feisty as ever. Still, the truth is she’s dying and there’s nothing to be done about it. As we sit around her bed praying and waiting, her moments of lucidity come with rapidly decreasing frequency.

Everyone here is dealing with the ugliness of her death in their own way. My sister refuses to let her go. She stands just beyond the door, arguing in harsh whispers with the doctors and nurses. She won’t believe the facts of the case, and it’s easier to argue over the interpretation of charts and data than to look straight at the old girl herself. I don’t blame her. Looking is hard.

My older brother looks but doesn’t see. “She’s just a little out of shape,” he says optimistically. “If we can get her up and out she’ll be back to her old self, ruling the roost!” And so he hangs a dress on her and rolls on rouge and glides her round the ward in a wheelchair festooned at the handles with curly ribbon and helium balloons so she might speak with the people. I tell you it’s horrible. Such a thing would be bearable (commendable even!) if compassion was his aim, but it’s not compassion he seeks from her fellows in the ward. No, it’s her rulership he hopes to re-animate and so he props her up like some animatronic relic – a broken-down ecclesiastical Chuck-E-Cheese promising fun-and-games for all the good little children.

Sadly, she scares the children. They weren’t around when she was bright and beautiful. They never attended her grand parties. They don’t know who she was (and let’s face it, as good as she might have been she was also a hard taskmaster, perhaps taking her job of keeping us safe too seriously and – I think – secretly hoping we would never grow up). So the children shrink and shriek and their lack of piety (or pity) has fermented my brother’s optimism into a swill of bitter insistence, rendering him defensive and defiant and refusing the temporary inebriation of grief.

(Can I tell you the truth? I fear her death is more than he can take. He always seemed the stronger one growing up, but I’m not sure he can keep his sanity without her strict order around the house – without her barbed-wire fences to separate the wild vines from the cultivated ones. I don’t think he realizes it was always her intention that we harvest the whole field, and I think all these years later she might even be happy to see us tear down those fences if keeping them meant letting the whole field go to waste.)

For me, it’s her delirious rants that are the most heart-wrenching. She’ll stubbornly hoist herself up to rebuke people who aren’t even in the room – resurrected memories of conflicts and passions long dead and gone to everyone but her own cruelly vivid memories that now, in her mortal distress, seem to have taken on a quality that simply overwhelms her present reality. Perhaps it’s for the best – perhaps it’s mercy – but for better or worse I find I’m not just grieving her death, I’m grieving the robbery of her chance to see the transcendence of death by the legacy she leaves in us. I think she would rejoice in that. I think she would look us in the eye and say, “It’s good to grieve me, but celebrate too. If I live on like this then death wins by making me into a mockery of life. But if I die then the life I lived will be victorious by passing on to you. Now take the best and go.”

She deserves that moment; it’s her birthright. But we won’t let her have it. We insist on preserving her because somehow we think our life is in her, when actually her life (all life!) is a gift that grows in the giving, until one day it grows so fat it swallows every one of us whole, death and all. Who would have thought, Fyodor, that the nihilism you so strenuously decried would lead not to the depraved insistence on rationalized death, but to the dogmatic insistence on irrational life?

You must be wondering how she can possibly endure for so long. It’s the machines that keep her alive. Pray for a death rattle in the chest of those monstrosities so she might finally be free from our obsessions, and enjoy a long night of rest in a well-deserved sleep.

Technorati Tags: Christendom, Christianity, Church, Dostoevsky, Letters

On Spending Easter With a Porn Star: My Interview With Craig Gross

As the Production Manager for christianaudio, I sometimes conduct audio interviews with Christian authors. I recently spoke with Craig Gross, co-founder of XXXChurch.com and co-author, along with Jason Harper, of the recent book, Jesus Loves You…This I Know:

In this edition of Author Sketches we talk to speaker and pastor Craig Gross, whose latest book Jesus Loves Me This I Know, was co-authored with Jason Harper and continues the outward-focused themes explored in his previous books like Starving Jesus and The Gutter: Where Life Is Meant To Be Lived. In this interview Craig talked to us about touring the country with Porn stars, sharing Easter with Ron Jeremy, and learning to be less judgmental through his visit with Fred Phelps and the people of Westboro Baptist Church.

You can download the interview for free at christianaudio.com by clicking here (registration is required).

Technorati Tags: Books, christianaudio, Christianity, Craig Gross, Interviews, Jason Harper, Jesus Christ

The Anthropological Study of the Vineyard Movement and its Implications

Last month I hosted a series of profiles and discussions on papers presented at the first annual Society of Vineyard Scholars conference. There was plenty of great dialogue and around some excellent papers.

However, I was really surprised there weren’t any comments or questions on Jon Bialecki and Jamie Wilson’s paper concerning Jon’s anthropological study of the Vineyard movement and Jamie’s response.

The study of Christianity in the West has been a recent development in the field of Anthropology (only about 10 years), and during that time the study of the Vineyard and other charismatic streams has been relatively hot, for a variety of reasons. In fact, Jon is not the only anthropologist presently studying the Vineyard, and as Jamie points out in his theological rejoinder, there are valuable insights about our present and our future to be gained by engaging with these social science analyses of our little tribe.

So, consider this a gentle nudge to all you Vineyard pastors and leaders out there to go back and read their excellent paper, profile, and interview and pitch in your thoughts and questions.

Technorati Tags: Anthropology, Christianity, Jamie Wilson, Jon Bialecki, Society of Vineyard Scholars, SVS, Vineyard Churches, Vineyard Movement

Communities of the Spirit: Untamed, Chapter 3

(During the month of April I’m blogging through Alan and Deb Hirsch’s latest book, Untamed. Previous posts: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2)

Chapter 3: The Spirit’s Edge

This chapter came at an interesting time for me, because I’m thinking through some of the very issues they broach. Is it necessary to have a sense of direct contact with God? What is our normative form of relationship with God? For the Hirsch’s part of the response to these kinds of questions would be to re-affirm the necessity of a fully Trinitarian encounter with God. Hence, this chapter commends the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as disciples:

“One of the foundational works of the Spirit is to usher us into the true knowledge and experience of God. Said differently: if there was no Holy Spirit, there would be no possibility of encounter with God, because it is the Spirit who mediates the knowledge of God and thereby leads us into truth and righteousness (John 16:5–11). And because the Spirit brings us into deeper awareness of, and conformity to, the one true God, he keeps us from becoming toxic.”

By “true knowledge” the authors don’t mean “secret knowledge.” Rather, they mean relational knowledge, or intimacy. For example, some people know things about my wife Jenell, but I really know my wife better than anyone – and that knowledge only comes from direct contact. The author’s point in this Chapter is the same: we cannot know God without contact with the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit is the point of contact in our relationship with God.

Moreover, we cannot have contact with the Holy Spirit without letting the Spirit be wild and unpredictable. It comes with the territory. To illustrate this, the Hirsch’s open this chapter with a story from Al’s early life as a Christian when some very Pentecostal new friends prayed for him to receive the Holy Spirit, complete with tongues, cursing of the devil, and shaking. All very strange stuff to someone not accustomed to such things. Indeed, Al wanted to run out the door.

But.

Something happened. Al made life-changing, perceptible contact with God through that encounter, and although he wouldn’t recommend the particular way that happened for everyone, he can’t deny the authenticity of his encounter with the Holy Spirit or it’s transformational effects on his life. That is what he does recommend to everyone. In fact, together Alan and Deb say it’s necessary.

And that leads me to a bit of an objection: Despite their characteristically strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit and direct contact with God, from my perspective it is precisely the excessively Pentecostal streams of Christianity that prove most “toxic.” I’m thinking here of the kind of Jesus-is-your vending-machine, there’s a devil-behind-every-door triumphalistic Pentecostalism that seeks to control both people and God. I can tell you from personal experience this kind of Christianity is quite rampant.

Granted, in this Chapter (and elsewhere in the book) the Hirsch’s warn against this form of Christianity as well, calling it “spiritual engineering.” In fact, one of the things the authors rightly point out is that both Pentecostalism and Cessasionist Fundamentalism are manifestations of the same desire for power and control (some would say they share a foundationalist heritage – one biased toward experience of God, the other toward the Bible). Still, I’m not sure they do enough to develop clear distinctions between classic Pentecostalism and the kind of Holy Spirit led, transformational pneumatology they seem to have in mind. My question is: How is it that your kind of focus on the Holy Spirit will lead to reliable Christlikeness when other kinds have not?

What they do say, very clearly, is that we need both the “light” and “heat” of the revealed word and divine experience, but we must learn to relinquish control to God, particularly as God pushes His mission forward through the wild, spontaneous, uncontrollable forays of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, their distinction seems to be twofold: an embrace of a peacemaking “radical middle” position that affirms the best of both, coupled with an emphasis on relinquishing control.

(As an aside, this “radical middle” approach has been at the core of Vineyard philosophy for over 30 years. For those who are interested I would recommend Empowered Evangelicals by Rich Nathan and Ken Wilson.)

While they don’t detail a distinctive pneumatology, they do outline some characteristics they believe would be present in any community of faith that was missionally engaged with the leading of the Holy Spirit:

• Serious creativity
• Risky mission
• Communitas (Community with intense common purpose)
• Lots of little Jesuses
• Love
• Learning community
• Miracles
• Spiritual maturity
• Discernment
• Unity around Jesus
• Ecstasy and intimacy
• Transformation and liberation

Each of these are briefly expounded upon in the book, but it’s clear the authors aren’t seeking an exhaustive list. Instead, they seem to be trying to sketch out a sense that authentically Spirit-led communities will have a depth and breadth about them that is often missing from current denominational sectarian streams.

Questions for Reflection:

1. What is your experience with the Holy Spirit?
2. Have you experienced versions of Christianity that seemed to seek control of others or of God?  How did you handle that?
3. What kinds of Christians have you encountered that most resembled Christ? What did those people have in common with one another?

Technorati Tags: Alan Hirsch, Christianity, Church, Deb Hirsch, mission, missional, Untamed

What Does The Gospel Really Look Like?

What does the gospel really look like in practice, on the ground, in the city, walking the streets, in the boardrooom and the legislative session, among the neighborhoods and schools of North America?

That was essentially the question asked by JR Woodward last year of 50 missional church practitioners, including myself. What would you write about the good news in your local paper if given the opportunity?

The 50 responses have now been collected and published in a wonderful little book called ViralHope: Good News From The Urbs to the Burbs and Everything In Between. It was humbling to contribute my small chapter to this book as many of the other men and women featured on the pages are people I have admired and emulated for years. Others I’m just discovering and getting to know. As Alan Hirsch writes in his endorsement of the book:

“ViralHope is a unique and enticing collection of postcards from a veritable who’s who of the missional church from across the Western world. It provides us with articulate and varied perspectives on how missionaries to the West are conceiving the good news in and for their various contexts. A worthy read.”

ViralHope would make a fantastic 50-day personal devotion, small group study reflection, or church-wide reading series. You can click here to get your own copy from Amazon.

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, Good News, Gospel, JR Woodward, missional, Missional Church, ViralHope

The Danger of Worship: Untamed, Chapter Two

(During the month of April I’m blogging through Alan and Deb Hirsch’s latest book, Untamed. Previous posts: Chapter 1)

Your sincerity is not enough. Everyone is sincere, but there is a real-live God, with real-live thoughts, values, and expectations that exclude other thoughts, values, and expectations as possibilities of goodness.

If the first chapter of Deb and Alan Hirsch’s latest book, Untamed, concerned the re-affirmation of a personally accessible God, then the second Chapter wants us to know that God is dangerous. Moreover, as history’s slew of cult leaders and televangelists attest, it is also dangerous to miss the truth about that God. Such false prophets are very sincere about their faith, as Martin Buber has noted:

“False prophets are not godless. Rather, they adore the god “success.” They themselves are in constant need of success and achieve it by promising it to the people. But they do honestly want success for the people. The craving for success governs their hearts and determines what rises from them. That is what Jeremiah called the “deceit of their own hearts.” They do not deceive; they are deceived, and can only breathe in the air of deceit.”

This means getting the “fundamentals” about God right, but before you make the mistake of hearing a re-hashing of fundamentalism here, you must understand what the Hirsch’ mean by this term; for them, the fundamentals refer to being like Christ:

“We easily lose focus on what is essential. We miss the fact that discipleship has to do with becoming like Jesus, living the Shema, and not forgetting that the “more important matters of the law,” namely love, mercy, forgiveness, justice (Matt. 23:23–24), are nonnegotiables in the equation.”

This is in sharp contrast to the fundamentals of fundamentalism, which are unquestionable, universally certain  doctrinal propositions of truth that must be consciously affirmed. For the Hirsch’s this is too abstract, and this places them squarely in postmodern territory (though, not lost in its wilderness). Indeed, it’s likely that many sectors of Christendom will dismiss the these ideas as legalistic because some of the focus is being shifted to include what we do (what they call, “living the Shema”), as well as what we believe (i.e. “believing in Jesus”).

The authors indirectly reject fundamentalist conceptions of legalism as a false dichotomy, instead seeing legalism as too much emphasis on doctrinal purity. They affirm that, “The reality is that what we believe about God does have consequences. History is full of people who have wreaked enormous damage and even killed for what they believe in.”Our theology dictates our conception of what it means to be good and right, and how it will look to build a just society.

For the authors, this is where the Shema – the core Jewish prayer, taken from Deut 6 – comes in. For the Hirsch’s, Jesus’ placement of the Shema (or what Scot McNight calls “The Jesus Creed“) in Mark 12:29-31 as the central explication of faith is his remarkable distillation of right theology and praxis in one simple statement, a statemnt which holds the two concepts of belief and action firmly together – making his “way” into a concrete, bodily faith:

“The follower of Jesus broadens his or her knowledge of God through living truth, not just believing in it. True knowledge of God must be expressed in practice or action—that’s why the Bible is one-third ethics. Obedience— body and soul—is part of the condition of God’s covenant (for example, Exod. 24:7; Jer. 11:3) as well as the momentous parting words of commission under which we live (Matt. 28:18–20). As C. S. Lewis says, “Obedience is the ‘holy courtesy’ required for entering into the divine relationship.”

This is how we truly come to know God: by faith, which means believing Jesus’ teachings to the extent that we put them into bodily practice and learn how, through trial and error, to become like him through the enabling grace of God given by the indwelling Holy Spirit. The teachings and actions of Christ, including the Shema, are not only the starting point for our theological conception of God, but also our guide for whether we’re getting it right or wrong.

Another distinctively postmodern aspect of this chapter is the Hirsch’s insistence that such a life simply cannot be lived individually. While we all can know God, no one individual can know God completely. Rather, because everyone is wired differently with a variety of temperaments, strengths, and weaknesses, we must pursue the knowing of God in community. That is the place of proper theology.

The rest of the Chapter explores some of the ways that people are derailed in their discipleship – with emphasis on the big three of sex, money, and power – but the core message remains the same: we recapitulate what we worship, therefore we must endeavor to know God as God really is. For the authors, this means that the first order of Christianity is a full-orbed, holistic worship (not just singing), which they call “dangerous” because it has the capacity to put us in contact with an untamed God who transforms us beyond our meager lusts.

Some Questions For Reflection:

1. Do you agree that we imitate that which we worship? Can you think of examples from non-religious life?
2. What is your concept of worship? What are the most effective ways you engage in worship?
3. What are you thought on the proposition that we can only know God in community?

Technorati Tags: Alan Hirsch, Christianity, Deb Hirsch, discipleship, God, missional, Postmodernism, Scot McNight, The Shema, Untamed, worship

Reading Blog: Untamed by Alan and Deb Hirsch, Chapter 1

Alan Hirsch has made a name for himself in recent years as a missiologist who has drawn attention to the neglect of mission to the West. His books, The Shaping of Things To Come (co-written with Micheel Frost) and The Forgotten Ways take up these subjects, along with his other missional initiatives such as the Forge Missional Training Network and Shapevine (started along with Lance Ford). For Untamed, Alan c0-writes with his wife Deb, an experienced and articulate minister in her own right.

Section 1: Untamed God
Chapter 1: Jeebus Made Me Do It

Homer Simpson is the template for this chapter. Trying to escape a debt to PBS, Homer gets shipped to the South Pacific by Reverend Lovejoy as a Missionary where he promptly destroys the pristine native civilization by preaching “Jeebus” and building a Casino-themed religion that introduces gambling and alcohol to the natives. For the Hirsch’s, this is a snapshot of what happens when we don’t really know God; we create toxic religious enterprises and institutions.

As has been pointed out abundantly by a growing collection of popular Christian authors in the last two decades – from Dallas Willard to Dan Kimball to Dave Kinnamon and Gabe Lyons – Christians often don’t look much like Jesus at all. Reflecting this, Bill Maher has said, “I don’t know anyone less Jesus-like than most Christians.”

It’s critical to reclaim the centrality of Jesus as the defining image of God. We know God by knowing Jesus Christ, or as former Anglican archbishop Michael Ramsey has said, “God is Christlike.” The Hirsch’s believe that this re-centering of Christ, not just as the savior of humanity, but also as the model of discipleship leads us to take Jesus seriously as a template for life. This incarnational view of God breaks us out of the tendency to “know” God primarily through the abstract concepts of his transcendent “otherness.”

However, this need to see God through Christ can include the tendency to create Christ in our own image. Quoting Voltaire’s famous saying – that God created us in his image and we returned the favor – the Hirsch’s explore the phenomenon of enculturated versions of Christ. Europeans create a light-skinned, light-haired version, Africans create a dark-skinned version, etc. While it’s necessary to recognize Christ ability to identify with every culture, this tendency can quickly becomes idolatrous. There’s an interesting example of this in Untamed, taken from an infamous sermon preached by Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll:

He [Driscoll] has become somewhat infamous for his portrayal of Jesus as some sort of ultimate fighter. But in attempting to “butch up” Jesus and make him appeal to “real men,” has Driscoll come close to creating Jesus in his own image? Consider this from one of his sermons:

“Latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers do not represent biblical masculinity, because real men—like Jesus, Paul, and John the Baptist—are dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes. In other words, because Jesus is not a limp-wristed, dress-wearing hippie, the men created in his image are not sissifed church boys; they are aggressive, assertive, and nonverbal.”

Now we don’t believe Mark’s original intention was bad. What he was trying to do is rescue Jesus from the overly feminized ways in which Jesus has been portrayed. We would agree and also want to rescue the image of Jesus from this [...] But the problem with Driscoll’s ultimate-fighting Jesus is that Jesus has been freed from one distortion only to be captured by another.

The Hirsch’s are very concerned with how an overly personalized and distorted image of Christ leads to toxic religious abuses. Instead, “Jesus must be freed in order to relate to all people; if he isn’t freed, the incarnation fails to make sense [...] That’s the whole point of the incarnation: he became a human in order to fully identify with each and every one of us.”

The authors go on to ask why is it that Christ’s holiness tended to attract the marginalized sinners of his day, but the “holiness” of Modern Christians tends to repel them? The Hirsch’s answer is that Jesus’ holiness wasn’t about conformity to the rules of personal morality, but rather individual and corporate conformity to God as revealed in Christ. The distinction they make here is the classic Evangelical distinction between religion and “relationship.” The authors affirm that Christ taught a reconciled relationship with God that leads to a genuine desire to please Him out of love.

However, that “conformity” to God usually sets us prophetically at odds with the surrounding culture (secular and religious). This is where the Hirsch’s view of God becomes “untamed” in the “gutsy” and “intoxicating” Jesus of the Gospels. There is a radical freedom expressed by God and his people to stand for what is truly righteous, unfettered by the rules of society.

Some Questions for Reflection:

1. Aside from Mark Driscoll’s “Ultimate Fighter” Jesus, What are some of the other caricatures of Jesus you recognize in Christianity that are inconsistent with the biblical picture of him?
2. What about Jesus do you identify with most? Does Christ seem attractive to you?
3. What do you think of the distinction the Hirsch’s make between moralistic religious conformity to the rules of society and relational conformity to the will of God? How can we reliably know the difference?

Technorati Tags: Alan Hirsch, Books, Christianity, Deb Hirsch, Mark Driscoll, Missional Church, Untamed

What Book Should I Blog Through in April?

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Technorati Tags: Blogging, Books, Christianity, Polls