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Review: The Barbarian Way (rated 4 stars)
The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within
by Erwin Raphael McManus
Erwin McManus’ short book called The Barbarian Way is a fantastic book challenging believers to quit playing it safe and to embrace a life of adventure, faith, and risk in Christ.
There are so many quotable paragraphs and thoughts in the book that I’m just going to have to encourage you to read it for yourself.
However, try this on for size:
Somewhere along the way the movement of Jesus Christ became civilized as Christianity. We created a religion using the name of Jesus Christ and convinced ourselves that God’s optimal desire for our lives was to insulate us in a spiritual bubble where we risk nothing, sacrifice nothing, lose nothing, worry about nothing. Yet Jesus’ death wasn’t to free us from dying, but to free us from the fear of death. Jesus came to liberate us so that we could die up front and then live. Jesus Christ wants to take us places where only dead men and women can go.
Throughout the book, McManus compares “civilized” Christianity to the “barbarian” way of Christ. He speaks of the Messiah in a way that compels you to discover more. This is no smiling, VBS-poster-boy Jesus. The Jesus he reminds us of is the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus prophesied of old. It is the Jesus that carries His own cross and that bears all our sins. It is the Jesus that urges us to trust what we cannot see and to abandon ourselves to a love we cannot fathom.
All in all, if you’ve got a couple of evenings, this book is well worth the investment.
A favorite line of mine to conclude with…
I was surprised to learn that a group of buzzards waiting around together to feast on leftover carnage is called a committee… This explains so much of what’s going on in churches — a lot of committees waiting around to live off human carnage.
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i love erwin mcmanus. i saw a video of him speaking on this very same thing – he’s funny yet very outspoken and able to get his point across. i’d love to hear him live sometime. and it’s interesting that of ALL the well-known pastors/speakers/teachers, he’s the only one i’ve ever heard speak about being dangerous and barbaric!
Phillip Slaughter and I got to hear him teach at Mosaic a couple of years ago when we were in CA for the Perspectives Training Workshop. I remain indebted to him for his great encouragement in Unstoppable Force and Seizing Your Divine Moments.
I’m just now reading CHASING DAYLIGHT (I’m a little behind. WAIT! Maybe I should rephrase that…There’s already WAY too much “behind” talk on this blog…Let’s just say that my reading list is not as up-to-date as you book-a-dayers.). I guess I’ll have to add this one to my To Read list.
That’s one thing I liked about some of John Eldredge’s stuff. He writes about the “wildness” of Jesus. And of course, my favorite Narnia quote of all, “‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” He’s certainly no tame lion.
Yea, I love that quote too, Amy – from C.S. Lewis.
Chasing Daylight is the new name for the book I referred to above as Seizing Your Divine Moment.