Life outside the cage

In his book, The Barbarian Way, Erwin R. McManus asserts that true Christian faith was never intended to be a well constructed, comforting, culturally compatible enterprise but a raw, aggressive, non-conforming, high risk movement that endeavored to bring a transforming power regardless of personal cost in this life. The following are several excerpts from his book...

Christianity over the past two thousand years has moved from a tribe of renegades to a religion of conformists. Those who choose to follow Jesus become participants in an insurrection. To claim we believe is simply not enough. The call of Jesus is one that demands action. Christianity has become docile, domesticated, civilized.

To have the Spirit of God dwelling within the heart of someone who chooses a domesticated faith is like having a tiger trapped within a cage. You are not intended to be a spiritual zoo where people can look at God in you from a safe distance. You are a jungle where the Spirit roams wild and free in your life. You are the recipient of the God who cannot be tamed and of a faith that must not be tamed.

When barbarians travel together, they do not march in single file. There is no forced conformity. They are not required or expected to keep in step. They walk together as free individuals joined not by standardization but by the spirit.

Am I a barbarian?

Do I choose to live safely over the risk of abandoning my life to Christ?

Am I living fearlessly for Christ or have I accepted the domesticated, civilized life of a conformist?

But the defining aspect of the barbarian way is really fearlessness. It is so easy to be gripped by a culture of "everyone does it." Everyday I confront concerns in my family, my community and in the world that need to be engaged. But not from a position of fear. I need to engage the world and others with fearless love.

"For years I have made it my mission to destroy the influence of the Christian cliché, 'the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God.' God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance. God created you so that your life would count, not so that you could count the days of your life," he writes.

McManus goes on to say,

"When we fear God and God only, we are no longer bound by all of the other fears that would hold us captive. The fear of death, the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of insignificance --- all of the fears that we know by name and haunt us in the dark of the night become powerless when we know the fear of the Lord. And if this is not enough, we discover that perfect love casts out all fear. Not even God will hold us or control us by fear. When we fear Him, we in essence begin to live a life where we are fearless."

McManus has ignited my spiritual imagination.

Erwin McManus is getting lots of press these days.
He pastors a church in LA called Mosaic characterized by unconvention and creativity.
The Barbarian Way is his fourth book.