.

Ever felt like this?

.

Well...never give up!

.

.

.

.

.

* I took this photo this morning atop "Obsidian Dome" in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  It was striking, because there was NO vegetation or animal life anywhere in sight, and yet...

Fully devoted followers of Jesus -- that's how many of us commonly describe an authentic disciple/apprentice of Jesus.  It's what "Christians" should be. It's how most of us would describe ourselves (or at least what we're committed to acheiving).  The terminology helps us to differentiate between those serious about living like Christ and those who seem to be Christians in name only.

But what IS a fully devoted follower of Jesus?  How can you tell when you've met one on the street, at work, or in your church?

Yes. I DO believe that there are fully devoted followers of Jesus serving and loving within the institutional Church today, contrary to the doubts of some emergents and revolutionaries.

"I wondered with it would look like if we decided to really follow Jesus.  In fact, I wasn't exactly sure what a fully devoted Christina looked like, or if the world had even seen one in the last few centuries." (Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution, p. 71.)

I absolutely loved Shane Clairborne's book, by the way, and recommend it without reservation. And although I don't hesitate in considering Shane a fully devoted follower of Jesus, I do not believe that a person necessarily needs to live with the homeless, intern with Mother Teresa, or visit the victimized people of Iraq in order to be one, though many may be called to such things.

For me, when I think of fully devoted followers of Jesus, I initially think of:
 

.
Abba Anthony said: "The time is coming when people will be insane, and when they see someone who is not insane, they will attack that person saying: 'You are insane because you are not like us.'"

...probably not earth-shattering to most, but for the past two days I've been preoccupied with the relationship between rest and trust. (see what happens when the guy takes a vacation!) It all started while praying through the morning office yesterday, and reflecting on this passage:

Isaiah 30:15 (NRSV) 
    For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
    In returning and rest you shall be saved;
        in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
    But you refused.

It was the parallelism that first caught my eye, drawing attention to the relationship between rest and trust.  Rest. True rest -- is somewhat elusive for many of us.  We take a few days or a couple of weeks off, and often can't wait to get back home again.  It's almost as if we end up needed a vacation from our vacation!  Or... we return from our "getaway", dreading our return and feeling as stressed as when we left!

Maybe our rest is not deep enough, not effective enough, because we're not trusting enough.  Trusting who?  Trusting God.  Maybe if we were to trust God more deeply, we would find ourselves resting more deeply.  Maybe then, what's behind our rest-deficiency would be seen as a trust-deficiency.

I've had ENOUGH of the 108°+ temps, high humidity, and afternoon thunderstorms!  Our part of the Mojave is just supposed to be hot.  Hot, I can handle.  But not what the weather man has been dishing out the past few weeks.

So... THIS (pictured) is where I'll be chillin' for the next week!  Actually, it's across the road from the condo we're staying in -- deep within the Sierra Nevada mountain range and fairly close to the Ansel Adams Wilderness, where we'll be doing some hiking.

My wife and daughter and I are SO ready for this!  And with laptops in hand and our favorite Deli (with free wireless) just around the corner, we're looking forward to some serious blogging, and relaxing, and blogging, and hiking, and blogging,  and reading, and blogging, and fishing, and blogging, and exploring, and blogging, and swimming, and blogging, and eating, and blogging, and long naps, and blogging!

a 'lil bit o' heav'n!

I'll definitely keep you posted.  ;)
.
Oh! And by the way -- BIG THANKS to Mark Galli for visiting us yesterday here at Paradoxology and talking with us about his new book.  And THANKS to all of you who stopped by and left questions or comments for Mark.  I enjoyed every post, and hope you did too!

Paradoxology is thrilled to have as our special guest today, Mark Galli, author of the recently released book, "Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God."  [He will be checking-in throughout the day, responding to your questions and comments]   I recently interviewed Mark about his book, which appears below:

.

Why in the world did you want to write a book on this topic?

I want to address two related concerns. First, the sentimentalizing of Jesus. I had heard too many sermons and teachings in which Jesus is described as “always gentle,” “always compassionate,” and so forth. I immediately thought of biblical passages in which Jesus is anything but that. One night I read through the Gospel of Mark and marked every passage where Jesus comes across as stern or intimidating. I saw that this was a regular feature of his ministry, and I wanted to understand it better.

The question that intrigued me was this: If Jesus was God’s love incarnate, how did these stern, angry, intimidating passages reflect the love of God?

Second, I wanted to address the sentimentalizing of faith. There is a temptation to believe in God’s love when things are going well, and to doubt that love when they aren’t. I wanted to remind us all that sometimes we’re driven into the wilderness of doubt, despair, emptiness, and trials by the same Spirit who drove Jesus into the wilderness. And that this same Spirit is the one who descends on us from time to time to remind us that we are beloved of the Father. Everything that happens to us is encompassed by God’s love, but that love does not always feel good.

.

Where in Scripture do you find Jesus at his meanest and wildest?

Certainly there is the turning of the tables in the Temple.  This included the use of a whip, which Jesus himself fashioned.  The fact that he took some time to make this whip, according to John 2, indicates that his violent behavior in the Temple was not an explosion of anger -- as if he "lost his temper" -- but a premeditated action.

The other main passage that comes to mind is Matthew 23, where Jesus in verse after verse relentlessly assaults the Pharisees, calling them snakes, hypocrites, and white-washed tombs.

But what really impressed me as I researched the book was in how many little ways Jesus was “mean and wild.” One instance is how often he spoke “sternly” to people he had just healed—“Don’t tell anyone about this!” The language used is not a request or a suggestion. It’s a stern warning.

.

What prevents people from seeing and appreciating Jesus as mean and wild?

For some, it upsets their idea of love. Love to them is about gentleness, kindness—the soft virtues. They have forgotten that love includes the strong virtues, like boldness, courage, and even anger.

For others, it’s a reaction against a religious upbringing that was “mean and wild”—legalistic, oppressive. Their faith came alive when they discovered how merciful Jesus was and is, and they’re having a hard time understanding how his stern side can be loving.

Others still are simply afraid. If this is part of Christ’s humanity, then it must be part of ours if we are to imitate Christ. But employing anger, boldness, sternness, and such in our lives is not easy, and it’s easy to get it wrong and make things worse. That’s why we revert to niceness as the chief Christian virtue. It seems safe (when it actually isn’t).

.

Just a reminder: Mark Galli, author of "Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God", will be here at Paradoxology tomorrow, July 26th.  I will be posting an interview that I just completed with Mark, and then he'll be dropping in throughout the day (and night) to respond to those leaving questions and comments. 

If you don't have time to read the book, perhaps you could read the review I recently posted, along with tomorrow's interview, and then just jump on in and  join the conversation!  It's going to be a LOT of fun, and informative to be sure.  So help me spread the word, and then don't miss it!

Earlier this evening, CNN anchor Paula Zahn presented as her top story, the growing debate over whether or not the current Israeli-Lebanese conflict is pointing to a far greater conflict -- namely the apocalyptic battle of Armageddon.

With the help of CNN's faith and values correspondent, Delia Gallagher, Zahn immediately drew attention to the huge divide among Christians over the interpretation of the Book of Revelation and whether or not today's Middle East conflict should have all of us concerned.

Representing one end of the spectrum, was Pastor Craig Treadwell of North Cities United Pentecostal Church in Dallas, TX.  Treadwell made it clear to CNN that

"we're either in or near the final seven years leading up to Armageddon.  Just look to Revelation, chapter nine, if you have any doubts."

Representing quite a different view, was The Reverend Kevin Bean of St. Bartholomew's Church (Episcopal) in New York City, who responded to all the hoopla by stating,

"There is a fiction being created here, like a Stephen King horror movie. [Revelation] is part of our church, it's a part of our tradition, but we don't read it the way that a lot of people do -- which is to make that false correlation with present day events.  That is a crock."

The United States is not the center of the universe, the planet, and increasingly... it is not the center of global Christianity. Yet despite the fact that many -- like Philip Jenkins --have been pointing this out to us, U.S. Christians don't seem to be listening all that well.

Blogger-extraordinaire, Len Hjalmarson, has posted a fascinating excerpt from Andy Crouch's interview with the  Rt. Rev. Dr. David Zac Niringiye, assistant bishop of Kampala in the Church of Uganda.  Len's post and Andy's interview both draw attention to an enormous problem: how the North American Church has fallen prey to the deception of seeing itself at the center.

This has long been recognized within the United States.  "American exceptionalism", a phrase first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, is the idea that the United States and the American people hold a special place in the world. It has connections to the more well-known concept of "Manifest Destiny".

Often subtle and imperceptible to American Christians themselves, the influences of americentrism can be far-reaching.  And as Assistant Bishop Niringiye has pointed out, this is the case even to the eroding of African self-confidence:

Africa's crisis is not poverty; it is not AIDS. Africa's crisis is confidence. What decades of colonialism and missionary enterprise eroded among us is confidence. So a "national leader" from the United States comes—he may have a good-sized congregation, but he knows nothing about Africa!—and we defer to him. We don't even tell him everything we are thinking, out of respect. We Africans must constantly repent of that sense of inferiority. (Asst. Bishop Niringiye, in interview with Andy Crouch in Christianity Today)

.

Abba Silvanus said: "Woe to the person whose reputation is greater than his work."