"The Barbarian Way" by Erwin McManus

For being on the smallish side, this book sure took me a while to get through, but I finally finished it. I was pretty excited to get my hands on this book. I hadn’t really read any of McManus before, but I had tremendous respect for him and the work that Mosaic has done. This certainly doesn’t change that, but I came away from the book with mixed feelings. There were moments in the book that were challenging, moments when I wanted to stand up and yell “Yes!”, but there were also moments that left me confused as to the author’s meaning, and frustrated at some of his points.

The first thing that comes to mind is that this book could be described as a mix between Don’t Waste Your Life and Wild at Heart. McManus is at his strongest in this book when he drives home the point that we are called so something much more than a safe cushy Christian life. The center of God’s will may not be the physically safest place to be. The church is not living with a wartime mentality. These and other points are well met, though Piper I feel offers a more practical view of what that looks like in our lives, as well as giving the whole picture as to why. The reason McManus gives leave a vague feeling, like…unleashing the passions that are burning within us.

As in Wild at Heart, there are plenty of Braveheart references in here. Indeed, this book has enough machismo in it to cook a t-bone steak. This is probably the main qualm I have with this book. Over and over and over again on every page you read the words barbarian…revolution…untamed…unleash…warriors…tribal…etc. It becomes tiresome and bogs down his main points.

Erwin seems really adventurous by nature. He’s the kind of guy who feels most alive when jumping out of planes or something extreme. When his son was on the roof and asked his dad if he could jump, he enthusiastically said yes. There is a lot that is simply his own temperment, but he comes across that everyone should be like this. If you’re not, you’re domesticated and not what God really wants you to be. McManus spends some time looking at John the Baptist as Christian barbarian defined. He looks to John as the model, but I think there was a reason that the disciples didn’t eat locusts and honey. He was the exception and not the norm. Does that make the disciples domesticated and tamed?

Another part of the book particularly disturbed me. And not in a good way. McManus tells about he was in a meeting concerning missions and counseling. The group was discussing ways to provide missionaries with access to counseling and mental health. His reaction was "please, don't go around making missionaries mentally healthy...you'll ruin everything." His point was that it takes being a little crazy to go into those environments and be excited and confident that you're going to win others for Christ. I get his point that yeah, we're supposed to be a little mentally unbalanced, but depression and mental fatigue are real problems, especially for those on the mission field. Counselors for the most part are not the great domesticaters and bubble-bursters that it seems McManus thinks they are. Missionaries need mental health and that encouragement so they can stay on the front lines and do battle, not to take them out of it.

Overall McManus makes some great points, but they are points made better elsewhere. I’m pretty convinced that any book seeking to show how we are to live our whole lives must hold the life and work of Jesus Christ on the cross central. In that, this book fell short.

Upcoming books: "Flags of our Fathers", "Much Obliged, Jeeves", and "Nine Marks of a Healthy Church"