[Selections from]
|[John the baptist] had no formal education, no degrees. His occupation was prophet, and his mailing address was the wilderness.
|[Matthew 11:4-6] What Jesus is saying to John has been far too barbaric for us to keep in the mainstream of Christian faith. Jesus was saying to him, "John, I'm not coming through for you. I'm not getting you out of prison. I'm not sparing your life. Yes, I have done all this and more for others, but the path I choose for you is different from theirs. You'll be blessed, John, if this does not cause you to fall away."
|The barbarian way is not about violence fueled by vengeance and hatred. The barbarian way is about love expressed through sacrifice and servanthood.
|We are called to a path filled with uncertainty, mystery, and risk.
|This is the sticky part of the barbarian call. It's not fair or equitable. When you hear the call, when you follow the call, you must recognize that it is a lie-and-death proposition.
|Your life is unique before God, and your path is yours and yours alone.
|Christianity as a civilized religion claims to have a group plan negotiated with God. Everybody gets the same package. And of course, the package is always the premium plan - get rich, get comfortable, get secure, get safe, get well when you get God. Everybody gets the John plan; nobody gets the Peter package [John 21:22]. The result and proof of faith are that you get to live a life without risk, which is ironic when you realize that for the early church, faith was a risky business.
|[Hebrews 11:33-40] They trusted Jesus with their lives, and they lost their lives on the journey. If you could interview any one of them, however, each would insist that even in the midst of the suffering and hardship, he was most fully alive.
|Some barbarians survive the night in the lion's den; others experience their darkest night and wake in eternity.
|The civilized view of Jesus is that He always comes through for us. Like Superman, He always shows up just in time to protect us and save us from disaster. His purpose is to ensure our safety, our convenience, and our comfort.
|Instead of finding confidence to live as we should regardless of our circumstances, we have used it as a justification to choose the path of least resistance, least difficulty, least sacrifice. Instead of concluding it is best to be wherever God wants us to be, we have decided that wherever it is best for us to be is where God wants us. Actually, God's will for us is less about our comfort than it is about our contribution. 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.
|[Paul's] journals, however, described not a life filled with safety and certainty, but a life of adventure and danger.
|Danger would have been [Paul's] first clue that he was out of God's will - unless, of course, he was a barbarian.
|There may not be a more dangerous weapon for violence or oppression than religion. It seems counter-intuitive, but when human beings create religions, we use them to control others through their guilt and shame.
|[Paul] once personified the very worst that happens when a religion becomes civilized. It moves away from God and oppresses humanity in God's name.
|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 to places where only dead men and women can go.
|God is asking, "Are you wiling to lose everything on My behalf to gain everything I desire for you? Rather than living a long life, are you willing to live a life worth living?"
|[At Mosaic Church in Los Angeles] we're an experimental church...Anything He wants to do that other churches do not want to do or are unwilling to do, we'd like to take on. A part of our ethos (he spirit of our congregational culture) is a value for risk, sacrifice, and creativity.
|Barbarians are people of the earth. We know how to survive in the wild. We understand whoever walks in front walks closest to death, but even this knowledge does not slow us down.
|Just do whatever Jesus calls you to do the moment it is clear to you. Do not procrastinate; do not hesitate; do not deviate from whatever course of action He calls you to. But I want to warn you, the close you walk with Christ, the greater faith required. The more you trust Him, the more you'll risk on His behalf. The more you love Him, the more you will love others.
|Barbarians hear a call different from that of civilized Christians. We understand clearly that we follow the God who chose the way of the Cross. If Jesus would not avoid the "place of the skull," then we should not be surprised where He might lead us. If even He found Himself sweating blood at Gethsemane, then we should be certain we will stand at crisis moments where all we can do after asking for relief is declare, "Not my will, but Yours." In those moments you may find very few who stand by you to provide you comfort and strength, and strangely enough, you may find far too many trying to reason with you that God would never require so much of anyone. Yet even with all the noise pounding inside your head, you will still clearly hear the voice of Christ and His barbarian call if you listen carefully enough.
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