Friday, January 14, 2011

Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God, by Mark Galli

**

An interesting premise, but it lacked oomph. I feel like Galli started with the gospel and traced it back to attributes of Christ that he feels are often overlooked by the church today: Here is the gospel, and what does that tell us about Christ? Which is a fine thing to do, but the book purports to start with Jesus himself and his seemingly unpalatable actions and words, so I think it would have been more effective to say: Here is the Jesus of the Bible, and what does that tell us about the gospel? It may be an overly subtle distinction, but I think the second approach better addresses the very real issues some people have with seeing Christ as He is, rather than as they imagine or want him to be. Also, I felt that aspects of Jesus that he chose are not really the best examples of the meanness and wildness of the incarnate God as revealed in Scripture.

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