Beautiful Outlaw

I am currently in the middle of reading a book by John Eldredge called "The Beautiful Outlaw", and it is blowing my mind.

The book is about the human personality of Jesus, and Eldredge brings out characteristics in Christ that a lot of people wouldn't think of. It's funny, we don't think about Jesus' human personality much; we figure his personality would be "loving" and "joyful"... but really, what do those words mean? They are quite vague. But Eldredge uses words and phrases like "playful", "generous", "cunning", "fierce intention", "scandalous freedom", and "disruptive honesty" to characterize Jesus.

Unfortunately, Christianity has sort of turned Jesus into this mystical, baritone-voiced figure who does NOT come across as playful or cunning or scandalous; but really, if you read the Bible without any of that "religious background", you can see it. Jesus walking on water? Randomly showing up in places after the resurrection? Maybe he was being playful, having some fun with his friends. All the times when the Pharisees try to question him, and he ends up turning it around and stumping them? Definitely cunning. And touching lepers and hangng out with prostitutes and turning water into wine using ceremonial washing jars was pretty scandalous in those days. (Another author, Bruxy Cavey, compared that incident to Jesus walking into a modern church, turning the water in the baptismal tank into wine, and inviting the neighbourhood in for a party!)

These concepts are totally blowing my mind, making me love Jesus all the more. And I am wondering, why don't we talk about these things more? I was in church last Sunday and we were singing our worship songs, and I realized that pretty much all the songs were about the "transcendant" aspects of God- his glory and majesty and greatness and all that. And of course those aspects are true- God is both transcendant and imminent- but nonetheless, we seem to worship God more for his "transcendant" qualities then the fact that he is Emmanuel, God come close to us. And really, for me, words like glory and majesty are hard to picture, hard to grasp. But words like playfulness and cunning and kindness and freedom are much easier for me as a human to understand. And the fact that God would not only become a man, but would choose to reveal himself as a man who was an outlaw, who was playful and fierce, cunning and gentle, honest and generous, humble and scandalous- well, to me, that speaks volumes to me about the kind of God we serve. For me personally, those things say a lot more about the kind of God he is than words like glory and majesty do. Maybe that's part of why God became a man- so we little humans could better understand the kind of God he is.

Once again, don't get me wrong- we need to understand the bigness of God, the power that he possesses. We need to be aware of how great he is- but we also need to be aware- and love- his more "human" characteristics. When you realize that the God of all heaven chose to reveal himself to humanity as a beautiful outlaw... well, how could you not love a God like that??