One thing that we love in the Army Christian community is war themed Bible studies. We have "Combat Christ", God's Army, ect. Dare I say, G.I. Josephus falls into this category, to an extent, with its witty look into cultural parallels between the military and Christianity (and over use of punctuation marks such as the parenthesis).
A few years back a friend, who was serving in Germany as a missionary with Cadence (a fantastic organization with the aim of reaching service men and women living overseas), did a study based off John Eldredge's book Wild at Heart. The book talks about the domestication of a man's spirit and the need for us to get back to being men (my summarization, kind of like The Message translation, but not as insightful). The problem as John saw it was that through the course of social activism men have had the wildness, the verve of manhood, tamed out of them and that God was fierce and wild and we shouldn't lose sight of that.
The problem as I saw it was that I had just returned from Iraq and was engaged with and surrounded by valorous and manly acts, and was approaching life from entirely different perspective than that of a some guy with a 9-5 in an office park (not that I am against that). The thing is, while we love these military themed manly approaches to studying God, we are surround by that stuff every day as a part of our job. I think I need to do a better job of viewing God in those circumstances and not through or in spite of those circumstances. And, while I know God is cool with me doing it up Army style, I am pretty sure he is just as cool with me being still and quite and as far from "wild" as I can get.
2 comments:
Dare I say that Eldridge is writing to the highly domesticated American who is surrounded by the daily 9-5, rather than those who are in a field of work that is constantly requiring extreme vigilance. I remember when the book came out and we were selling it at the JBAG (Jesus Book and Gift). It seemed that guys over the age of forty were buying it. Then again it was the title for Through Eden's first Ep but I don't know what that has to do with anything.
Absolutley, and I re-read the book, and there's some great stuff in it. Rick did a fantastic job with study as well (I missed most of it, but my wife loved it and shot me all the notes via email).
Keep the comments coming.
Post a Comment