The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Manifesto

I'd appreciate your thoughts about this "Manifesto":

Quit living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death. Grab life by the mane. Set God-sized goals. Pursue God-ordained passions. Go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention. Keep asking questions. Keep making mistakes. Keep seeking God. Stop pointing out problems and become part of the solution. Stop repeating the past and start creating the future. Stop playing it safe and start taking risks. Expand your horizons. Accumulate experiences. Consider the lilies. Enjoy the journey. Find every excuse you can to celebrate everything you can. Live like today is the first day and last day of your life. Don't let what's wrong with you keep you from worshipping what's right with God. Burn sinful bridges. Blaze a new trail. Criticize by creating. Worry less about what people think and more about what God thinks. Don't try to be who you're not. Be yourself. Laugh at yourself. Quit holding out. Quit holding back. Quit running away.

Chase the lion.

This whole lion-chasing theme is from II Samuel 23:20. The author is Mark Batterson who wrote a book about chasing the lion which is his metaphor for taking risks for God, getting out of our comfort zone, etc. I don't know anything about the author but if he can be accused of guilt by association, I guess you could say he is "emergent"...whatever that means. And it doesn't mean much because the whole emergent church/conversion/movement is deliberately, self-consciously nebulous.

Anyway, I'm not defending or criticizing Batterson, but this Manifesto is very challenging and thought-provoking, in my humble opinion.

1. If he is associated with the "emergent church" movement, then he IS to be faulted for it denies propositional truth, along with myriad other errors and heresies.

2. This would go a long way to explain how in the world he wrote what he did which he evidently did write, at least from what I gather from what you wrote and the quote provided. Talk about butchering God's divinely inspired Word. Here is what IISam 23:20 says:

Sorry, but I can't see much of anything Batterson wrote in this text. And, if nothing else, Benaiah didn't "chase a lion" but rather he killed one that had fallen into a pit.

3. Aside from the total lack of relation to IISam 23:20, I find little of what he wrote in the Bible period, although there are admittedly a couple of things which one could find in part.

In His grace,

Pilgrim is correct if Mark Batterson is Emergent he is as Pilgrim states: This particular book is very typical of books written by Emergent authors. In fact I read a book called 'The Barbarian Way' by Erwin Raphael McManus that seems to be on the same theme.
The main message of books like this one are very convicting and I for one can understand the draw that this movement might have on Christians. They challenge Christians not to just let life pass them by. But they sprinkle just a little (sometimes a lot) false teaching along the way, to make it hard to discern truth from error.
However, the same can be said about many Reformed books. For instance RC Sproul's 'The Holiness of God', brought me to my knees in reflection of God's holiness.
The point I am trying to make is why not read books by good Reformed authors, rather than books by false teachers?

I read 'The Barbarian Way' mainly because I was asked to by someone I respect. But to be honest, I don't think I will read these kind of books again if asked, unless I believe I can help someone see error in such a book. But even then, I would hesitate to read it.

Tom