Fierce and wild!

[Bill H]

13 THE OTHER LION
The tender Shepherd God of the Scriptures is also a threatening Lion. God is totally other; he is called The Numinous by Rudolf Otto. He is a God of immeasurable power and sizzling holiness.C.S. Lewis, influenced by Otto’s The Idea of the Holy, depicted the hero of the Narnia Chronicles, Aslan, a Christ figure as a lion.
God is fierce and unstoppable; he is a consuming fire. In the over familiarity of evangelicalism and charismatic renewal, many contemporary Christ followers have lost sight of the fierceness of God, the dark side of the divine. This tendency is nothing new. When I was a theology undergraduate, I stumbled on journal that outlined a debate between the Wesley brothers. John chided his hymn-writing brother, Charles for the lyrics of gentle Jesus meek and mild. There is an unfortunate tendency towards the cissyfication of Jesus. John Eldridge complained that we have made Jesus into Mister Rogers with a beard.Nice, kind and unthreatening. Bishop Bruce Wilson called the Son of Man, the wild man from heaven. Mark Galli has recently offered us a series of meditations called Jesus Mean and Wild! We need to remind ourselves that our God is both tender and terrible .Jesus comes not only to offer abundant life but also to ruin our lives and threaten our well-constructed plans and scheme. The Jesus of the gospels is a wild and unpredictable countercultural renegade.