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THE HOLY WILD: Trusting in the Character of God
Mark Buchanan
Multnomah, 272 pp., $12.99

Can God be trusted? "Can we both risk for him and rest in him?" asks Mark Buchanan. How do we become intimate with God, and thus enter the "Holy Wild"?

If we desire to leave the "Borderlands" of Christianity (conversion without regeneration) and enter the "Holy Wild" (living face-to-face with God), we must know God so deeply that we will risk everything for him, Buchanan writes in this book, new this year to paperback. With this risk in mind, he unpacks some of God's attributes that would invite us to trust him, including God's love, faithfulness, wrath, mercy, holiness, creativity, and glory.

Buchanan, an excellent storyteller, offers a potpourri of ideas that are less about new insights than they are gentle reminders of who God is and why we can trust him. Through Buchanan's expressive writing, readers become reacquainted with the amazing beauty of creation ("a gallery of wonders"), the importance of the church (even with its flaws), and the wisdom of Sabbath-keeping.

He emphasizes that God's love for us is as "tenacious as oak roots, potent as a typhoon. It is abrasive as much as it is soothing. It scours and breaks us before it sets us right—in order to set us right. It never lets us alone."

THE BARBARIAN WAY: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within
Erwin Raphael McManus
Nelson Books, 160 pp., $16.99

Forget "safe" religion. In this compact, pithy book, Erwin McManus, lead pastor of Mosaic in Los Angeles, calls Christians to rethink the Christian life. Whom did God create us to become? What is our divine destiny?

McManus enthusiastically paints a portrait of Christians as risk-takers, renegades, and passionate people of action. True Christians or "barbarians" are not interested in religion; they are interested in advancing the revolution Jesus started 2,000 years ago, he writes.

Barbarians live life fully awake; they dream great dreams and find the courage to live them. The barbarian call means finding the unique path God calls us to walk and embracing it. "A world without God cannot wait for us to choose the safe path," he says. "If we wait for someone else to take the risk, we risk that no one will ever act and that nothing will ever be accomplished."

We must refuse to look to Jesus for comfort and safety, but rather "to lead us where he needs us most and where we can accomplish the most good."

Although readers will find much that makes them uncomfortable (doubtless McManus's intention), many will find his call to a life of "risk and mystery" both inviting and invigorating.

THE BEST CHRISTIAN WRITING 2006
John Wilson, Editor
Jossey-Bass, 224 pp., $17.95

Books & Culture editor John Wilson serves as a reader's best friend and filter in this installment of his annual series, sieving out sometimes overlooked but eminently worthy essays from various journals and magazines.

The topics are as varied as the drinks at Starbucks. Although leaning more toward the academic and literary than the trade, most of the writing is accessible to a general readership. Amy Laura Hall mulls over the value of life in her essay "On Reproduction and the Irreproducible Gift," noting that "life itself is a loan, a gift that never truly becomes ours for disposal, justification, manipulation, or definitive control." Bill McKibben ponders faithfulness as he vacuums between the pews of his small rural Methodist church in "High Fidelity," and Gideon Strauss examines personal responsibility for conditions overseas in "My Africa Problem … and Ours."

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October 2005, Vol. 49, No. 10