No one would purposefully want to go
into a dense thicket of tangled, thorny, prickly shrubs and vines. But after reading Shayne Wheeler’s The Briarpatch Gospel, that’s exactly
where I want to go. He uses the
briarpatch as a metaphor for those places where many people don’t want to
venture by choice. Our potlucks, quiet
times, and half-hour sermons are easier than the difficult, scary briapatch.
The briarpatch includes the poor, the
marginalized, and the disenfranchised.
It includes the self-centered, the hypocritical, and the greedy. It includes the lesbian who has been rejected
by her church, or the teenager struggling with depression, or the child with
leukemia. Going into the briarpatch is
drawing near to someone whose soul is struggling to breathe in a place where
the air is thin. This is where Jesus
went. It’s not easy to dwell there, to love there, but the healing grace of
Jesus is there if we have the courage to follow.
We are called to conform to the
righteousness of Christ, and we are going to fail miserably at times. We are to
be willing to walk down the road of life together and enter together into the
mess and the mystery of following Jesus. We must have the courage to love, even when we
don’t understand or agree. Shayne
Wheeler shows us how to follow Jesus fearlessly into the thorny places and live
out our calling to love.
But this isn’t just an idealistic
book of how things should be. Shayne
Wheeler wrestles with the tough issues through life examples of the problems we
encounter in the briarpatch, the dangers, what to do when we are there, and how
transformation occurs.
I devoured this book! I couldn’t stop
reading, couldn’t get enough, because he grappled with so many questions I’ve
had about loving others who seems so different and sharing the good news of
Jesus with them. He doesn’t offer
simplistic answers. This book is profound and life-changing. My eyes are opened to the briarpatches around
me, and I no longer take the long way around.
Disclosure: I received a
complimentary copy of this book from Tyndale Publishing in exchange for my
honest review.
Paula, you described this book better than I could have. Thanks so much for taking the time to read it and interact with it in such a thoughtful manner.
ReplyDeleteShayne