I have to admit - I'm feeling a little foolish. Not long ago, I posted on my facebook wall that anyone who thought Jesus is boring should read John Eldredge's new book Beautiful Outlaw. I had heard excerpts of the book via podcast and everything sounded fantastic - a book about the vibrant personality of Jesus. Not to mention, I LOVE every book John Eldredge has written and own almost all of them. Let's establish that right off the bat - I LOVE John's books, his ministry, and have never had an issue with anything he's taught in the past.
Which is why before even reading his new book, I EVEN went so far as to organize a book study with some friends. Now that I've finished reading it, I'm almost wishing I hadn't. Don't get me wrong, it will still make for some interesting discussion... but it won't be what I had hoped it would, and for one simple reason: This book, which seems to be about 'Jesus', spends half of its energy rejecting "religion" as though a personal relationship with Christ is mutually exclusive from it. He goes as far as to say "this is the bottom-line test of anything claiming to be of Jesus: does it bring life? If it doesn't, drop it like a rattlesnake. And you will find that the religious never, ever brings life. Ever." You know he means it, he added an extra "ever".
Needless to say (since this is a Catholic blog and Catholicism is the oldest institutionalized religion on the planet), I reject that assertion. Undoubtedly I will probably be disqualified as having a reasonable critique, because he said in the book 'if you will simply read the Gospels without bias, you cannot come to any other conclusion but that religion is the enemy' and later even asserts 'if you disagree with me, it's because you're a religious person'.
While I absolutely agree with him about the hollowness of much religious ritual, I know from study, observation, and experience that the hollowness stems from poor catechesis more than anything, and cannot be bundled and rejected as part and parcel of the nature of religion itself. When you DO have that personal relationship with Jesus, your religious practice becomes full of life and from your heart!
Allow me to point out a selection of Catch-22's I found in Beautiful Outlaw:
-The author is careful to distinguish between Christianity and popular Christian culture, yet he seems to be towing the Christian pop-culture line of "I like Jesus, but I don't like organized religion". So, out of his mouth comes 'don't just get immersed in pop-culture Christianity ideas', and yet here is promoting what I think is the worst one!
-The author takes the time to warn us that our perceptions and experiences aren't the sum total of Christ and that we have to be careful - what we experienced usually isn't objective truth. And yet... people having bad religious experiences makes religion bad? A bit of a double-standard.
-He cites the words of Jesus 'you shall know them by the fruit they bear' to say that all the bad fruit that comes from the religious spirit proves that it's bad. I think that is to take these words of Christ out of context, because if a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, we're all bad trees. A better parable to use would be the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13) - there is some crap in the Church, but it doesn't mean you leave the Church and call it evil. We all 'grow together until the harvest'.
This attitude John is purporting in his book is the reason the Body of Christ is so broken today, splintered into so many factions. We find sin, corruption, or something else that we don't like in the Church. So we leave and start our own church, or we decide to be a lone-ranger Christian who 'loves Jesus but doesn't like organized religion". We cannot say out one side of our mouths that we love Christ, and then turn around and reject his Bridge, his very Body the Church, just because of sin. Jesus loves her and bears with her in spite of that, so you leaving her is not the answer. C.S. Lewis (PHENOMENAL writer, as is John!) made the same mistake by excluding ecclesiology from his classic Mere Christianity. Martin Luther made the same mistake - although he set out for reform, he ended in regret, having caused a division among Christians that Christ never intended.
My friends, I understand that we encounter sin, evil, corruption, etc. in the Church - but that is not a reason to leave. Jesus found sin, evil, corruption, etc. in US and did not leave, but bonded us together in His very self - The Church, The Mystical Body of Christ. We cannot say we love Him and at the same time reject His Bride. Practicing Catholicism doesn't take us away from Jesus, it brings Him to us - that's what's so mind-blowing about the Eucharist.
That said - I think that a reader with discretion will find that ("poison of religion"-flavored comments aside) the rest of the content of this book is dead-on. Jesus was fully God and fully man - we miss the mark if we view him as only God, but just as much when we think he was just a nice dude. He had a personality, a WONDERFUL one, and most of the strange, seemingly cryptic things he said become very relevant for us if we don't stop at "that's weird and old and doesn't make any sense". Dig deeper... you will find a treasure!
PS- John says in one part of this book "many Catholics find Mary a more approachable figure, because Jesus has been lifted so far into the heavens he seems altogether gone". THAT IS CRAZY TALK to anyone who understands Marian devotion and practices it truly. We love Mary because Jesus loved Mary, and she helps us to get close to him not because he is far away, but because she is the first Christian and the most wonderful person to emulate and seek help from - because being close to hear only helps us to love him more! Mary is a mediator, yes, but we are all mediators - if we didn't believe that, we would never ask anyone to pray for us, we'd just "go straight to Jesus".
