Lion and Lamb - Brennan Manning - Book Review

3 stars
For me, this book verged between amazing and thought-provoking to 'makes me want to throw it out of the window'. The good outweighed the frustrating, therefore the three stars.

Manning's book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, was life changing for me. But this one...I dunno...I think it needs a second read at some point, maybe I'm just not in the right frame of mind for some of Manning's points about suffering, etc. It just felt too hard, too otherworldly, too selfless, too high a standard. However, the answer most probably lies in the part which did resonate.

What did resonate with me was Manning's encouragement to look past our own failings and past and whatever drags us down and look to Christ. Meditate on his holiness, his beauty, his love, his peace...look away from yourself and look to him. This is where purity of heart comes from. Which reminds me of these two scriptures: Matthew 5:8 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God'; and, 1 John 3:3 'All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure'.

We TRY to be pure and fail because we are concentrating on ourselves; we are being legalists or are self-obsessed (both selfishness and self-hatred are different sides of the same coin). But if we simply place all our hope in HIM we purify ourselves because he is pure.

Manning encourages the reader to empty themselves, he writes: "Simply hoard nothing of yourself; seep the house clean. Sweep our even the attic, even the nagging, painful consciousness of your past. Accept being shipwrecked. Renounce everything that is heavy, even the weight of your sins. See only the compassion, the infinite patience, and the tender love of Christ. Jesus is Lord. That suffices. Your guilt and reproach disappear into the nothingness of non-attention. You are no longer aware of yourself, like the sparrow aloft and free in the azure sky. Even the desire for holiness is transformed into a pure and simple desire for Jesus." (Which reminded me of my favourite Tim Keller book - The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.)

Overall, a good book and I may increase the stars on a second read.