SOUL CANDY

Soul Cravings by Erwin McManus
Nelson Books, ? Pages

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk.
---John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”


Those who have been following the recent activities of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles can’t help but feel a profound sense of sadness over the whole matter. Those of us who have been critical of the church are not exempt from this heartache. There is a lingering stink of brokenness: brokenness of fellowship and unity. The brokenness of lives. Regarding the minister who was recently forced to retire, I have not spoken to him in over five years. Then why am I angry about it? Consider the youth pastor and his wife who were fired in a shockingly callous manner at Mosaic Pasadena. I hardly know them. Still, why does the story depress me? I rarely see the former pastor who was dismissed after twenty five years of service. Why does it rankle when I think about it? Not only me, but many former members still express frustration over this event and the way it was clumsily handled by leadership. Perhaps the worst part is that many good congregants had some honest questions about the dismissal that were never answered. Many of these same former members, fueled by a sense of righteous anger, have now asked these same questions on blogs and websites. To add insult to injury, the Mosaic leadership is now branding them with labels: “bitter” seems to be the missive du jour.

Why does the pain linger after so many years? I believe that though broken, the Body remains united by a sense of purpose and justice. Given this backdrop, current and former members of Mosaic might benefit by some context for our current predicament, a document if you will that would guide us through the question “why?” Why did this happen? The books of Erwin McManus are a good start, and thankfully, there are some clues in his latest. Soul Cravings is a feel-good concoction of things you want to hear wrapped in an egocentric worldview. This book goes down like a sweet elixir but, in the end, it leaves you with all the health benefits of hemlock.

This book has no page numbers, so when I quote from it, you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s in there. Somewhere. Soul Cravings is a series of “entries” about McManus’s ideas about love, hope, and meaning. In entry one, McManus writes “we are driven by love, driven to love, and even from love.” In entry two, he writes, “We cannot live unaffected by love.” He also writes, “The more you love someone, the more that person can hurt you.” In the first three entries, which comprise about nine pages, the word “love” appears eighty one times, not counting tenses and variations of the word like “loving,” “loved,” and “loveaholic.” At around the tenth entry, we come to what I think is the thesis of the book: “You are unique and irreplaceable. You are the object of God’s love.” Make no mistake about it, this book is a celebration of the self. “To come to God is to discover the uniqueness of your being.” To many of us, the core of our being at the time of our conversion was not a good thing. We can relate to the tax-gatherer Jesus speaks of who beat his breast asking for mercy for his sinful soul. The being McManus refers to is one with “immeasurable value.” He writes that the “kingdom of heaven is within us” and claims that God’s signs are “all around you but even more the signs are all within you.” This type of doctrine, one can easily conclude, can move people to behave in strange and brutal ways. If truth is that subjective, then why can’t I harm my brethren? After all, God has spoken within me. McManus has gone on record to say he does not build his life on the word of God but on the voice of God, but that he does treasure the scriptures. You can see where that can lead someone. In fact, we have many tragic examples of people who’ve been led by God’s voice but didn’t test that voice with God’s word. Let’s hope this is not the case with McManus or that he at least clarifies what he means by this.

There is another grievous idea that seems to be a running theme in every one of his books. In entry ten, he writes: “For centuries the church has been telling us if we want God to love us, we need to follow the rules. It’s been far more important to focus on the sin problem than the love problem. This is the only way the institution can maintain control over our lives.” I am mystified why McManus and his editors continue to peddle this false dichotomy. It’s as if there is a huge boxing ring, the church is on one side, McManus on the other. The church is screaming, “Repent! Now follow a loveless God and his iron-clad set of rules.” And on the other corner you have McManus saying, “No. God is love.” Where is this church McManus keeps writing about? To be sure, legalistic churches exist but there are numerous evangelical churches that preach a doctrine of love and repentance. Can’t God do two things at once? Must He be either/or?

The second part of Soul Cravings deals with hope and meaning. He writes, “God designed us to dream because he created us to create.” Is that so? Like his church, McManus places a heavy emphasis on creativity and art. It’s a shame he doesn’t deal more with creative ungodly people in this book. This, of course, would lead to problems with his theory that “creativity is the natural result of spirituality.” Lately, he has been saying that “creativity leads to mysticism.” The idea that mysticism has reared its head in Mosaic church is chilling.

He writes extensively about Victor Frankl, a man I have a great deal of admiration for. Frankl survived the Nazi death camps during World War 2 by an unwavering hope. Once hope dies, we die was Frankl’s message, and to be sure, it is a good one. But Frankl also wrote that there are only two races: the decent and the indecent. I was reminded of that quote as I read the passages of Frankl in Soul Cravings. I was reminded of the many decent people posting questions who are now being branded as malcontents and crybabies. Well, there is a lot to cry about. And I also think of the people who haven’t posted but quietly reflect. This is a sad chapter to reopen. But, reluctantly, we open and shine a light on it knowing that healing comes in the morning.