Asleep in the Light

Wide Awake by Erwin McManus
Nelson Publishers, 252 pages

At first I was uncertain about writing this book. It could so easily become a formula for self-indulgence.
–Erwin Mcmanus on the writing of Wide Awake

To follow Erwin McManus’s career, quotes, and books is to invite the task of Sisyphus in your life. You keep rolling that stone up the hill but you get nowhere. In fact, you end up at a spiritual deficit with more questions than answers and more despair than hope. Take, for example, the notion that his Mosaic church touches those that have been left unreached by the “pharisaical church” as he calls it. While he believes that the Christian church is full of “conformists,” his church is filled with “dreamers” and “revolutionaries” that are armed with a gospel that is “relevant.” He also goes to great pains to declare that his church isn’t about building up an already fattened flock but about extending to the uncommitted and non-churchgoer. Reading this you would think that Erwin might have the language to reach this secular culture more effectively. Then you get on the Mosaic website and you are greeted by this verbiage: “become an unstoppable force by shaping and apostolic ethos within a missional community.” Elsewhere, there is an explanation that “the focus of this ethos is found through this commission. The spiritual environmentalist focuses on five elements for spiritual health: wind, water, fire, wood, and earth.” Who, if not Christians, would this message be directed at? Of course they are directed at Christians because a non-Christian would be totally confused by it. Come to think of it, even Christians might be. The language is so muddled with impractical and vague concepts as to be worthless. When he writes “mission” is why the church exists, what does he mean? The Great Commision? The Midnight Mission ? The San Gabriel Mission? “Relevance to culture is not optional” is another well-meaning but utterly vague and impractical concept. After all, who is the arbitrator for what is relevant and why can’t it be optional? Some of us think that the culture is on a slide, both spiritually and artistically. So if we go to Mosaic we have to immerse ourselves into today’s pop culture? It’s so hard to get answers when none are forthcoming. It’s rolling that boulder up that lonely hill.
McManus confuses his audience even more by some of his outrageous quotes. Take for example this one: “two signs of a healthy church are sexual immorality and heresy.” This qualifies as a good McManus quote because it places squarely in the realm of “edgy.” But what happens when the rooster comes to roost, as when a young lady at his church begins to date a Jewish man? According to the woman, instead of gentle reproofs she is isolated, ignored, and abandoned. When have we heard this before? How about this quote: “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.” As Frank Lutz puts it when he is advising presidents: “It’s not what you say it is what people hear.” In other words, be very careful what you say because the listener might think you will have no problem with a particular lifestyle, because, after all, why focus so much on the “sin problem?” And, sure enough, another member with a problem has come forward, and again, been devastated by this coy bait and switch technique.
And then, finally, you come to McManus’s books, and if there was a stone to roll uphill, this is surely Mount Everest . Erwin Mcmanus’s Wide Awake reads like the Christian cover version of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. McManus gives us nine attributes to be "wide awake," which, as he defines it, is to "rediscover your hopes, dreams, and passions, and to break the monotony and live the life God intended." These attributes, though seemingly arbitrary, are "essential," which are: dream, discover, adapt, expect, focus, create, enjoy, invest, and imagine. When writing about dreams, McManus writes that it is more "devastating to the human spirit to give up on our dreams altogether." Leave aside the fact that there are thousands of people who have given up their dreams of being an artist to start a family and lead normal, even happy lives; does McManus really believe his statement? Aren’t there even more devastating things in the world? I can think of chemical dependency, marital strife, and living in a war zone for starters. I’d gladly give up every dream I have to not get stricken with cancer or get stuck in a loveless marriage, if given the choice. McManus, of course, doesn’t back his claim with scripture but instead layers his chapter with lazy assertions and banalities: "Your dreams create space for the dreams of others," "you will not become everything you dream, but you will never become anything you don’t dream of." When McManus does quote scripture, it is more of a "let’s launch this puppy and see what it can do" variety of exegesis. He’ll set up long passages, comment very little, and count on the reader to fill in the holes. And there are holes. His commentary on Ezekiel 37, the powerful chapter where God tells Ezekiel to speak to the dry bones, is this: "So dreams are so powerful that you cannot let them rest in your sleep. You have to live them when you’re awake. You dream with your eyes wide open." And then McManus moves on to other things.
McManus opens chapter 2, "Discover," with this sentence, "We were in an open jeep in the northern tip of South Africa …" Elsewhere in the book, he writes, "on a recent family trip to Paris," and in another passage, he tells a story after he "came home from a recent trip to Australia and New Zealand." It’s difficult to read these passages without thinking of the morass that has become of his Awaken ministries. Is it a non-profit or a for-profit? Where is all the money going and how is the financial accountability handled? There needs to be more disclosure when it comes to Christian ministries, not less. You better believe non-Christians are more skeptical than most when they read about a Christian minister hunting for the best gelato spots in Italy as McManus does in his account on page 189.
To discover is to learn, according to McManus: "when you live in a relationship to God, learning is a given." But what you are learning is not made clear here and studying the Bible is certainly not a priority with McManus. So I ask: what exactly are you learning under this man’s leadership? McManus often speaks of engaging the world in a "conversation." But when reading chapter two, the reader is left wondering if the conversation ever steers toward "dead in your trespasses." In fact, it often veers in the direction of self-importance. On page fifty, he writes, "you are created by God to be a pioneer, to explore unknown places and have uncertain experiences because he created you to solve whatever challenges and problems and obstacles you will face in that place. When you live up to your greatness, the world is made better." When reading a passage like this, you're left wondering how McManus deals with Jeremiah 17:9 or Romans 3:10. The deception is subtle but present: "you are created to be a pioneer" to "explore unknown places" as opposed to being "created for good works." Even more egregious is his "when you live up to your greatness" as opposed to "there is no one who does good" and the "heart is desperately sick." In the next chapter, McManus tells us to "adapt," which he interprets as to "continually reinvent ourselves." By way of example, he chooses Daniel as a man who adapts. Daniel, according to McManus, "lived under oppression and had every excuse for not accomplishing anything significant...instead of drifting into obscurity, stepped up, learned everything he could and rose above the circumstances. It was in the context of unimaginable difficulty that he was formed into an extraordinary individual." Talk about stripping the power of Daniel in the lion's den and reducing it to a formula for self-indulgence! Daniel's unyielding faith is boiled down to a trite "significant accomplishment" while his wisdom to reject the king's food allowed him to "drift above obscurity." God help you, reader, if you end up obscure in the eyes of the world or worse, gulp, not accomplishing something "significant." Notably absent from the description is the word "holy." Instead, we get the milquetoast phrases "insatiable curiosity," "determination," and "adaptation." It's ironic, but I walk away from the Daniel story, my favorite in the Old Testament, thinking he was anything but adapting. He was unyielding.
Chapter 3 brings us to "Expect." I get nervous when I read that word after the debacle of the word-faith movement's "Expect a Miracle!" campaign. My fears are confirmed when McManus writes on page ninety two: "one of the most important characteristics of people who achieve the extraordinary is they live a life of expectation--they expect the good to happen; they internalize optimism." Faith for McManus isn't only the substance of things hoped for but also the "promise of a better world, a better future, a better you." It's inexplicable that he chooses "focus" as his fifth attribute when he himself admits he lacks focus. On page 126, no less than the Emperor himself, Rick Warren, asks McManus if he has ADD, while others close to him say his biggest deficit is lack of...well, focus. I won't hold that against him as much as his unbreakable habit to cling to bland phrases and empty philosophy: "without a sense of destiny you will diffuse your energy. When you are focused, you are your most powerful. A destiny is not something waiting for you but something waiting within you." What is significant here is not only what is present but what is lacking. There is no encouragement in the Lord, no love for the Word, no seeking wise counsel, no keeping thy way pure, no seeking first the kingdom of God . Instead, there is a tendency to put the self on the throne through the idea of a "destiny waiting within you." In Soul Cravings, he claimed humans have divine potential and that what you are looking for is there "within you." The "Focus" chapter also screams for better editing. At its worst, McManus chokes us with metaphors before taking us through the rabbit hole: "We're looking for a yellow brick road or a clearly paved one-way street. We want a straight line from point A to point B. We often think of God's will more as a tightrope than a compass. We want one path, clearly lit and marked so we know exactly where to go. We don’t think of ourselves like little mice smelling for the cheese while God shows us the way through the maze. We act as if the spiritual journey is like God leaving little breadcrumbs, and we are Hansel and Gretel. Through the woods we can find our way home. But somewhere along the way all the ravens ate the breadcrumbs and we’re lost in the forest, asking God ‘where do I go.’ ” Wide Awake sometimes drifts into a kind of dreamy stream of consciousness that lacks substance or practicality. Think Stuart Smalley meets Robert Schuller in this passage: “You are commissioned to write a great symphony. It is the masterpiece of your life. You have been entrusted with this creative process. You are essential to this work of art—and the art requires that you act. You bring the notes that will be played. The symphony, though, is in great hands. The great Conductor will bring it all together, and the sound will be glorious. In the end, you are not only an artist; you are also an activist.”
It is in the “Create” chapter that I am reminded of McManus’s love for culture, art, and relevance and how fleeting and irrelevant it all really is. He opens the chapter with him and a friend scrambling over a “long line of humanity” excited and breathless at an art museum to get a glimpse of…Banksy. Banksy?? The graffiti artist? I mean, make a play for Shepard Fairey, that other flavor of the month guerilla artist. At least Fairey has a workshop at this week’s Democratic convention and takes phone calls from Barack Obama. But really now, who cares about either of them? This Christian movement that tries so hard to keep up with the silly trends of our narcissistic culture to stay “relevant” reminds me of the runt who tries on his father’s clothes in front of a mirror. They just don’t fit, son. You want to tell the kid to just be himself. But figures like Erwin McManus will continue to sell you the idea that he is relevant and even ahead of his time: “More than twenty years ago I began my work as a futurist. Not the kind who simply gets a glimpse of what tomorrow could look like, but the kind who shapes what tomorrow will look like.” (page 32) No, this isn’t the runt, this is the guy who just drove in from the Midwest, looking “LA Cool” while gliding into the Geisha house wearing sunglasses bought from Hollywood and Highland . While “noshing” on some sushi, he asks you if you caught the latest Godard retrospective at the Nuart. Meanwhile, everyone in the restaurant stares at the guy thinking the same thing: “what’s with the carpetbagger?” He.Tries. Too. Hard.