Christianity is...

For my morning reading, in addition to the One Year Bible Thing, today I started NT Wright's For All God's Worth. Rock on. This guy is amazing... The wild thing is that he seems to be brilliant enough to write well not only on different levels (popular, scholarly, a mix of the two), but in actual different styles. I have some of his commentaries in which (under the name "Tom Wright") he writes at a very accesible, very helpful preaching commentary level. I looked at one of his books yesterday (while browsing Powell's downtown, the actual biggest bookstore in America) that must have weighed 30 or 40 pounds and was written at a level where I'm pretty sure they checked your degree before selling it to you ("Yeah... I'm going to need to see your diploma. MA? No, sorry... See the sign? You need to have at least a ThM to purchase this.")
But back to the different styles things... I got this small book because when I flipped it open in the store, I came across a passage on the Trinity that rocked me... right there in the Powell's Christianity aisle.
Anyway, I started reading it this morning, and I gotta tell ya- this guy must be channeling C.S. Lewis..

How can you cope with the end of a world and the beginning of another one? How can you put an earthquake into a test tube, or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire has become flesh, that life itself came to life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality in the world, or it's a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful play-acting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of these things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between. We may not be content there, but we don't know how to escape.

. . . [T]he way through is by sheer unadulterated worship of the living and true God, and by following this God wherever he leads, whether or not it is the way our traditions would suggest. Worship is not an optional extra for the Christian, a self-indulgent religious activity. It is the basic Christian stance, and indeed (so Christians claim) the truly human stance.

Check it... this one is definitely going on the bookroll and I'm going to see if I can find some cheap copies for our book table at our sunday gatherings (They have to be cheap- we sell everything for $5!)