REMEMBER THE thrill that went through you when C.S. Lewis told you Aslan is not a tame lion? I sometimes forget about this untamed image of God when ensconced in my “safe” Christian community.
In his recent book Rewilding the Way: Break Free to Follow an Untamed God, Mennonite minister and permaculture practitioner Todd Wynward reminds us of the importance of the wilderness in the Bible and in Christian history. Wynward calls his book an “unapologetic rallying cry to rewild a Christianity that has become terribly tame.”
He argues for a third way of enacting discipleship: not the radical renunciation of ascetics, open only to the childless and unattached, nor a life of unexamined affluence, but a life of spiritual resilience where we develop strong, place-based communities of praxis who care for one another and creation through the power of the Holy Spirit.
He invites us to remember the transformation that occurs through the wilderness testing of Moses and the Israelites, many of the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus, the apostle Paul, and the desert fathers and mothers. In the wilderness we learn about “enough,” trusting God, and how much we need one another. We learn about our paradoxical smallness and value to our loving God.
A text like this could reinforce Christian contemplative navel-gazing and a personal experience of God as only available in the sublime elements of nature, unreachable in a sullied built environment. Wynward avoids this pitfall by focusing on community and a covenanted right relationship with God, others, and creation. He discusses environmental justice, activism, and urban projects that rewild spaces closer to home.
Wynward creates a solid foundation of biblical examples to back up his communal wilderness praxis paradigm and shares stories of many from Christian history who followed this way. Peppered throughout are his own experiences and those of other contemporary individuals and organizations attempting to live in the way he suggests. He also utilizes ecological metaphors, pointing out that Jesus and the early disciples did not have the New Testament and often used metaphors from nature to explain spiritual concepts.
The book is prophetic and hopeful, beseeching us to live out the radical discipleship exemplified in the biblical narrative, holding out hope that we can do so for the benefit of ourselves, future living beings, and our relationship with God.
Rewilding the Way is premised on our definition of the “good life.” Are we experiencing the good life here in the United States with our cheap food and ever-faster technology? Are we free? Do we feel satisfied? Are our innovations creating more just societies? Or do we still yearn for something deeper, a faith that calls for an actual repentance, a turning around? Do we desire a community that invites us to right relationship, providing safety not based simply in security and comfort but in a network of support and prophetic challenge to truly live out the good news in our own time and place?
I won’t lie: I loved this book. It would be useful for adult small groups and certain undergraduate and seminary classrooms, and it would provide inspiring reading for a pastor looking for fodder for a sermon series on creation care. It’s also very accessible for the average Christian. Although Wynward refers to many theologians and individuals from the Bible, church history, and modern contexts, he introduces each of them so that no prior knowledge is necessary. Along the way, his knack for putting together biblical passages with modern examples opens up the reader’s imagination to see these ideas come to life. His honest sharing of his failures and successes provides further authority.
Read this book if you’re ready to walk both a spiritual and literal wilderness trail, trusting in the Spirit’s power of enough and daily persevering through step after arduous and satisfying step on the Jesus Way.
Cherice Bock teaches courses at Portland Seminary, is on the faculty of the Oregon Extension, and is a Ph.D. candidate in environmental studies at Antioch University New England.
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