A few weeks / months ago, I had a mild (or maybe not so mild) case of news-addiction (certain internet blogs and news sites).   Recently I've felt too busy to read those sites very often, besides realizing that the news from around the world is pretty much "bad" all the time, though there is absolutely zero reason for me to be worried because Jesus Christ has already conquered and it's only a matter of time before He returns and crushes all badness.

So I've learned that I can live without reading the news.   It's been interesting. 

Have any of you ever had news-addictions, email addictions, internet-addictions, etc?   cell phone addictions?

I was reading John Mortenson's blog tonight, while reading more on the internet about the postmodernist/emergent controversy stewing at Cedarville University these days (about which I had already heard an inside perspective or two).  Specifically this post and especially the three other previous posts linked from that one.

I am so heartbroken to see my friends embracing postmodernism and "teaching others to do the same".  (I revived my similar post below from October of last year... same thoughts once again... these same thoughts burn through my mind increasingly more frequently).

I am delighted to see the love and acceptance which friends like Mortenson pour out on the needy people around them, and I seek to do this more myself.  But I have "great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart" when I see postmodern friends avoiding the exclusive and absolute teachings of God's Word (the Bible) and and allowing the culture to dictate the Church's perspective on the Bible, Christian life, and God Himself.

I will tread as lightly as possible as I quote below from Mortenson's earlier post:

"We go outside and he smokes. He is way across the yard from the children and worries that he is smoking too near them. He asks my permission to speak freely, meaning, can he swear in front of me. He says bullshit and watches to see if I will condemn him."...
Eddie comes by. Eddie is on the same road, but much farther gone. Eddie is deeply lined in his face, and skinny, and walks unrhythmically. He shakes hands with everyone over and over. Yeah, hey, hi, you’re a gentleman, thanks a lot, great to be here, shake my hand. He works a crowd like a politician. But this isn’t Eddie; this is Eddie’s robot, the mechanical part of him that the addiction needs to keep going. The addiction gladly kills all that is human, keeping only the smooth scheming parts, the clever negotiating parts, so that the body can get a little food and live another day and keep the addiction alive.
Ray knows this will be him.
He tells me where the crack houses are in this neighborhood, and then says this place gets bad after dark and he wants to leave now.  Gets bad? What could you meet that is worse than this?
He shakes my hand, not scheming like Eddie, but heavy and slow and sad. He walks away.
What Bible verse would you read to Ray?  ...
“Jesus of Nazareth…went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.”

There is an extremely fine line to walk.   It is good to be brokenhearted on behalf of others, to "weep with those who weep."   Yet there are words by which we are told to "comfort one another".   Jesus of Nazareth certainly did go about doing good and healing, but He also called people "broods of vipers" and even told some people "Go and sin no more".

Job's three friends sat with him in his misery for seven days without saying a word.  Then they opened their mouths.  The emergents/postmoderns say they should have kept their mouths closed-- that's where they went awry.

But I disagree.  Their problem was that they lost sight of God!   They "knew not the scriptures, nor the power of God".  They went astray not in their confidence about who God was, but in the content of their incorrect supposed knowledge.  They should have known from Genesis (Abraham's story, Joseph's story, etc) that God is not a cosmic karma machine.

The postmodernist will say, "But that's exactly it Tim - don't you see, Job's friends thought they knew God, but actually they were mistaken.  Herein is the lesson for us, never to speak with full authority or confidence on our interpretation of the Scriptures, because we might be wrong.  We ought never to rule out any perspective- be it McClaren, McClaine, or Bin Laden... because we might arrogantly miss some aspect of the truth that they could teach us."

Two thoughts in response: first a tiny caveat, then the main point.  Caveat- I agree that "100% certainty" is an unhelpful thing- it can lock one in to incorrect notions from which there is henceforth no possibility of getting out.  However, I suggest that 99.999...% "asymptotic certainty" is not only very legitimate in many cases, but that it can look outwardly indistinguishable from "100% certainty" in many situations.  Where do we ever see Jesus or Paul or Peter or any Biblical character preaching "Thus and thus says the Lord, and thus and thus you should do in response, but I might be mistaken in my interpretation of His message, so let's dialog about this-- what do you think God is saying to you?"    !
I do suspect that Peter and Paul and Jude had "only" 99.999...% asymptotic certainty, but it didn't preclude them from taking a firm, "dogmatic" stand on what God had previously stated (i.e. the very words)... and it didn't preclude them from saying things like "...I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.  For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."

Now the main point:
Notice the Emergent/Postmodern emphasis on avoiding condemnation... as in the quote above "...and watches to see if I will condemn him".    I suggest that the focus in Emergent/Postmodern Christianity is too small... too limited... too terrestial.   My arbiter ought not to be my fellow man.  In fact, if I am looking to peers' approval to make sure I am on the right spiritual track in life, I am committing idolatry.

Rather, my arbiter must be God Himself, through His Word, the Bible (unmediated by human gatekeepers of traditions, but rather aided through the Holy Spirit to understand (cf. Alvin Plantinga's writings on 'warrant')...  yet trusting even no "spirit guidance" except what concurs with the revealed written Word of God, following Jesus' example).

My chief concern should be whether Jesus Himself would want me to confront the swearing man or not... rather than whether or not the swearing man might feel uncomfortably 'judged' by a Christian and henceforth perhaps spurn God.

In the words of the old song, "There's a call going out..."   a call to all true Christians in America and the West... to be broken....  doubly broken... in Christ's service and for His sake.

The first brokenness is an empathetic understanding of our postmodern peers... to seek to understand where they're coming from, to listen to them, to engage in gentle kindness and hospitality to them, to avoid the strident sounds of 'harsh, fundamentalistic, modernistic, arrogant, simplistic, judgmental, thoughtless' Christianity whenever possible as part of 'becoming all things to all men.'  We are called to become 'as postmodern' to the postmoderns.

Yet Paul's veneers had limits, as must ours... and thus comes about the second brokenness.  Our postmodern culture tells us that all perspectives are equally valid, and if we believe differently, we will face ridicule, rejection, and persecution by our peers.   We must be willing to accept this rejection... we must be willing to be broken a second time.  To be villified on the one side by the moralists for our empathy and hospitality, and be villified on the other side by the emergents for our unswerving stand upon God's Word and for the exclusive Lordship of Jesus Christ.   To be villified by our supposedly Christian brethren on both sides, for the sake of Christ.  As Jesus so poignantly asked the Pharisees, "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God?"

We must be compassionate and loving, while simultaneously 'setting our faces like flint'.  We must be shrewd as serpents, but innocent as doves.

This is the call...   It is a call to love.  Not tolerance, which is cheap... but real love... tough love... which is excruciating.

We live in extremely challenging times...  God has placed us specifically here 'for such a time as this'.

The question was asked above: "What Bible verse would you read to Ray?"  I suggest that for us who truly follow Christ, this question cannot be a rhetorical one.

Here's a fascinating dialogue between a Jew, a Catholic, and some biblical Christians.  It's only a five-minute read and very well worth it in my opinion.

Here's an excerpt:

DONAHUE: Thank you. Do these 16 million people believe Jews can go to heaven?

MOHLER: Well, the gospel is not just for the worst of us. The gospel is for all of us. And the scripture tells us the hard truth, that all have sinned. And that Nazi guard is going to be punished for his sin, and it will be judged as sin. His only hope would be the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And the profound truth of the gospel is that the salvation that can come to any person who comes to faith in Christ-can come to that Jew who was killed and to that guard who does the killing. That’s the radical nature of the gospel.

I was listening last night to a debate between Messianic Jew Michael Brown and Rabbi David Blumofe.  It's a wonderful debate to listen to and ponder.  During the Q/A at the end, the concept was presented (in 'question form') of a Nazi mowing down innocent and pious Jews with a laugh and then praying to Jesus for salvation right before the Allies shoot him.  The emotional question (posed also by Donohue) is: how could such a person go to heaven, when the pious Jews he killed go to hell?  How could such extremely bad people go to a good destination, while the good people go to a bad destination?

Michael Brown answered the question very well - listen to the mp3 to hear his answer.   I have a slightly different thought in reply (and why the hypothetical story is deeply flawed in its presented form).  Actually two thoughts.

First, as Brown also mentioned, it is not enough to simply say that one believes in Jesus God's Messiah; one must actually believe (in one's heart or inner being).  True repentance is necessary, not just the saying of a magic saving formula.   This involves seeing oneself as God sees - i.e. agreeing with the Bible's portrayal of oneself as (not abstractly but personally) very very wicked and sinful, unable to please God, unable to ever earn one's salvation; in a word, doomed.  And it involves true heart belief (inevitably producing action as fire produces heat and smoke) that Jesus' death-on-my-behalf is my only hope.

Second, the story overlooks the fact that "ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  When the Jew is said to be "innocent" and "pious" compared to the Nazi, that is a human comparison looking at outward appearances.  Compare the two next to each other, and sure - one is 'worse' than the other, outwardly speaking.  The Holocaust Jew has never killed someone, etc.

But has the Jew ever told a lie?  Has the Jew ever had an angry-without-cause or covetous thought toward someone?  Has the Jew ever felt lust?  Our sinfulness (and I am obviously including myself here) is usually buried beneath layers of piousness and outward showy good works... self-woven layers that everyone without exception enshrouds themselves with.

In response to the question of the Nazi and the Jew, the Bible says, "Hold on a second -  every single person on earth has performed despicable acts of abominable evil against God and his/her fellow man, every day.  Some people's acts are worse than others, but all have performed these acts.  All, moreover, are 'sinners by nature', 'unable to please God' even if they wanted to... even our best deeds are soaked with pride and a refusal to honor God as He deserves."

Once the Nazi and the Jew are seen as two wicked sinners who are both deserving of hell, the flaws of the emotional argument above become evident. A more accurate picture might be a homeowner peeling up his floor and finding two termites, one of whom is abusing the other, but both of whom are destroying his house.

And it so happens that the same emotional picture is often asked with respect to other religions - Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.  The Christian answer is: "Although there are moral distinctions that can be made on a relative scale, we need to look at the absolute scale.  The truth is that both (and indeed every person on earth) deserve eternal destruction.  But the good news is that God has provided a way - belief in Jesus God's Messiah - by which whoever believes can be saved!  Jesus Christ underwent the eternal destruction that I deserved."

Here's an interesting quote from a debate between a christian and an atheist a few years ago, with my comments below:

Moderator: "You have said that there has been no adequate evidence put forth for God's existence. What for you personally would constitute adequate evidence for God's existence?"

Dr. Stein: "Well it's very simple; I can give you two examples. If that podium suddenly rose into the air five feet, stayed there for a minute, and then dropped right down again. I would say that was evidence of the super natural, because it would violate everything we know about the laws of physics and chemistry (assuming that there wasn't an engine under there or a wire attached to it--we can make those obvious exclusions). That would be evidence for a supernatural, violation of the laws, we could call it a miracle right in front of your eyes. That would be evidence I would accept. Any kind of a supernatural being putting in an appearance and doing miracles that could not be stage magic would also be evidence I would accept. Those are the two simplest ways. I would also accept any evidence that is logically noncontradictory and I have not heard any yet tonight, that hasn't been offered already."

Dr. Bahnsen: "Dr. Stein, I think, is really not reflecting on the true nature of atheism and human nature when he says, "All it would take is a miracle in my very presence to believe in God." History is replete with, first of all, things which would be, apparently, miracles to people. Now from an atheistic or naturalistic standpoint, I will grant in terms of the hypothesis, that that's because they were ignorant of all the causal factors and so it appeared to be miraculous; but that didn't make everybody into a theist. In fact, Scripture tells us there are instances of people who witnessed miracles who all the more hardened their heart and eventually crucified the Lord of Glory. They saw his miracles; that didn't change their minds. People are not made theists by miracles. People must change their world view; their hearts must be changed. They need to be converted. That's what it takes. And that's what it would take for Dr. Stein to finally believe in it. If this podium rose up five feet off the ground and stayed there, Dr. Stein would have, eventually--in the future--some naturalistic explanation. You see they believe things on faith, by which I mean they believe things they have not proven as yet by their senses.

I agree with Bahnsen here.  Specifically, even if Stein saw the podium rise into the air, it would (likely) go against his own belief structure to accept even this as proof of 'the supernatural', because it would be an argument "appealing to a god of the gaps."  If he wished his basic atheistic presuppositions to remain unchanged, he could simply say that the naturalistic explanation for the event had not yet been discovered but that the history of scientific discovery provided hope that such an explanation (for mysteriously levitating podiums) would eventually be discovered.

What do you think?

2 Chronicles 25:5-9...

Moreover, Amaziah assembled Judah and appointed them according to their fathers' households under commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds throughout Judah and Benjamin; and he took a census of those from twenty years old and upward and found them to be 300,000 choice men, able to go to war and handle spear and shield.

He hired also 100,000 valiant warriors out of Israel for one hundred talents of silver.

But a man of God came to him saying, "O king, do not let the army of Israel go with you, for the LORD is not with Israel nor with any of the sons of Ephraim. But if you do go, do it, be strong for the battle; yet God will bring you down before the enemy, for God has power to help and to bring down."

Amaziah said to the man of God, "But what shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the troops of Israel?"

A legitimate question, in my opinion.   Here's a king who's faced with a choice.  He's just become king, and he's about to go out to war.  He's paid the equivalent of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to hire mercenary soldiers.  But then a prophet of God comes and tells him that he should send them all home, because God will not support him if he sends this particular group to fight his battles.  But what about all the money I would lose? asks Amaziah.  It was a nonrefundable deposit!

How profound is the answer in return:

And the man of God answered, "The LORD has much more to give you than this."

So many souls are dying apart from God, every day, in my own city and around the world.   They desperately need to hear (and see lived-out) the Gospel - the good news that God has provided a Way of salvation.

And meanwhile, while I should be so freely explaining/preaching/proclaiming the good news to everyone (and exerting effort to get the message to those who have never heard), I am so inhibited...  by sin, by doubt/uncertainty, by 'the cares of this life', etc.   If you think to pray for me, pray that God would bring me very close to Himself ('at any cost,' as Nick says) and would give me wisdom and understanding about the gospel (and all the other issues I'm usually confused about), and freedom to tell the Gospel to my friends/colleagues/coworkers and other people.

As Paul prayed for others: "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God."

And as Paul asked for himself: "...pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel... that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak."
"Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; praying at the same time for us as well, that God will open up to us a door for the word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ, for which I have also been imprisoned; that I may make it clear in the way I ought to speak."

As Glenn Miller resonantly writes:

I am 'soaring' as I write this--borne aloft by the Spirit of the Living God, infused with tangible grace, warmth, goodness, glow. And there are no temptations in my 'normal sphere of moral combat' that can touch me now... I am as clean as I can be, transcending the pull to feel 'sarxy' (fleshly, from the Greek work for NT flesh--sarx), to get off track, to settle for less, to settle into comfortable despair, and other normal-glennlife challenges. [I am the beneficiary of God's love/outreach to some of you out there--something in this writing He intends more for you, than for me--but I get to learn it too, because I am in the media path(yes!). Otherwise, I might NEVER learn some of this stuff, honestly.]

But I know I will fall back to earth again soon, and dance with sin and conceive some micro-death down here... and it will hurt my heart more than ever before... the higher I soar in love for our good-hearted God, the greater the loss of innocence in the next betrayal of that love... I really hate the little betrayals I do, to my Loyal Lover... and I hate them more and more, the more He grows my beauty within... Someday I will be free to soar in delirious-dance with this One--without stopping! But for now, I will continue to need His Cross, His foot-washing, and His pulling me out of the thorn bushes and thistles.

It's a sad thing, really, that while the Spirit lifts my heart up to share with you precious people--you beloved of our tender-hearted God--my mind knows that my Judas moment is only minutes, hours, days away... and He knows it, too, and has made ample provision for it, but it doesn't lessen the sadness in my heart BEFORE I fall, nor the sense of grief AFTER I fall into betrayal.

I will 'get up' and dust myself off, as always (“for a just man falleth seven times, yet riseth up again”--Prov 24.16), and I will know that I am forgiven (I Jn 1.9), and that my sin has not impacted His 'paid in full', and that I am still 'winning' in His work of progressive sanctification in my life (the sheer witness of my increased grief over this is proof that my moral sensibilities are growing more like His). But I will still feel that post-denial experience of Peter's in the courtyard (Luke 22.61, “and Jesus turned and looked at Peter”), and yet--like him--I will probably not see a trace of anger, disapproval, harshness, “I told you so”, or anything but a quiet love in His face.

Hebrews 4:14-16 -

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Do you know what it feels like to deliberately do something that will break a friend's heart?

It feels pretty bad.

Some of my friends would say I did the right thing... and that it will turn out for the best in the end.  "Tough love."

Others of my friends would say I did the wrong thing... evincing 'coldheartedness' instead of 'christlike love.'

My only hope and stay is some verses from the Bible (2 Peter 2:12, 2 Corinthians 8:21 Romans 12:17, Romans 14, Hebrews 13:4), and some counsel from some of my closest friends, and some optimistic hope-for-the-best type stories concocted in my imagination in which this all works out well.  (actually I know that it will all work out "well" from Romans 8:28, but I guess my only question is what "well" will look like.)

How exactly does one become "saved", according to the Bible, and what exactly takes place?

This past year feels like it's been an "education" or at least a "challenge" along the lines of this question.  I have been exposed to friends answering the question from many different perspectives, and I am still sorting through what exactly the Bible has to say about this.

- From the Bible study I'm going to (on Galatians), Tim Keller presents a Reformed/Lutheran perspective (http://godsquad.com/discipleship/galatians/index.htm) similar to http://www.monergism.com/ ... Salvation is by faith alone (though it always produces works).  We must strive to avoid all "functional saviors" besides Christ.  The gospel is not the attitude of the "younger brother" in the Prodigal story (eat, drink and be merry, ignore God, etc), nor the "elder brother" (follow the rules, earn my own salvation).  Instead, it's "I am more wicked than I ever imagined, but God's grace is greater than I have ever dared to dream."

- I have a dear friend who says that he wants to be saved, but he doesn't want to give up a particular sin in his life.  Does the Bible teach that he must be willing to give up all sin in his life in order to be saved ("Lordship salvation"), or only that he must believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is Who He claimed to be?

- From http://www.reasoningbygrace.org/articles.htm - not only is salvation by grace alone, but those who neglect to emphasise this enough are preaching a false gospel (e.g. Rick Warren, Billy Graham and his inclusion of Catholics, etc).   See also the very sobering "Honey from the Rock" by Thomas Wilcox.

- From my Mormon friends and my Catholic friends - salvation requires both faith and works.  Faith alone is not enough - and James 2:24 "proves" this.  Plus a bunch of verses in the Book of Mormon or a bunch of church traditions.  Mormons also believe along with many other religions that everyone will eventually be saved, as far as I understand.  This is obviously difficult to reconcile with the Bible.

- From my Postmodern Type1 friends - N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul - NPP - Traditional Christianity has interpreted Paul all wrong.  Instead of the heart of the Gospel being the offer of "being made righteous" by legal imputation of Christ's righteousness, NPP claims that the heart of the Gospel is God's fulfilling his promise to those who are righteous in themselves; to those who are covenant members of the Kingdom of God.  N.T.Wright and others claim that their teaching "includes" the idea of salvation from personal sin, but "enhances" it and goes further to present the "complete" gospel.

- From my Postmodern Type2 friends - Dallas Willard and "the disciplines" of the Christian life... It is not enough simply to "be saved" - one must walk in the spiritual disciplines in order to grow in Christ.  “A discipline for the spiritual life is…nothing but an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and his Kingdom .” Such as: "disciplines of abstinence": solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice... and "disciplines of engagement": study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, and submission.
On the one hand it sounds similar to 2 Peter 1:5-10.  And certainly Jesus fasted and spent time alone, etc. On the other hand, some of the "ascetic"/"gnostic"/"you-need-this-secret-or-else-you-can't-live-the-full-christian-life"/"Christ-is-not-enough" sounding tendencies seem to go against Colossians 2:1-13, etc.

"Behind" all of these contemporary views, we feel the constant undertow that is the spirit of the age.  This worldview is above all pluralistic and syncretistic - constantly trying to avoid anything "absolute".  It is a reaction against modernism/early-humanism and the failure of Enlightenment thought... a reaction against the World-Wars, a reaction against the perception of unloving, argumentative Christians and their 'doctrinal wars', and a consequence of the global interconnectedness through which the beliefs of all other cultures (especially eastern- Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam) are now visible all around us...

The devil keeps trying always to use the world's reigning philosophies to swing the pendulum of Christian theology away from truth.  In the second, third, and fourth centuries, multitudes of heresies sprang up in the church, and had to be countered by the people of God.  In the time of the Reformation, the pendulum swung away from salvation-by-works, but some reformed people were carried in the opposite direction to hypercalvinism.  In the time of the Modernists, reacting to Darwin and the higher critics, the pendulum swung away from denying the miracles of the Bible (Lewis, McDowell), but some Christians adopted a strident anti-intellectual fundamentalism ("The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it").

A knowledge of where contemporary culture is trying to push us is helpful, but simply 'reacting against the world's philosophy' is dangerous.  Instead, we must hold to the Bible as our source of truth (not blindly/presuppositionally, but in an informed way).

As for the salvation questions discussed above, I am currently thinking that the "monergism" and "Lordship" views are closest to the truth of the Bible, though the idea of a secondary judgement based on works also seems very biblical (for the unsaved, Luke 12:35-48, and for the saved, 2 Cor. 5:9-11... Rev. 20:15 seems to discuss the "binary" savedness-or-unsavedness, and Rev. 20:13 seems to discuss the tiny "gradations" within those two huge categories... for more info see also Matthew 5:7, 6:14-21, 7:13-14, 11:20-24, 12:33-37, 20:20-28, 23:11-12, Luke 13:23-30, John 5:22-30, Acts 24:25, Romans 2:5, 8:1, 8:33ff, 14:10, 1 Corinthians 3:9-17, 4:1-5, 11:29, Phil. 4:17, 2 Thessalonians 1:4-12, James 2:13, 3:1, 1 Peter 4:15-19, 1 John 4:17).

What are your thoughts on salvation?   I will greatly appreciate reading your thoughts on these things.

"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." -- Jesus, Matthew 7:15

"I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them." -- Paul, Acts 20:29-30

Awwww....  how romantic.... 

Differing roles, equal worth...

Complementary strengths and weaknesses...

Strength and beauty working together...

Different (imperfect) vessels, different names, but filled with the same sweet goodness, and whereof said goodness resides not in the polymers thereof, but from a source wholly other...

(more details in the comments section)

"If Satan troubles us, Jesus Christ
You who are the lion of the grasslands
You whose claws are sharp
Will tear out his entrails
And leave them on the ground
For the flies to eat."

-- Afua Kuma, Christian songwriter and poet from Ghana

There may be some humor in the reading of that song, by Christians more used to a different type of CCM... (and maybe more used to thinking of Jesus as a "tame lion" or a velvet stuffed lion)...  but there is also a lot of truth behind the metaphor...