Worth It All

I finished reading Bill Jackson's book "The Quest for the Radical Middle," and soon it will be going back to that library down in Alabama where it was borrowed from. Jackson's book was very interesting. It's one of those books that really should come out in a second edition, since it would be improved with expansion and revision. But I'm not going to write out a review of the book other than picking out what to me represents its signal quotation from the final chapter:

In regard to pneumatology, there are only two choices for an evangelical when reading the Gospels: affirm the "teaching Jesus" but relegate the "power Jesus" to an anomaly of history, or affirm all of Jesus and take literally his commission for his disciples to heal the sick and cast out demons. The former seems to bifurcate Jesus and violate the plain meaning of the text while the latter violates our Western presuppositions. For John Wimber it was a simple choice of who he wanted to offend, God or men. He decided early on that God had called him to become a fool for Christ, and his acceptance of being a spectacle has unveiled a Trinitarian God for many.

I was astonished at what John and Carol went through, especially since I was also reading Carol's memoir at the same time. But I suspect that John would tell me now that it was worth it all.