Wild Goose Chase - Mark Batterson

Published by Multnomah Books: Colorado Springs, Colorado, 2008.

A book I picked up purely based on the title, Wild Goose Chase is written by an American pastor, Mark Batterson. The title refers to the Celtic habit of referring to the Holy Spirit as a 'Wild Goose', and the subject of the book is about pursuing the Holy Spirit, no matter where He leads.

I almost stopped reading the book near the beginning for a fairly minor reason: Batterson was relating the story of Adam naming the animals and suggested that perhaps God took Adam to the animals in their natural habitat, letting him find them for himself and naming them based not only on their looks but also on their environments. It was a nice picture, but as with Iscariot, not one that fits with a straightforward reading of the text - Genesis 2:19 specifically says that God "brought them [the animals] to the man to see what he would name them..." Little inaccuracies like that bug me, but I stuck with the book, and overall enjoyed it.

I would describe the book as a little bit like a Christian 'self-help' book. Batterson identifies six 'cages' that hold Christians back from fulfilling the potential God has for them - cages like 'fear' or 'failure' or '[over developed] responsibility' and then challenges the reader to overcome them. In this way the book is very much a self-help, although Batterson does continually remind his readers of the necessity of God's Spirit in all this: "I don't want to do things I am capable of doing. Why? Because then I can take credit for them. I want to see God do things in me and through me that I am absolutely incapable of so I can't possibly take credit for them." (page 33).

It's not a hugely 'deep' theological work, but it is encouraging and stirring. Taken in the right context - as someone's reminder to trust in God's Spirit - it is a helpful work. Taken out of context - someone trying to sort out all their problems on their own and just using the 'cages' to identify how to do that, or someone trying to theologically sort out why suffering happens (for example) - it could be a little bit misleading. 

Completed 8 January 2022.

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