Barbarians and Rhinos

"...most groups of animals have unique names or designations when they dwell together. With insects most of us know that bees are called swarms, and ants are called colonies... But my favorite of all is the group designation for rhinos.

You see, rhinos can run thirty miles an hour, which is pretty fast when you consider how much weight they’re pulling. Just one problem with this phenomenon. Rhinos can see only thirty feet in front of them. Can you imagine something that large moving in concert as a group, plowing ahead at thirty miles an hour with no idea what’s at thirty-one feet?

You would think that they would be far too timid to pick up full steam, that their inability to see far enough ahead would paralyze them to immobility. But with that horn pointing the way, rhinos run forward full steam ahead without apprehension, which leads us to their name. Rhinos moving together at full speed are known as a crash. Even when they’re just hanging around enjoying the watershed, they’re called a crash because of their potential.

You’ve got to love that. I think that’s what the Church is supposed to be. That’s what happens when we become barbarians and shake free of domestication and civility. The church becomes a crash. We become an unstoppable force. We don’t have to pretend we know the future. Who cares that we can see only thirty feet ahead? Whatever’s at thirty-one feet needs to care that we’re coming and better get out of the way. We need to move together as God’s people, a barbarian tribe, and become the human version of the rhino crash.

The future is uncertain, but we need to move toward it with confidence. We need to stop wasting our time and stop being afraid of what we cannot see and do not know. We need to move forward full force because of what we do know. We may not be able to see what’s at thirty-one feet, but we don’t have to be blind to what’s right in front of us. There’s a world that desperately needs God, a world filled with loneliness, hopelessness, and fear. We have somehow become deaf to a cry that reaches heaven coming from the souls of men. But God hears."

                          - Erwin McManus, The Barbarian Way