Irresistible Revolution .10

Research has shown that the more a person goes to church, the more they are likely to be sexist, racist, anti-gay, for wars and committed to a local church. Shane questions what Bible we are teaching. It is these things that cause many people to think of Christians as hypocrites instead of audacious lovers of people. Brennan Manning says, "The greatest cause of atheism is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him in their lifestyle. This is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." So how can we reverse this? Shane gives a few examples that can help us envision how to live as followers of Jesus who are full of grace.

1. If terrorists are beyond redemption, he says that we can rip out half of the New Testament, since half of it was written "by a terrorist who became an extremist for grace."
2. Shane tells the story of a woman he met in Iraq whose son and husband was killed by an Iraqi police officer. In court the woman told the judge that she simply wanted to officer to know grace and love. She asked that he be ordered to come to her home in the slums 2 times a month.
3. Spin magazine did a feature on Shane and the community he is a part of named The Simple Way. He said after the feature ran he received hundreds of letters from non-Christians who were intrigued by the God he followed and many other letters from Christians who were upset that he would do an interview with such a secular magazine. It was at that point that he knew he had done the right thing.

Irresistible Revolution .9

Chapter 9 of Irresistible Revolution is essentially a look at modern versus post modern.

Shane says that modernity is a joining of people who have it all together, while post modern is a joining of people who know they don't. This divide is played out in all areas of faith. Iraq to some is what America deserved (he quoted Jerry Falwell for this), but Shane quotes Mark 10:18 to respond to Falwell's opinion. During the great persecutions it was written that for every one Christian that was killed there were at least 10 converts. Shane believes that Christianity spreads rapidly when it is killed by evildoers without retaliation.

I know a lot of you who have followed this are thinking Shane is really liberal. I'd like to share this quote from chapter 8. "Conservatives stand up and thank God that they are not like the homosexuals, the Muslims, the liberals. Liberals stand up and thank God that they are not like the war makers, the yuppies, the conservatives. It is a similar self righteousness..."

A powerful story he alludes to is his relationship with the father of a girl who was killed in the Oklahoma City bombings. At the first the father was bitter and angry, very angry. However, the father always remembered his daughter saying "execution teaches hatred." This father traveled the country, after McVeigh had been sentenced to death, speaking about the message of his daughter. He believed that the death penalty was teaching people that we believe some people are beyond redemption, a message unsupported by Scripture in his mind.

• Claiborne is not shy about tackling just about every sensitive subject in politics and society in this book. I commend him for that. Whether you disagree or not, it is much better to discuss than to suppress your thoughts.
• I have spent a lot of time thinking about the validity of the death penalty. It is something I have supported my whole life. I always felt that some people had simply done something too wrong. It is at this point in my life that I am saddened by that mindset that I have been a part of. From a national standpoint I see some sensibility to it, but in a human and Christian standpoint I see no sensibility at all. The wages of sin is death, one sin or many sins, but it is never too late for grace to reach someone. Do you think Jesus would support the death penalty?

Irresistible Revolution .8

Chapter 8 of Claiborne's book is titled "Jesus Made Me Do It." This chapter focuses on some of Shane's experiences upon his return from Iraq. It is essentially a chapter on living in our comfort zones.

In Philadelphia's Love Park, Shane would hang out with homeless folks and pass out food often. The city then passed a law making it illegal to sleep in the park, to ask for money in the park, and illegal to hand out food in the park. He pondered what it meant to submit to authority and still uphold to God's law of love. He answer this question by having a church service in the park. They sang and prayed and even shared in the breaking of bread and communion together. Soon after communion they continued by bringing in pizzas, and even after that everyone slept in the park overnight. During the night the police came and arrested everyone.

In court, Shane wore a shirt that said, "Jesus was homeless." The judge asked him about it and Shane quoted, "foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." The judge later sided with Shane and his friends stating that "if it weren't for people who broke unjust laws, we wouldn't have the freedom that we have."

Shane ends the chapter by saying there are safer ways to live than by being a Christian. It was a radical love that Jesus brought to this earth and following it is a high calling.

I have one problem with all this. That is that it is far different to fight to have an unjust law removed then it is to purposely break the law. I just cannot think of how Shane saw this as submitting to authority and also honoring God.
That being said, he is right about Christianity not being easy. I experience easy Christianity everyday. Seminary, working at a church, being married to a Christian, and etc. This isn't reminiscent of the difficulties Jesus and the apostles encountered when bringing the message of good news to the world.

Irresistible Revolution .7

Let's take a look at chapter 7 of Irresistible Revolution. This is easily my favorite chapter but is also probably the most controversial. Claiborne goes into detail about his thoughts on post 9/11 in America and also his time spent in Iraq after the war had begun.

Around 9/11 the media commended America for rallying together. Clairborne has a different take. He felt that conservatives rallied around war and liberals started protesting, but the cross was covered by the flag. Church community was lost for patriotism. "People longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down." He felt that 9/11 wasn't a tragedy of lost lives but of misplaced love towards the borders and allegiances of the world.

Claiborne went to Iraq because he felt that America was teaching the myth of redemptive violence: that it can produce good (Matthew 26:52). He went to Baghdad in March of 2003 where he spent a month. A powerful story he tells is after a church gathering of Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodoxes. The bishop who organized it talked to Shane about the Christian church in America. When Shane explained that many Americans supported the war so that Iraqis could be liberated the bishop said, "But we Christians do not believe that. We believe 'blessed are the peacemakers.' We believe if you pick up the sword, you die by the sword. We believe in the cross."

Some Iraqis Claiborne encountered referred to US leaders, such as George Bush, as "Christian extremists" while we consider all the terrorists "Muslim extremists".

Some thoughts:

1. Christian extremists seems quite a bit strong to me. The United States was originally attacked.
2. The last chapter talked a lot about how issues don't have faces for a lot of people. They lack a humanity. The war in Iraq is largely that way for me. Sure I have some friends who have been there on one or two tours of duty, but I don't know any Iraqis. It was this side of the war that had no face for me and a face that Claiborne brought light to.
3. I don't want this to be a forum for whether the war is just or not.
4. It scares me to think about the people who have been killed innocently in this war that believe in Jesus. Or even those who don't believe in Jesus but have nothing to do with this war. These people are just as real and alive as our neighbor.
5. The questions that this brings up are difficult for me to find answers to.
6. I wonder when Jesus would say it is ok to go to war.

Irresistible Revolution .6

Chapter 6 of Shane Clairborne's Irresistible Revolution is titled "Economics of Rebirth." He gets started quickly by saying in the 2nd paragraph, "Layers of insulation separate the rich and the poor from truly encountering one another. There are obvious layers like picket fences and SUVs, and there are more subtle ones like charity. Tithes, tax-exempt donations, and short-term mission trips, while they accomplish some good, can also function as outlets that allow us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from the poor."

He gives a quick discussion to the verse that most people use on this subject: "The poor will always be with you." Those are the words of Jesus. Claiborne believes the common exegesis of this verse is incorrect. It is usually taken to mean that there will always be poor people and that we need to focus on others. Claiborne says that Jesus is saying this in a leper's home after he has had his feet anointed with expensive perfume by a poor woman. The poor were all around Jesus when he said "the poor will always be with you." Claiborne believes this is a verse pointing the church to her true identity; that she should always be near those who suffer. Claiborne uses a great quote from Gandhi. Gandhi was often asked if he was a Christian. In response he would say, "Ask the poor. They will tell you who the Christians are."

Early Christians had a mindset that if a child starved while a Christian had extra food, they were guilty of murder. A lot of people have a problem with a gospel of prosperity and people have problems with a gospel of poverty, so Clairborne proposes a gospel of abundance rooted in a theology of enough. His main verses for this are Proverbs 30:8-9. As Gandhi says, "there is enough for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed."

I know in my own life that I have many layers of insulation that allow me to be comfortable. I guess I don't even know where or how to begin to break those down, which leaves me changing nothing.

Irresistible Revolution .5

Chapter 5 of Irresistible Revolution gives an overview of the beginnings of the community that Claiborne helped start called The Simple Way. It is also an overview of his experiment of monasticism. He begins the chapter by telling us that Christians have not shown the world another way to live.

He talks a lot about the wording "come and see," a phrase that Mother Theresa would always use when people would ask about what she did. The only way he knows to invite people into the Christian faith is to invite them to come and see how they live at The Simple Way as they try to be an incarnation of the body.
Claiborne believes that helping the poor is considered commendable, but joining them is considered radical. Catholic bishop Dom Camara says, "When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist."

In American it is popular today to try and do church in a way like the early church. What I mean is that it is popular in ideology to try and do church like in Acts. Claiborne describes this as "the story of a people who were together and were of one heart and mind, sharing all in common." There aren't many churches today who want to approach church in a way like Acts presents...that "do" church like that.
As Claiborne describes the difference between most faith communities and The Simple Way he tells us that most communities only tell us what they believe, "but they do not tell us how their beliefs affect their lifestyle."

Most churches are known by their doctrine, not by the way they live. I wonder how we can change this, because I do see the importance and value of doctrines, but I also see how they confine churches into certain categories. I see doctrines as being important to believers but mostly unimportant when it comes to reaching the lost.

Irresistible Revolution .4

Chapter 4 of Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution is titled "When Comfort Becomes Uncomfortable". It outlines a lot of his time working at Willow Creek Community Church and living in the suburbs of Chicago. He finished some of his education at Wheaton and also worked with Axis, which used to be the name for the 20s group at Willow. During his time at Wheaton he established a relationship with Rich Mullins, who was on a one year sabbatical in order to write a musical inspired by the life of St. Francis of Assisi.

During an all campus chapel meeting Rich spoke and I was really struck by what he said that got him basically banned from speaking at Wheaton again. "You guys are all into that born again thing, which is great. We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me that I have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy too...But I guess that's why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest."

His time at Willow was right after his time in India and Shane spent a lot of time working through how there could be such a divide between the wealthy church that is Willow and the lepers in Calcutta. Tony Campolo (Shane's adviser while he went to Eastern College) says, "Jesus never says to the poor, 'Come find the church,' but he says to those of us in the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,' Jesus in his disguises."

Shane ends the chapter by saying, "We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor."

This was a heavy, convicting, and hard to read chapter. That is a good thing. At least it was a good thing for me. I don't have answers to the questions that statements like these make. Well I could give answers but they aren't very good.
How do we respond to this?

Irresistible Revolution .3

Chapter 3 of Irresistible Revolution is titled "In Search of a Christian". This is really a chapter on Shane's experience in India. He was able to get the phone number for Mother Theresa. When he reached her, he asked if he could come and work with her for a summer. When asking her what to should bring she replied, "God takes care of the lilies and the sparrows, and God will take care of you. Just come."

Shane tells the story of a man he met in India named Andy. Andy was a wealthy German businessman. His life changed when he read the gospel. "It messed everything up." Andy sold everything he had and moved to Calcutta and by the time Shane was there, Andy had not been back to Germany since he had arrived ten years before. Shane was on a journey to find purpose, to find what Christianity could look like when lived out. He had found that in the person of Andy.

During his time in India, Shane worked mostly with a society of outcast lepers. He was told by one of the lepers that most of them don't know the words "thank you" because they have never needed to say them. We see in Jesus that it wasn't what he did, but how he did it. "Jesus healed the sick, but they eventually caught some other disease. He fed the thousands, and they next day they were hungry again. But they remember his love. It wasn't that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper."

I see two main points to this:
1. As he left India and his time with the community of lepers he felt like he was going back to his homeland (the US) full of lepers. We are country full of people who are numb.
2. It was never what Jesus did but how he did it. Just as God looks at our heart, it matters less to Him what we do, but rather how we do it.

Irresistible Revolution .2

Chapter two is titled "Resurrecting Church." This comes from a news headline following the story that Shane shares. Some of his friends see a newspaper headline that the archdiocese is kicking homeless people out of their abandoned church building in 48 hours. Shane and his friends head to that church to lend some support and upon entering they see a banner that says, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?" After that night they recruited many people from his college to be there to show support and not allow the authorities to kick out the families. All of this was announced to the media and it became a media spectacle with many public figures supporting the homeless families. Different public agencies tried quiet ways to get rid of the families but the presence of the Shane and his friends made it difficult to do so. Shane said they were never evicted because of many small miracles.
It was through these experiences that he talks a lot about what church truly is.

"Church is not a building with a steeple." Through Saint Edwards (the abandoned Catholic church), "the church became something we are."
He uses the example of a wealthy church near the abandon church the homeless families lived in. This church gave a large box donation to support the homeless families. Inside...a bunch of small boxes of microwavable popcorn. The problem with this is that they obviously had no microwaves or electricity. Around the same time the mafia came by and donated thousands of dollars and bikes to the children. "My instinct was to cry because of how far the church had become removed from the poor," he says. In the season of life he says he felt "born again...again." Though many times city officials tried to get rid of the haven for the homeless families the church had became, all of these families were able to rebuild their lives through donated housing.

I see Shane really talking about how the strength of community and relationship really made church something much more than Sunday morning.

Irresistible Revolution .1

A week before classes started I bought Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. It had been recommended to me by my great friend (who reads a lot more than me) Ross. Because I don't have classes or papers over Christmas break I had made it a priority to read a book that I wanted to read instead of a textbook on theology. Not that I don't enjoy learning out of the theology book...it is just different. So this begins a chapter by chapter look at Claiborne's book. I have been inspired by Scot McKnight at Jesus Creed in how I would do this.

I think most people would call this a book on social activism, which is something I haven't been a huge fan of (it feels like the popular thing to talk about in Christianity these days), so I am going to keep an open mind to his thoughts. It is never bad to have my way of thinking challenged, so maybe this book will help shape my thinking and yours. Claiborne would not call it a social activism book. He says, "folks separate the spiritual from the political or social, as if the political and social issues were of no spiritual significance, and as if God had no better vision to offer this world."

The first chapter, "When Christianity Was Still Safe," is kind of an autobiography of his childhood through college. He seems to have a pretty normal Christian upbringing. He grew up with a Methodist background but in high school started going to a more charismatic nondenominational church as he describes it. In high school he did the Christian thing and started listening to only Christian music and only reading Christian books. He says, "I had gorged myself on all the products...but was spiritually starving to death." I see him as a normal kid. He didn't really enjoy church. He and all his friends would sit together and leave after the service had started and come back at the very end. "I recall thinking that if God was as boring as Sunday morning, I wasn't sure I wanted anything to do with him." His roommates in college first invited him to hang out with some homeless people in Philadelphia and slowly but surely it was this experience that changed his life. He ends the chapter with a Mother Theresa quote, "In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises." His experience with the homeless in Philly seems to set up much of the rest of the book.

Starting Tomorrow

Hey friends. Starting tomorrow I'm going to begin a short book series on Irresistible Revolution. I'll go chapter by chapter, so 13 posts in all. I am looking forward to sharing some of the insights Shane Claiborne has from his book. It is a book that has challenged and shaken me. He has strong experiences and education that allow his responses to at least be credible and I hope that you can learn something from what he has to say. I'm looking forward to hearing your responses to some of the hard things he has to say and even controversial things he has to say.