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Welcome to my first ever blog! We're having some wonderful discussions over the book The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. I love this book because it is prompting so many of us to ask the right questions! May we sharpen one another as "iron sharpens iron"!
I want to use this space also to list some other books that are in our home right now and, boy howdy, are they making a HUGE difference!
The Illumined Heart by Frederica Mathewes-Green
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+illumined+heart
Everyday Justice by Julie Clawson
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=everyday+justice
I want to use this space also to list some other books that are in our home right now and, boy howdy, are they making a HUGE difference!
The Illumined Heart by Frederica Mathewes-Green
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+illumined+heart
Everyday Justice by Julie Clawson
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=everyday+justice
Please feel free to comment on any chapter, regardless of whether I have or not.
ReplyDeleteFavorite quotable quotes from this chapter: "God's got a thing for showing up in badlands like Kensington and Nazareth." / "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?" / "Referring to the church as a building is like referring to people as two-by-fours." / "At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of." / "I'm scared God will ask me the same question." OUCH!!!
I find myself saying ouch alot as I read this book!!! Lord, may we not be so far away from the needy, may we not be out-given by the mafia, may we be resurrected! We have the power to change. I believe God is awakening His church! It's very exciting to sense the Lord's revival in us, isn't it! We are ready for something more. We are ready for Mathew 25:40 to be our theme! Let's do it unto Jesus! Let's go out and meet Jesus!
On first read of this chapter is quite easy to dismiss it as a lovely story but not something I can apply to my life.
ReplyDeleteIt's significant that this was something they did whilst at College, a time when, if you going to be that way, most of us are ready to set the world on fire, fight for our rights and generally want to start a revolution.
I spent many hours telling my student friends why they shouldn't bank at Barclays bank, shop for Nestle products, use Boots cosmetics etc, etc. And I'm sure that had I been there I'd have rushed on down to the church to stand and "fight" BUT....
I'm now 37 years old, I have 2 kids and a far more conservative husband (I don't think he's ever rebelled!!) and I put these things first.
In the book, underneath the "rage against the machine" message there is a very simple one.
As people who are in the main comfortably well off, we have houses, internet connections, cars etc,etc. Have we any comprehension of "how the other half live"? Can we put our hands on our hearts and say we'd never be so silly as to deliver microwave popcorn to the homeless? Can we really say we do enough to help?
We had our harvest festival this week and we took donations for a project very near our area who supply crisis packs to the vunerable and needy. These packs contain such things as food, and toiletries to at least give the homeless a meal and a chance to get clean.
On Saturday I was making a display with some of the tins of food that had already arrived and someone had very generously donated a tin of Tiptop. Not sure if you get it in the USA but it's basically a long life pouring cream substitute in a can (happy childhood memories for me!!). Now I don't want to take away from the generosity of the donator. But if you hadn't eaten for a while and someone gave you food, how far would you get on a can of substitute pouring cream? Did the person who bought it really think about what they were giving? did they buy it by mistake and think oh that'll do for them?
The other thing that I got from the weekend was a realisation that I have been donating to this charity on and off for 2 years, it's only at the end of my street and yet I know nothing about their work, I have no idea if I could do more to help etc, etc
Have we all become so comfortable in our lives that we no longer think about the rest of life other than in the context of a harvest gift once in a while or a envelope of money when the pastor (oooo get me, all American!!) asks for it.
Isn't it our Christian duty to do everything we can to help those around us? And just because we have no wish to go sleeping in homeless shelters in protest does that mean we exempt from stretching ourselves at all?
Whether we should actually all be at that homeless shelter, regardless of our situations, is another question.
Naomi makes another great point. Can all of us go sleep in homeless shelters and get arrested on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized? What about those of us with children? What about other responsibilities? Julie Clawson, an emergent mother so to speak, writes about this in her book Everyday Justice and in the blog she moderates called Emerging Women and Parents. A lot of the justice that we are called to as God’s people begins not with the giant radical things, but with the small ones, such as the products we buy, the energy we use, etc.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don’t want the relevance of this argument to give us an ‘out,’ to delude us back to the place we came from. On pg 65, Shane says, “I felt so thirsty for God, so embarrassed by Christianity, and so ready for something more.” It’s these exact feelings that are driving me to explore a life of faith in the ways I am. And though we are all certainly called to different things, I do think we are all called to be radical. And we must ask ourselves in choosing how we live out that faith: what is a part of our calling and what have we imposed as limitations to that? For example, raising children is a beautiful part of the Christian vocation. But it does not exempt us from being radical. In fact, for their sake, we need to show them examples. So what does it mean to raise your children radically? To be a radical mother or father for Christ? And where is the line regarding our responsibilities that would keep us from living radically? Is it money, profession, standard of living, or social status that we feel such responsibility toward that we couldn’t possibly give it up (or look at it in a very different way) for the sake of a radical life of faith?