I just found something I wrote towards the end of this past summer and I thought I would post it since I am still experiencing some of these feelings to one degree or another:
"Okay, so I have to get these thoughts out because they are driving me CRAZY!! But thank you, Lord, for this craziness and for messing with my thoughts. I thank You for this new feeling of discomfort. I think this discomfort is the first stage needed in order to produce real change in the future.
While spending some time in Ecuador this summer, I started wrestling with some thoughts which were largely provoked after reading The Irresistible Revolution and so I started praying a ton about this and jotting many of my thoughts down.
I talked about this topic with many people already which has been great. It really helps to verbalize things when sometimes your thoughts just aren’t making sense.
I guess besides the questions I have about how to really live out your faith in this post-modern age, what is really driving me crazy in this overwhelming desire to want to run to the poorest of poor neighborhoods and live alongside the orphans, the single mothers, the homeless, the prostitutes, the thieves, the hungry, and the shirtless. I desperately want to hang out with these people on a regular basis because after all these are the kind of people that Jesus hung out with on a regular basis. I know you don’t need to go live in a ghetto to witness to these folks and just love on them, but it sure makes it a lot easier to have contact with them when you do. I know those people don’t live in my neighborhood but they can be found in nearby areas. I also know that those aren’t the only people who need God’s love because I know a lot of rich people and very self-righteous people who need to be shown God’s love too. But these last two months I feel as though God has really put inside me this insatiable desire to want to do something so radical and so remarkable and yet, at the same time, something so ordinary and something “expectant[?]” of a follower of Jesus.
What has also been driving me crazy lately is the way so many Christians live. First of all, a few disclaimers…I do not think that there is anything wrong with having both wealth and Jesus as long as the person is a slave to Jesus and not the money and uses the wealth wisely. It is not wrong to live in a nice house, drive a nice car, or go to a nice church. (Although I am starting to have different beliefs about how churches should organize their finances. Sometimes it confuses me when a church is willing to spend exuberant amounts of money on say stained-glass windows that might have cost several hundred thousand dollars….think of how many mouths can be fed with $400,000 or more).
Anyway, I have been perplexed with how little we are moved by our faith or by how many few people actually are moved by their faith. I know many Christians volunteer their time to help out in the church community from time to time and some go on mission trips once in a while and others get involved in their communities and do various outreach programs. But, what I am talking about is something bigger than that. [Or is it bigger than that?] What I have been wondering is why aren’t their more Shane Claibornes and Mother Theresas and Gandhis out there? (Okay, maybe these weren’t all the best examples to use when you’re talking about faith that moves.) But, what I mean is why aren’t more people like Shane Claiborne –someone who is willing to totally sell themselves out to the Lord by living on a daily basis with some pretty poor, broken people who desperately need someone like Shane to tell them about the hope we have in Jesus.) Not to sound self-righteous, but I have been experiencing like never before this new awaken –but deeper-than-before innate desire and passion –to want to live among these people and I mean live right alongside them. I am confused now why more people don’t have this same desire if they are really in love with Jesus. As followers and believers and lovers of Jesus, we are able to experience, to an extent, and share with Him His desires and passions and longings. So if we share in these, then why aren’t we doing more to act on them?
I certainly have come up with a long list of reasons why it would be difficult for me to live such a lifestyle. At first I felt a little guilty just thinking of reasons why I “can’t” live in such a way because then I started thinking that maybe I was just being selfish and I know that that kind of life would be hard to live. However, I still think I can make some pretty radical changes in my life –maybe not as radical as Shane –but radical nonetheless and ordinary. (I say “ordinary” because it should be “ordinary” not “extraordinary” to live in such a way because isn’t that is what is expected of us?) Anyway, some of the reasons on my list for not living in such a way as Shane included: 1) I still have a little college to finish up and then I am planning on grad school; 2) I am a woman; and 3) I am single. This is just a short list of things that aren’t going to change quickly or at all (meaning number 2) but these are things that will make it difficult to live in such a way as Shane."
Reading over these old comments made me think about what Christian family interdependence should look like. It saddens me how much of an independent society we have become. What if we did good deeds not to be seen as Good Samaritans or because we may work for a nonprofit organization or in hopes of the good deed being repaid, but we do them out of love and Christian commitment? If only radical interdependence can take over then money will lose its power. I think it would be so cool if people shared cars, bought each other groceries, watched each other’s kids, and made mechanical repairs without charging anything. Perhaps, this sounds very socialistic. I realize this kind of system will never work well on a national level because of our fallen nature. One of the early Christians once said, “Starve Mammon with your love.” I think once Mammon goes hungry then we can really experience what it is like to depend on God and one another to meet our needs. I think it would be so much fun to share lawn mowers and garden tools and washing machines. It’s always more fun to do laundry with someone anyway.
As Luther said - there are two conversions - one of the heart, and one of the wallet. How we use our wealth is a mark of our spiritual life - and that is a huge challenge in a self centered and materialistic culture. It's certainly one I am struggling through at the moment - and Shane's book was a good spur for me to pray and act on this, and re-examine what scripture says about wealth and how we use it and relate to it. And the scary thing is that we are all in the top 2% of incomes in the world - even Western full time missionaries and Christian workers "living by faith" are among the top 2% of the world's incomes. Most people live on so much less than us that we cannot even understand it. That is a huge challenge to looking at how we live in relation to scriptures like James 2: 14-17.
Monday, December 21, 2009
irresistible revolution
This was written back in July and it is still stuff I’m contemplating daily:
So I have just finished reading Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. After hearing Shane speak at Taylor, I didn’t feel influenced at all –nothing he said really affected me and I initially wasn’t sure I agreed with everything he said. But now that I have finished his book, I just have to say, wow, I feel like a different person. When I picked up the book I had no idea my thinking would change so dramatically. So this is how it all started….I was wandering through a bookstore looking to buy some reading material for my trip to Ecuador when I spotted Irresistible Revolution and thought why not give it a read. Out of my refusal to be ignorant of what Shane has to say (even though I was initially stubborn to even really listen to him), I picked up his book. Wow! Am I ever glad I bought this book. If you have not heard of this book before, please do yourself a favor and read it. I do have to admit thought that is was hard for me to read past the first chapter or two mostly because of the initial bias I had. I was initially skeptical of the theology and doctrine behind Shane’s way of thinking. Although Shane won’t admit that he really is part of the emergent church movement, the fact is that he is in terms of living out faith in modern times. (I am still not exactly sure what this movement is all about because it is such a big, new movement and I just started researching it this past year. If you aren’t familiar with this movement and you are a true follower of Jesus Christ then you need to research this too because it should concern you since many churches are headed down this road and they are going to have incredible influence on the faith of the next generation as well as ours). It is because of this very controversial issue that has caused much heated debate that initially turned me off to reading Shane’s Irresistible Revolution. The book really got me thinking about how to live as a follow of Jesus in a post-modern world (this is where the emergent church comes in).
Every since putting the book down, I have literally been going crazy with this new heavy conviction I have about how I should live my life as a follower of Jesus (I am going to be like Shane and refuse to say “Christian” when I really mean “follower of Jesus.”)
Shane Claiborne is someone "living as an ordinary radical." He is part of a faith community known as The Simple Way in Philadelphia, and lives in the impoverished area known as Kensington in Philadelphia. This community is part of a movement that could be considered a form of new monasticism. He is someone who has taken seriously the call of the Gospel to live a radically different life.
The Irresistible Revolution reads like a travelogue of a life, or, like a memoir of sorts. It weaves stories and experiences from Shane's life with challenging questions and theological insight. It is easy to read, but challenging to chew.
Shane's book is about his experiences and application and sometimes this makes it a little difficult to interpret...it actually takes some thinking on the readers’ part to make application for our own life. Shane is single without kids, living in a community house in a poor neighborhood, part of the cell church type of system, and relatively free of some of the responsibilities of that life (not that he is free of responsibility). The challenge becomes making application and figuring out how to live the Kingdom-Life for the person who is married with children, living in the suburbs or rural areas, part of an organized church, and tied down with some additional life responsibilities because of those realities. Luckily Shane isn't completely insensitive to the plight of others to make application...he says, "You don’t have to have my life, but you have to react to Jesus.”
We mustn’t read Shane’s ‘testimony’ as a complete ‘theology’….others might not feel the same as me, but I didn’t feel like Shane was encouraging and inspiring me to live more like Shane, but to live more like Jesus. Society is broken all around us. There is no shortage of opportunities for creative, incarnational evangelism everywhere you look.
Shane is passionate about the need to live this gospel as much as talk about it...and I’m sure we’d all agree that there is a need for the church to re-engage with society in this way...and no doubt that WILL mean engaging with the broken and hurting society around us, loving our neighbor, etc...for Shane, it was the most broken and the most hurting in Philadelphia, but it’s not a ‘one size fits all’. We are all different ‘parts of the body’.
Now I have heard people turn their ‘testimony’ into a complete ‘theology’ (dangerous) but I don’t think Shane is guilty of that. He does though offer a series of provocative stories which “rage against the dying of the light” and act as ‘signposts’ to another Kingdom, to another way of life, stories which recognize the brokenness of the world, and meet it there, but don’t let it have the last word.
One major criticism you may hear people make is how the book minimizes the importance of theology.
"I learnt more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than a systematic theology ever taught me" (p51) Now, I know Shane is a firm post-modern and that post-moderns like stories more than facts etc. But, that kind of statement calls into question the whole value of theology. What did the tears of homeless mothers *actually* teach him? That sharing is good? That we should care for each other? Great - but not much about God. What can those things *possibly* teach us about God? We are made in his likeness, not He in ours. We don't learn about God by looking at fallen sinners (no matter how vulnerable or holy); we learn about God from the Word. On the other hand, someone can argue that you can learn theology from a homeless person because they were made in the image of God (however, “marred” as Augustine would put it).
I'm not sure what his "gospel" is. Throughout the whole book, I could find barely a mention of sin, salvation, or the cross. What there was a lot of is loving our neighbors. Which of course, is good. But surely it's not the whole picture? He seems to see Jesus as an inspirational figure, who showed us how to live and love well. But that's not the gospel of Paul, or of evangelicalism. One story will serve to illustrate the point: It was the time when a bunch of his friends slept on Wall Street, New York, as an act of solidarity with the poor. (p118-119) Then at a certain time, they unfurled banners which read, "Stop terrorism", "Share", "Love", and a quote from Ghandi about greed. They drew pictures on the pavements and blew bubbles, and hugged and laughed. And SC describes it as "bringing God and Mammon together". Forgive me, but, if you look carefully, where is God in that? Where is the Biblical gospel in there? Sure, it's a worthwhile enterprise to stand in solidarity with the poor, and to stand up against corporate greed. But don't make out that this was some sort of outreach with the gospel. Now I don’t think Shane is trying to provide a complete systematic theology. But I’m sure he’d not be so arrogant to say that he’s trying to. What we really need is to be motivated by the truth of the Jesus-filled, Biblical gospel, and to reach out to people with the saving message of the cross.
If i lived this radical life my worry would be that people would be impressed by me more then my King. I love how humble SC is, he is obviously an amazing guy, his worst thought I think would be that people would think him 'cool'. The latter part of the book may prove otherwise in terms of where direct communication of the gospel comes in. “I just don't want preaching to get a bad name!” Also “any quality of life we create now is still a pale shadow of what is to come, we need to make sure people are in on that.”
For me it is not meant to be a complete solution, theology or guide to how we are to 'do church' in a postmodern culture (in fact, as I recall, Shane is explicit and disarmingly humble about this in the latter section of his book) it is however a collection of inspirational stories and an overall narrative in which says something like, “I, like a lot of people got dissatisfied/bored with the ‘church’ I belonged to…but instead of turning my back on ‘religion’ (like many of my ‘de-churched’ friends) I re-discovered the person of Jesus and his message by engaging with the poor and the broken and the hurting (like Jesus did) and I found that it wasn’t after-all the message of the gospel that was weak or faulty, just that it had been ‘lost in translation’…or perhaps more alarmingly, where it had been translated okay, it still wasn’t making a tangible difference to the lives of those who proclaimed it!”
And Shane and some friends got together to experiment in a new way of living, which they called ‘The Way’ – but that doesn’t mean he thinks it’s ‘The ONLY Way’’
It would be easy, but wrong, to write Shane off as a liberal or an activist who is simply pasting the message of Jesus over his own message. Somehow he has forged a middle ground between liberal activist and right wing conservative. He manages to hold elements of both in tension with great humility and recognition of his own inner struggles. Shane says, “While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness (after all, it is a fruit of the Spirit), I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.”
I was challenged and convicted by many things said in the book, and believe it is well worth your time to read. Perfect? No. There were a few things that gave me pause. But all-in-all this was a good read. I don't necessarily agree with all of his conclusions (I don't necessarily agree with all of my own conclusions), but I can't disagree with his commitment to live out an expression of the faith that echoes the Old Testament Prophets (established orders didn't like them much either...critiquing their theology and commitment to the nation).
After reading this book, I just wanted to run off and find my own Calcutta (Shane mentioned how he was first greatly influenced by working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India). I have been going insane over how uncomfortable I feel because of how comfortable my life is. Shane expresses the kind of authentic Christianity that most of us are trying to avoid because the cost is too great. He proposes a lifestyle that prophetically proclaims what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the twenty-first century.
Why do so many of us “Christians” far remove ourselves from the poorest of poor, the lowest of low, the downtrodden, the outcast? Sure, maybe it is because they aren’t our next door neighbors. But apart from geographical location, we are so often blinded by our own wealth and comfort. It says in Scripture that it is not about the sacrifice we make but about our attitude and heart. Sure there are a lot of people out there who are willing to make enormous sacrifices. For example, those who join the Peace Corps take a financial sacrifice for a time and also go to live in some pretty poor countries. Or soldiers too, for example. But sacrifice without a right heart is futile. I really think those who have a change in heart desire to sacrifice their whole lives to serving the Lord. There are so many ways to serve, but I honestly can’t think of a better way to live out the Kingdom of God on earth then by living, working, and hanging out with the same people Jesus surrounded himself with. I am not saying everyone needs to find their own Calcutta like Mother Teresa or not everyone needs to live in the poorest area of Philly like Shane Claiborne with The Simple Way. There are other indirect ways to serve these people. Also, we are all different parts of the church body working together but performing different job functions. But since reading Shane’s book, I can’t stop thinking about how if we really love Jesus and really want to follow Him wholeheartedly and share in every feeling He had for the hungry, thirsty, shirtless, and homeless…who wouldn’t want to live like Shane? I really believe if Jesus was living here in the U.S. in this day and age, His lifestyle would probably look a lot like Shane’s. The problem I am dealing with is our culture. Our post-modern culture doesn’t exactly fit Shane’s lifestyle (which, of course, that’s why Shane is considered so radical). Some will even argue that Shane has disengaged himself from our culture which is not good either. But the point I am trying to make is this…Shane is a prime example of what it means to be completely sold out to the Lord and I think we can learn a lot from him on how to live our lives as imitators of Christ.
I think God calls certain people to live lives similar to Shane’s, but perhaps this is not how everyone should live or can live? I just can’t help but think…who wouldn’t want to live this way? (hence the title of the book…it is “irresistible”) I think I am actually very jealous of Shane’s life or maybe it’s more of a jealousy after his faith…it takes incredible sacrifice and commitment to do what Shane is doing. I was watching a documentary today on AIDS victims and orphans in Africa and I couldn’t help but think about how desperately I want to go to Africa to help those kinds of people but I also couldn’t stop thinking about how there are so many of us Christians living comfortable lives and yet there are so few of us even willing to think about the millions dying of AIDS...we avoid these thoughts because we know they are uncomfortable and if we thought about it then we would feel guilty about not acting on it. (I actually wrote a few more pages on the complacency of Christian churches today and on the whole emergent movement but that may have to become another note because this note is becoming ridiculously long.)
I think the point is don't live Shane's life...live his commitment to living out Jesus' life. Or, maybe just start asking the hard questions of how you can more fully live out Jesus' life for yourself. I know I am, and it is never easy. But, please read this book and let it make you feel as uncomfortable as it did me. We need this kind of discomfort more than we know.
So I have just finished reading Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. After hearing Shane speak at Taylor, I didn’t feel influenced at all –nothing he said really affected me and I initially wasn’t sure I agreed with everything he said. But now that I have finished his book, I just have to say, wow, I feel like a different person. When I picked up the book I had no idea my thinking would change so dramatically. So this is how it all started….I was wandering through a bookstore looking to buy some reading material for my trip to Ecuador when I spotted Irresistible Revolution and thought why not give it a read. Out of my refusal to be ignorant of what Shane has to say (even though I was initially stubborn to even really listen to him), I picked up his book. Wow! Am I ever glad I bought this book. If you have not heard of this book before, please do yourself a favor and read it. I do have to admit thought that is was hard for me to read past the first chapter or two mostly because of the initial bias I had. I was initially skeptical of the theology and doctrine behind Shane’s way of thinking. Although Shane won’t admit that he really is part of the emergent church movement, the fact is that he is in terms of living out faith in modern times. (I am still not exactly sure what this movement is all about because it is such a big, new movement and I just started researching it this past year. If you aren’t familiar with this movement and you are a true follower of Jesus Christ then you need to research this too because it should concern you since many churches are headed down this road and they are going to have incredible influence on the faith of the next generation as well as ours). It is because of this very controversial issue that has caused much heated debate that initially turned me off to reading Shane’s Irresistible Revolution. The book really got me thinking about how to live as a follow of Jesus in a post-modern world (this is where the emergent church comes in).
Every since putting the book down, I have literally been going crazy with this new heavy conviction I have about how I should live my life as a follower of Jesus (I am going to be like Shane and refuse to say “Christian” when I really mean “follower of Jesus.”)
Shane Claiborne is someone "living as an ordinary radical." He is part of a faith community known as The Simple Way in Philadelphia, and lives in the impoverished area known as Kensington in Philadelphia. This community is part of a movement that could be considered a form of new monasticism. He is someone who has taken seriously the call of the Gospel to live a radically different life.
The Irresistible Revolution reads like a travelogue of a life, or, like a memoir of sorts. It weaves stories and experiences from Shane's life with challenging questions and theological insight. It is easy to read, but challenging to chew.
Shane's book is about his experiences and application and sometimes this makes it a little difficult to interpret...it actually takes some thinking on the readers’ part to make application for our own life. Shane is single without kids, living in a community house in a poor neighborhood, part of the cell church type of system, and relatively free of some of the responsibilities of that life (not that he is free of responsibility). The challenge becomes making application and figuring out how to live the Kingdom-Life for the person who is married with children, living in the suburbs or rural areas, part of an organized church, and tied down with some additional life responsibilities because of those realities. Luckily Shane isn't completely insensitive to the plight of others to make application...he says, "You don’t have to have my life, but you have to react to Jesus.”
We mustn’t read Shane’s ‘testimony’ as a complete ‘theology’….others might not feel the same as me, but I didn’t feel like Shane was encouraging and inspiring me to live more like Shane, but to live more like Jesus. Society is broken all around us. There is no shortage of opportunities for creative, incarnational evangelism everywhere you look.
Shane is passionate about the need to live this gospel as much as talk about it...and I’m sure we’d all agree that there is a need for the church to re-engage with society in this way...and no doubt that WILL mean engaging with the broken and hurting society around us, loving our neighbor, etc...for Shane, it was the most broken and the most hurting in Philadelphia, but it’s not a ‘one size fits all’. We are all different ‘parts of the body’.
Now I have heard people turn their ‘testimony’ into a complete ‘theology’ (dangerous) but I don’t think Shane is guilty of that. He does though offer a series of provocative stories which “rage against the dying of the light” and act as ‘signposts’ to another Kingdom, to another way of life, stories which recognize the brokenness of the world, and meet it there, but don’t let it have the last word.
One major criticism you may hear people make is how the book minimizes the importance of theology.
"I learnt more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than a systematic theology ever taught me" (p51) Now, I know Shane is a firm post-modern and that post-moderns like stories more than facts etc. But, that kind of statement calls into question the whole value of theology. What did the tears of homeless mothers *actually* teach him? That sharing is good? That we should care for each other? Great - but not much about God. What can those things *possibly* teach us about God? We are made in his likeness, not He in ours. We don't learn about God by looking at fallen sinners (no matter how vulnerable or holy); we learn about God from the Word. On the other hand, someone can argue that you can learn theology from a homeless person because they were made in the image of God (however, “marred” as Augustine would put it).
I'm not sure what his "gospel" is. Throughout the whole book, I could find barely a mention of sin, salvation, or the cross. What there was a lot of is loving our neighbors. Which of course, is good. But surely it's not the whole picture? He seems to see Jesus as an inspirational figure, who showed us how to live and love well. But that's not the gospel of Paul, or of evangelicalism. One story will serve to illustrate the point: It was the time when a bunch of his friends slept on Wall Street, New York, as an act of solidarity with the poor. (p118-119) Then at a certain time, they unfurled banners which read, "Stop terrorism", "Share", "Love", and a quote from Ghandi about greed. They drew pictures on the pavements and blew bubbles, and hugged and laughed. And SC describes it as "bringing God and Mammon together". Forgive me, but, if you look carefully, where is God in that? Where is the Biblical gospel in there? Sure, it's a worthwhile enterprise to stand in solidarity with the poor, and to stand up against corporate greed. But don't make out that this was some sort of outreach with the gospel. Now I don’t think Shane is trying to provide a complete systematic theology. But I’m sure he’d not be so arrogant to say that he’s trying to. What we really need is to be motivated by the truth of the Jesus-filled, Biblical gospel, and to reach out to people with the saving message of the cross.
If i lived this radical life my worry would be that people would be impressed by me more then my King. I love how humble SC is, he is obviously an amazing guy, his worst thought I think would be that people would think him 'cool'. The latter part of the book may prove otherwise in terms of where direct communication of the gospel comes in. “I just don't want preaching to get a bad name!” Also “any quality of life we create now is still a pale shadow of what is to come, we need to make sure people are in on that.”
For me it is not meant to be a complete solution, theology or guide to how we are to 'do church' in a postmodern culture (in fact, as I recall, Shane is explicit and disarmingly humble about this in the latter section of his book) it is however a collection of inspirational stories and an overall narrative in which says something like, “I, like a lot of people got dissatisfied/bored with the ‘church’ I belonged to…but instead of turning my back on ‘religion’ (like many of my ‘de-churched’ friends) I re-discovered the person of Jesus and his message by engaging with the poor and the broken and the hurting (like Jesus did) and I found that it wasn’t after-all the message of the gospel that was weak or faulty, just that it had been ‘lost in translation’…or perhaps more alarmingly, where it had been translated okay, it still wasn’t making a tangible difference to the lives of those who proclaimed it!”
And Shane and some friends got together to experiment in a new way of living, which they called ‘The Way’ – but that doesn’t mean he thinks it’s ‘The ONLY Way’’
It would be easy, but wrong, to write Shane off as a liberal or an activist who is simply pasting the message of Jesus over his own message. Somehow he has forged a middle ground between liberal activist and right wing conservative. He manages to hold elements of both in tension with great humility and recognition of his own inner struggles. Shane says, “While most activists could use a good dose of gentleness (after all, it is a fruit of the Spirit), I think most believers could use a good dose of holy anger.”
I was challenged and convicted by many things said in the book, and believe it is well worth your time to read. Perfect? No. There were a few things that gave me pause. But all-in-all this was a good read. I don't necessarily agree with all of his conclusions (I don't necessarily agree with all of my own conclusions), but I can't disagree with his commitment to live out an expression of the faith that echoes the Old Testament Prophets (established orders didn't like them much either...critiquing their theology and commitment to the nation).
After reading this book, I just wanted to run off and find my own Calcutta (Shane mentioned how he was first greatly influenced by working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India). I have been going insane over how uncomfortable I feel because of how comfortable my life is. Shane expresses the kind of authentic Christianity that most of us are trying to avoid because the cost is too great. He proposes a lifestyle that prophetically proclaims what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the twenty-first century.
Why do so many of us “Christians” far remove ourselves from the poorest of poor, the lowest of low, the downtrodden, the outcast? Sure, maybe it is because they aren’t our next door neighbors. But apart from geographical location, we are so often blinded by our own wealth and comfort. It says in Scripture that it is not about the sacrifice we make but about our attitude and heart. Sure there are a lot of people out there who are willing to make enormous sacrifices. For example, those who join the Peace Corps take a financial sacrifice for a time and also go to live in some pretty poor countries. Or soldiers too, for example. But sacrifice without a right heart is futile. I really think those who have a change in heart desire to sacrifice their whole lives to serving the Lord. There are so many ways to serve, but I honestly can’t think of a better way to live out the Kingdom of God on earth then by living, working, and hanging out with the same people Jesus surrounded himself with. I am not saying everyone needs to find their own Calcutta like Mother Teresa or not everyone needs to live in the poorest area of Philly like Shane Claiborne with The Simple Way. There are other indirect ways to serve these people. Also, we are all different parts of the church body working together but performing different job functions. But since reading Shane’s book, I can’t stop thinking about how if we really love Jesus and really want to follow Him wholeheartedly and share in every feeling He had for the hungry, thirsty, shirtless, and homeless…who wouldn’t want to live like Shane? I really believe if Jesus was living here in the U.S. in this day and age, His lifestyle would probably look a lot like Shane’s. The problem I am dealing with is our culture. Our post-modern culture doesn’t exactly fit Shane’s lifestyle (which, of course, that’s why Shane is considered so radical). Some will even argue that Shane has disengaged himself from our culture which is not good either. But the point I am trying to make is this…Shane is a prime example of what it means to be completely sold out to the Lord and I think we can learn a lot from him on how to live our lives as imitators of Christ.
I think God calls certain people to live lives similar to Shane’s, but perhaps this is not how everyone should live or can live? I just can’t help but think…who wouldn’t want to live this way? (hence the title of the book…it is “irresistible”) I think I am actually very jealous of Shane’s life or maybe it’s more of a jealousy after his faith…it takes incredible sacrifice and commitment to do what Shane is doing. I was watching a documentary today on AIDS victims and orphans in Africa and I couldn’t help but think about how desperately I want to go to Africa to help those kinds of people but I also couldn’t stop thinking about how there are so many of us Christians living comfortable lives and yet there are so few of us even willing to think about the millions dying of AIDS...we avoid these thoughts because we know they are uncomfortable and if we thought about it then we would feel guilty about not acting on it. (I actually wrote a few more pages on the complacency of Christian churches today and on the whole emergent movement but that may have to become another note because this note is becoming ridiculously long.)
I think the point is don't live Shane's life...live his commitment to living out Jesus' life. Or, maybe just start asking the hard questions of how you can more fully live out Jesus' life for yourself. I know I am, and it is never easy. But, please read this book and let it make you feel as uncomfortable as it did me. We need this kind of discomfort more than we know.
blueberry picking and contentment
I think we all dream about having the perfect family from time to time. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the kind of family I want mine to be someday. I am not talking about the family I have now, but the one I want to have as my own. Recently, I have been thinking a lot about silly little activities, traditions, and rituals I would like to establish with my family someday. I have always dreamed of how I would like my family to look, but I don’t think I have ever really thought about what kinds of things I want them [us] to do. I think some of this thinking was perpetuated last week in my Christian marriage class when we talked about family commitment and the role of family traditions, rituals, and routines. As classmates shared about the kind of things their families do together, I got a little sad thinking about how my family never really established many rituals or traditions. I then started thinking about all the different types of traditions I would like to establish with my own family someday. I thought of many things I would like to see my own family do: like go on annual camping trips, go fishing, go blueberry picking, go skiing, have picnics in the backyard, fly kites together, etc. And then I began to think of some more serious rituals I would like to start too, like praying together –not just at dinner time but around the clock and having regular devotions together. I thought of a few traditions too –I have been thinking about how cool it would be to fast every Thanksgiving instead of having a big feast like everyone else in America so we can think, in a more powerful way, about the less fortunate who have no food (although this one may be tough if my husband has a lot of family whom we are expected to celebrate Thanksgiving with and there’s food involved…unless we can convince them to all join in this tradition). I also think it would be cool to celebrate the Passover meal so that our children can better understand it and it would be more meaningful this way. I also thought of a ton of other traditions I would like to start but I am afraid that if I state anymore I might start to sound like this spiritually pretentious control freak who uses monastic means to discipline her children.
…but, one last thing before I move on from this silly stuff. Although I know many girls dream about what kind of wedding they would like to have, I honestly don’t think too much about that (after all, it’s the marriage that matters anyway not the wedding ceremony…I never understood some people’s obsessions with planning every single detail of their wedding). However, I have been thinking about whom I want to invite to my wedding. The first thing that comes to mind when I think about this is the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14. Jesus talks about how, when throwing a party, one should invite the poor and downcast in society instead of just friends and relatives who can repay you by inviting you to their feasts and celebrations. I have dreamt for a while of using this principle when making out my wedding guest list. I think it would be so cool to have this destination wedding somewhere like maybe the D.R. and invite a whole orphanage of orphans. I would dress all the little orphan boys in white dress shirts and the little girls in sundresses and all the girls could be the flower girls. Of course, the wedding would be more meaningful if I actually knew some of the wedding guests. Over the last few years, I have realized my deep passion for orphans. This realization was really brought to my attention while I was in Guatemala. It would be pretty sweet to have a wedding in Antigua, Guatemala with some orphan guests that I have already met when I was there. My plan is to do some more orphan work after college so who knows when I will encounter all my wedding guests :)
I guess we all have dreams and visions for how we want life to turn out –some are more realistic than others. When I wrote “perfect” I meant “perfect” as a relative and subjective term. What’s perfect for one person may look very imperfect to another person.
I think a lot of times the desire to want to create that perfect family stems from growing up in a not so perfect family and the further your family is from your ideal of perfection the more you dream and desire to create the most perfect family ever.
I was just thinking...if someone finds themselves dreaming a lot about what they want their family to be like, does this mean that they are not fully satisfied or content in God? I don’t think so...I think we are all naturally restless and we will forever feel some discontent (to different degrees depending on life’s circumstances) until we are reunited with our Heavenly Father. I think that little bothersome discontentment we feel at times is very necessary; otherwise, without it we wouldn’t have as strong as a desire for God or a desire to want to know Him more. Without some longing for better earthly families, we probably wouldn’t crave God’s family as much.
I am so thankful that I will soon be a part of God’s perfect, eternal family. But until then, let the longing continue for it is within that longing that the desire is strengthened and it is the discontentment that perpetuates both.
…but, one last thing before I move on from this silly stuff. Although I know many girls dream about what kind of wedding they would like to have, I honestly don’t think too much about that (after all, it’s the marriage that matters anyway not the wedding ceremony…I never understood some people’s obsessions with planning every single detail of their wedding). However, I have been thinking about whom I want to invite to my wedding. The first thing that comes to mind when I think about this is the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14. Jesus talks about how, when throwing a party, one should invite the poor and downcast in society instead of just friends and relatives who can repay you by inviting you to their feasts and celebrations. I have dreamt for a while of using this principle when making out my wedding guest list. I think it would be so cool to have this destination wedding somewhere like maybe the D.R. and invite a whole orphanage of orphans. I would dress all the little orphan boys in white dress shirts and the little girls in sundresses and all the girls could be the flower girls. Of course, the wedding would be more meaningful if I actually knew some of the wedding guests. Over the last few years, I have realized my deep passion for orphans. This realization was really brought to my attention while I was in Guatemala. It would be pretty sweet to have a wedding in Antigua, Guatemala with some orphan guests that I have already met when I was there. My plan is to do some more orphan work after college so who knows when I will encounter all my wedding guests :)
I guess we all have dreams and visions for how we want life to turn out –some are more realistic than others. When I wrote “perfect” I meant “perfect” as a relative and subjective term. What’s perfect for one person may look very imperfect to another person.
I think a lot of times the desire to want to create that perfect family stems from growing up in a not so perfect family and the further your family is from your ideal of perfection the more you dream and desire to create the most perfect family ever.
I was just thinking...if someone finds themselves dreaming a lot about what they want their family to be like, does this mean that they are not fully satisfied or content in God? I don’t think so...I think we are all naturally restless and we will forever feel some discontent (to different degrees depending on life’s circumstances) until we are reunited with our Heavenly Father. I think that little bothersome discontentment we feel at times is very necessary; otherwise, without it we wouldn’t have as strong as a desire for God or a desire to want to know Him more. Without some longing for better earthly families, we probably wouldn’t crave God’s family as much.
I am so thankful that I will soon be a part of God’s perfect, eternal family. But until then, let the longing continue for it is within that longing that the desire is strengthened and it is the discontentment that perpetuates both.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Never thought I would see this day.
I never thought I would see this day where I start blogging, then again, I never thought would see that day when I got facebook (although, I never did set up my own silly facebook account).
Perhaps, by getting a blog, this very act is a sign of growth and maturity. Perhaps, it means that I am becoming more open-minded and less prejudicial. Or, perhaps, it means I am just letting go of fears. Fear of criticism of my writing style, fear of self-disclosure? (of course, it is good to keep a limit on this when stuff is publicly accessible)
Herein, I dedicate my letting-go-of-fear-of-blogs to my roommate, Hannah. Thank you, roommate, for encouraging me to start this thing.
So, why have I always strongly disliked blogs? This may sound very stereotypical, but it's true -I have a general dislike for all blogs because I seem to often find myself stumbling across a ton of wrong blogs. "Wrong" as in the reason for why they are written. I don't have a problem with blogging as long as it doesn't draw too much attention to the blogger. Personally, the blogs I only really like to see are ones completely dedicated to pointing others to Jesus Christ. Perhaps, "wrong" is not the word I mean. I can see many reasons why an atheist [insert any person non-Christian or Christian who does not blog about God] would want to blog. But, I just can't comprehend why in the world anyone would think that other people are willing to spend precious time pouring over their blog which is solely about their daily, mundane life. I mean how narcissistic can you get? This is not meant to discredit the blogs that get people to think about things in a more philosophical way even if Christ is never mentioned or the blogs that are so creatively fashioned that they are beautiful works of art. Before this blog becomes one of those egotistical blogs I am referring to, I will try to end this blog entry shortly.
This is one of the reasons it is so hard for me to blog. My writing has a tendency to trail on and on and on. I like to think about an issue from so many viewpoints that it is hard to just state my opinion or give a quick answer when there is just so much to think about. For instance, I can practically write a book on my opinion of blogs, but I certainly can't do it here. Right now I am already thinking that maybe starting this blog is a bad idea. I mean this entry is already so long and I feel like I haven't said anything. What makes me think people would want to take their time to read all this?
This brings me to why I am blogging. This is where irony comes in. One of the main reasons I have chosen to adopt this avenue of getting out some of my thoughts is because I am a poor journaler. By blogging, I will be forced to spend more time developing my thoughts and putting them into writing. Another reason I have chosen to start a blog is to keep people updated on my traveling experiences. I will be spending all of next semester in Ireland. I thought a blog is the best possible way to keep everyone who cares updated all at once. I realize this is also more irony because this sounds like the blog's direction is pointing back to me. I am not sure what this blog is exactly going to look like -originally, I thought I might just have it while in Ireland and then delete it afterwards but I am not sure yet. Regardless, I hope this blog, through my travels, will not only help me to see God's truth more clearly everyday, but I hope I can also more clearly share with others any spiritual insight I may experience. And that's my purpose for this blog...to make much of Him and little of me.
Perhaps, by getting a blog, this very act is a sign of growth and maturity. Perhaps, it means that I am becoming more open-minded and less prejudicial. Or, perhaps, it means I am just letting go of fears. Fear of criticism of my writing style, fear of self-disclosure? (of course, it is good to keep a limit on this when stuff is publicly accessible)
Herein, I dedicate my letting-go-of-fear-of-blogs to my roommate, Hannah. Thank you, roommate, for encouraging me to start this thing.
So, why have I always strongly disliked blogs? This may sound very stereotypical, but it's true -I have a general dislike for all blogs because I seem to often find myself stumbling across a ton of wrong blogs. "Wrong" as in the reason for why they are written. I don't have a problem with blogging as long as it doesn't draw too much attention to the blogger. Personally, the blogs I only really like to see are ones completely dedicated to pointing others to Jesus Christ. Perhaps, "wrong" is not the word I mean. I can see many reasons why an atheist [insert any person non-Christian or Christian who does not blog about God] would want to blog. But, I just can't comprehend why in the world anyone would think that other people are willing to spend precious time pouring over their blog which is solely about their daily, mundane life. I mean how narcissistic can you get? This is not meant to discredit the blogs that get people to think about things in a more philosophical way even if Christ is never mentioned or the blogs that are so creatively fashioned that they are beautiful works of art. Before this blog becomes one of those egotistical blogs I am referring to, I will try to end this blog entry shortly.
This is one of the reasons it is so hard for me to blog. My writing has a tendency to trail on and on and on. I like to think about an issue from so many viewpoints that it is hard to just state my opinion or give a quick answer when there is just so much to think about. For instance, I can practically write a book on my opinion of blogs, but I certainly can't do it here. Right now I am already thinking that maybe starting this blog is a bad idea. I mean this entry is already so long and I feel like I haven't said anything. What makes me think people would want to take their time to read all this?
This brings me to why I am blogging. This is where irony comes in. One of the main reasons I have chosen to adopt this avenue of getting out some of my thoughts is because I am a poor journaler. By blogging, I will be forced to spend more time developing my thoughts and putting them into writing. Another reason I have chosen to start a blog is to keep people updated on my traveling experiences. I will be spending all of next semester in Ireland. I thought a blog is the best possible way to keep everyone who cares updated all at once. I realize this is also more irony because this sounds like the blog's direction is pointing back to me. I am not sure what this blog is exactly going to look like -originally, I thought I might just have it while in Ireland and then delete it afterwards but I am not sure yet. Regardless, I hope this blog, through my travels, will not only help me to see God's truth more clearly everyday, but I hope I can also more clearly share with others any spiritual insight I may experience. And that's my purpose for this blog...to make much of Him and little of me.
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