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.
